Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 66

MONDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 1811

Kat was in her dressing room, supervising the packing of her trunks, when she looked up to find Devlin standing in the doorway.

“I’d heard you were hurt,” she said, her worried gaze tracing the cuts and purple bruises that discolored his face, the arm that hung stiff and awkward in a sling at his side.

“It’s nothing.” He turned his head to survey the litter of half-packed trunks and tumbled gowns strewn about the room. “It’s true then, what they’re saying? You have wed?”

She nodded, barely trusting herself to speak. “Yes.”

He studied her face. “Why Yates?”

“He can protect me. He has evidence that would destroy Jarvis, were it to be made public.”

“But, Kat, what kind of a marriage can this be, with a man who…” He left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

Her voice shook as she answered him. “The only kind I want.” She cleared her throat, trying to ease the tight constriction that felt as if it might choke her. “I’ve let it be known that the Post scrambled the announcement of my coming marriage. There will doubtless be some talk, but it should die down.”

He shrugged one shoulder, but said nothing. She knew it meant nothing to him, the public whispers and speculations.

The old urge to go to him was still there—the urge to take him in her arms and enfold him in the comfort of her embrace. The strength of that wanting—despite all she knew, despite the shame now attached to what they had been to each other—shocked and appalled her. She gripped her hands together against her skirt. “Have you spoken to Hendon?”

His face was oddly blank, as if carefully drained of all emotion. “I’ve nothing more to say to him.”

“It’s not his fault, what happened between us. God knows he tried to discourage it.”

“He took your mother as his mistress.”

“And you took me as yours.”

“I would have made you my wife.”

“Yes. Well…at least we were spared that.”

He searched her face, his yellow eyes hard, questioning. “What about you? Do you forgive him?”

Kat let out a sigh that shuddered her breasts. “For my mother’s sake, no. He would have taken her child away from her. Yet he wanted what was best for me, didn’t he?”

“Or what was best for himself. Does he plan to acknowledge you?”

She felt a wry smile tug at one corner of her lips. “That’s asking a bit much, isn’t it? For the Earl of Hendon to acknowledge an actress as his daughter—an actress who everyone knows was mistress to his son?”

“Kat—” He reached as if to touch her, but she jerked away.

“No. You mustn’t.”

She watched his hand fall back to his side. She found she was no longer able to fathom his thoughts, the exact tenor of his emotions. She knew Devlin better than she’d ever known anyone in her life, but she knew him as a lover. How was she ever to learn to know him as a brother?

“I look at you,” he said, his voice a torn whisper. “I look at you, and I see my father’s eyes staring back at me. And still in my heart, I can’t accept it. Surely if you were my sister, I would know it?”

They studied each other across the crackling distance that separated them. She said, “How could we ever have imagined such a thing?”

He shook his head. “I am trying. But I don’t know how to make my love simply go away.”

She saw the pain in his eyes and knew there was nothing she could say, nothing she could do to ease it. She wanted to say, I love you. I will always love you.

Instead, she said, “We must.”

The Earl of Hendon found his firstborn child, Amanda, seated at her embroidery frame in the morning room.

“I’ve come to tell you I have another daughter,” he said, standing in the center of the rug as she continued to set neat stitches in the chair cover she was making. “An illegitimate daughter.”

Amanda let out a peal of laughter, her needle flashing in and out. “Good God. Are you getting soft in your old age? What precious little thing has managed to convince you she’s your long-lost offspring?”

“Kat Boleyn.”

All trace of amusement fled her face. She set the embroidery frame aside. “You can’t be serious.”

“But I am.”

Amanda raised one eyebrow. “How clever of you. So that’s why the marriage has been called off. However did you manage to convince her?”

Hendon worked his jaw back and forth. “What do you think? That I contrived this tale to drive a wedge between her and Devlin? I’m not that clever. She is my daughter. Of that, there is no doubt.”

He watched a slow, unpleasant smile spread across Amanda’s face. “So now they believe they’ve been committing incest all these years? And of course you said not a word to disabuse them of that notion.”

Hendon tightened his jaw.

“He’ll discover the truth, you know. Someday. And when he does, this will be just one more lie you’ve told him, one more lie he’ll never forgive you for.”

Hendon let his gaze rove over her haughty face, with its unsuccessful blending of his own blunt features with the fine-boned beauty of her mother. He wanted to deny it. Instead he turned and left her there with her embroidery hoop beside the cold hearth. He had almost reached the doorway when he heard her start to laugh.

He kept walking.

Charles, Lord Jarvis stood beside the library windows overlooking the rear garden of his house in Berkeley Square. He was calm. Rage made men do stupid things, and Jarvis was never stupid. He had suffered a setback—several setbacks—and he had some scores to settle. But he was in no hurry, and he was already beginning to see a way the situation might be turned to his advantage.

His butler scratched discreetly at the door. “Lord Devlin to see you, my lord.”

Jarvis kept his back to the room, his gaze on the garden below. “I’m not at home.”

“Yes, my l—”

“I suspected you might deny me,” said the Viscount in a bland voice. “So I’ve come anyway.”

Jarvis’s head snapped around, his eyes narrowing. The Viscount had his left arm in a sling and a patch of sticking plaster on his forehead. Jarvis grunted. “Who did the damage? Lord Stanton or this Kentish doctor I’ve been hearing about?”

“Both.”

Jarvis reached for his snuffbox. “Say what you have to say and then get out of my house.”

Devlin smiled. He carried a leather book tucked under one arm, a large volume with a charred binding that he set on the corner of Jarvis’s desk. “I’ve brought you this.”

Jarvis frowned. “What is it?”

“The Harmony’s log. I think you’ll find it makes interesting reading.”

Jarvis stayed where he was.

Devlin turned toward the door, but paused with one hand on the knob to look back and say, “I’d like to have known your son. You have much to be proud of. Good day, my lord.”

When Devlin had gone, Jarvis stared at the charred log on his desk. It was a moment before he crossed the room to pick it up.

He read the log seated in the embrasure beside the window. It was some time before he finished, closing the log with a quiet snap. The sun had sunk low behind the neighboring rooftops, lengthening the shadows in the library.

And still he sat there, until the last of the day faded from the sky, and the lamplighter on his rounds set a flickering flame to the oil lamps in the square.