Page 57 of The Bridal Quest

Chapter Thirteen

For a long moment no one spoke, too shocked to utter anything. Irene cast an anxious glance at Gideon, who had gone pale and was staring at his grandmother.

It was Lady Odelia, not unexpectedly, who spoke first. "Are you mad? Pansy!"

"No. I am not mad," Pansy replied, though her voice had dropped to so low a whisper that it was difficult to make out what she said. "It's the truth."

"No! It cannot be!" Lady Teresa's voice rose in a wail. "She was kidnapped. Everyone knows that. She died years and years ago!"

"Are you saying that Cecil lied to everyone all those years ago?" Lady Odelia pressed her sister. "That you lied?"

Pansy nodded, and suddenly her eyes flooded with tears that began to spill down her face. "Yes. Yes. We lied. To everyone."

She pressed her hand against her mouth, as if in a futile attempt to stop her words.

"No, no," Lady Teresa moaned, shaking her head.

"But why?" Irene asked, unable to keep still. Her heart clenched in her chest as she thought of what Gideon must be feeling now. His whole world had been overturned only a few months ago when the duke had found him. Now it had been thrown into a tumult .all over again. "Why did you pretend that they were kidnapped?"

"Because Cecil could not bear for anyone to know the truth!" Pansy cried. "The scandal ..."

"He did it to cover up a scandal?" Irene asked, appalled.

"Not for himself!" Pansy cried. "For her! He did it for Selene. Even then he loved her. He—he was certain that she would see the folly of her ways and return to him in a few days. He did not want her to have to suffer the sort of gossip that would ensue if everyone knew what she had done."

"More likely his pride would not let him admit that his wife would leave him," Odelia snapped.

"Odelia! How can you say that?" her sister protested. "Cecil's heart was broken. You were always unfair to him."

"And you were always a weak reed," Odelia retorted. "How do you know that she ran away?"

"Why, Cecil told me, of course." Pansy looked at Odelia with amazement. "He would not have withheld such a thing from me. He came to me, waving the letter Selene had left for him. It was all blotched with tears—as if she were the one whose heart had been broken. She told him that she was sorry, but she loved someone else, and that she was leaving with him that night. She begged him to let her go, not to look for her. Cecil found it in his study the next morning."

"And he just let her go?" Gideon asked. His voice was quiet, his face like stone. "He let her take his son from him?"

"I told you, he was certain she would be back. He was positive that she would regret her actions and return, full of apologies, so he made up the story of the kidnapping, pretended that the letter he had found in her room was a notice from the kidnappers. He had Owenby take the necklace and ride off as if he were fulfilling their demands, but of course the man just brought back the necklace and Cecil hid it away, then pretended that it was gone."

Pansy sighed, then went on, her voice quavering a little. "After a time, when he realized that Selene was not going to return or even contact him again, Cecil fell into a dark despair. He stayed in his room. He lost interest in everything. Why, the estate manager had to come to me to ask about problems that arose, because Gideon would not see him."

Pansy's face reflected the seeming horror of that memory.

"But eventually he must have come to his senses," Lady Odelia told her sister. "I know Cecil did not spend the remainder of his life locked away in his room, grieving."

"No, of course he did not," Pansy agreed. "Finally he returned to himself. He began to take an interest in things again, bit by bit. He did send Owenby out to try to find her and Gideon, but by then the trail had grown terribly cold. He could find no trace of Selene or their son. Cecil was sure that she and her lover must have had a plan laid out before they left. He thought they must have driven straight to a port and sailed out of the country almost immediately. Owenby went to London, even to Liverpool, but he could find no record of their having been there or having boarded a ship, though no doubt they would have been smart enough to use false names. And they could have sailed from anywhere. Cecil sent a man to Europe to look for them, but he had no success, either. In all likelihood they sailed to one of the Colonies. Any place where they would have been impossible to find."

"But what about his son?" Lady Odelia burst out.

Irene's eyes flashed to Gideon's face. The old woman's question was the same one that burned on her tongue, but she would not let herself speak it, knowing the agony that Gideon must be suffering. He had learned that he had not been torn from his home and family and thrown into a life of hardship and poverty by villains, but by his own mother. And his father had not even tried to get him back, at least at first.

Obviously Lady Odelia had no such compunctions, however, as she said, "Gideon was his heir. I cannot believe that Cecil would not have gone after him and brought him back."

"I urged him to look for the boy," Pansy insisted. "I reminded him that he must have an heir. It did not matter if she was gone, but the succession was at stake." She shook her head. "He did not seem to care. He said it did not matter, that his brother was there to inherit after him. He refused to pursue a woman who did not want him. Who had gone to such great lengths to escape him."

She looked around at the others' shocked expressions, then added guiltily, "He did not know that Gideon was on his own in London. It never occurred to us that Selene would abandon the boy. How were we to know? We thought that Gideon was all right, that he was with his mother."

Lady Odelia shook her head, looking dazed. "I cannot believe it. Even of Cecil. How could you have let him? How could you have been so bacon-brained?"

"I didn't know!" Pansy wailed, bursting into full-blown tears. "I—I meant no harm!"