Page 36 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

His eyes widened. “Your silence?”

“Yes. My silence.”

“About what?”

“For not revealing to your father what I knew of that day.”

Phoebe had been right that some lying had been done. “But she died seven years after that day.”

She nodded. “I know. But before that I was a faithful servant to your mother and would never have dreamed of betraying her. I think, perhaps, she thought that service was worth something to her after she was gone. So, she offered me this post. I would not have revealed her secret even if she hadn’t offered it to me. I am her faithful servant still.”

“But you’ll reveal it to me?”

The smallest of twitches in her lips betrayed the fact she might be smiling. “She told me that if one day you came asking, as an adult, I was at liberty to reveal all to you. But only if I felt it was the right time.”

“And is it the right time?”

Another twitch of the lips. “I think it is.”

Gabriel leaned back in his chair. “Go on, then. Tell me everything.”

She leaned towards him, her arms resting on the ledger. “The events of the day happened much as your mother told your father. I was with Her Grace at Mademoiselle Binet’s establishment in Soho Square. We descended the stairs to the front door and emerged onto the street. The carriage was waiting. A woman was running across the square towards us. When she came to the carriage she hid herself behind it, plainly exhausted. She was carrying a baby wrapped in a shawl. The baby was you. Two men entered the square on the far side. They were looking for the woman. She saw them. Your mother offered to take her up in the carriage but the woman refused and thrust the baby into your mother’s arms. And she fled.”

“Do you remember what the woman said?”

Mrs. Hawkins shook her head. “She spoke in French, my lord, a language I’m sorry to say I don’t understand a word of. But your mother told me afterwards she’d asked her to take the baby and look after it. I believed her.”

“This is much like the story my mother told me before she died. So what was the secret you were keeping for her? I don’t understand. This was what she told my father, surely?”

At least he could be sure now where this had happened. So most of the story was true.

Mrs. Hawkins leaned a little nearer to him and he responded by leaning forwards as well. Their faces were only inches apart. “Your father, His Grace the duke, was most clear that a search had to be made for the mother of the child his wife had brought home. He said that if she could be found, you must be returned to her care. He even promised you and your real mother would be taken to Wentworth and housed and cared for there, to please Her Grace.”

“And?”

“Your mother wanted so badly to keep you, she lied to the duke.”

“She lied?” Phoebe had most definitely been right. “How? Why?”

Mrs. Hawkins’s eyes were suddenly sad. She hesitated for a moment, licking her lips, before it seemed she came to a firm decision to keep going. “Your mother loved your brother Ambrose dearly, and confided in me how much she hoped to give him brothers and sisters. But none came. She had no idea why. Only God himself would know that, but she felt God had turned his face away from her. So when a little baby was thrust into her arms, she saw it as God smiling on her.”

She reached a tentative hand out and touched Gabriel’s left wrist. “A baby with the kiss of an angel imprinted on him.”

He looked down at her hand on his arm, as she tweaked back the sleeve. There indeed was the birthmark in the shape of a heart, dark against his pale skin.

“What lie did she tell?”

“His Grace asked her what the woman that he was to set men to search for looked like. She gave him a false description.”

Of course. Why would she have told the duke the right description if she’d wanted to keep him? He should have guessed this long ago, but it had taken Phoebe to point out that this could have happened. And now he had confirmation. His real mother had not been gray-haired and short and ugly. Possibly she’d been the exact opposite.

“So, you must have seen her for yourself. What was she really like, then?”

Mrs. Hawkins withdrew her hand. “The woman who gave you as a baby to Her Grace was tall and auburn haired, not short and gray. Dark-auburn hair framing a face that lodged in my memory for the open fear I saw in it. She was a striking woman.” She gave a little shake of her head. “I always thought it a shame she did not pass her hair color on to you. I’ve a fondness for auburn hair on a man.”

She didn’t look as though she had a fondness for anything.

Gabriel nodded. “Anything else you recall?”