‘Why, thank you,’ Luke said with an ironic bow.
‘I will try to emulate you,’ Revereux said with a sigh, then watched the fire and seemed to be staring into a past full of mixed blessings. ‘I took a bullet in my side at the Battle of the Nile. I was eventually given shore leave to recuperate with my maternal grandfather, a minister of the Scottish church, since even the Admiralty decided they didn’t want me back until I had some flesh on my bones.’
‘Your poor mother must have been beside herself with worry,’ Chloe said.
‘She has one son in the navy and two in the army and often says the one who gives her the most worry is my brother Henry, who stayed at home and followed in his grandfather’s footsteps. A practical female, my darling mother,’ he said with a rueful smile that said a lot about his affection for her.
‘I hope we’ll have the chance to meet her one day,’ Luke put in, to remind them time was wasting and Cully would be down to bear her patient off to bed again very soon.
‘So do I, but to return to my tale, I was feeling better and growing restless and bored, as young fools of eighteen often do when they don’t have enough to do. Then, one day I met a young lady walking the hills on her own and sadly lost. Not that she minded being so, she told me, since as she didn’t know where she was, she hoped nobody else would either. When I pointed out that I now knew, she had a fit of the giggles and admitted I was right. I fell in love with her on the spot.’ Revereux smiled broadly at nothing at all and even Luke couldn’t help but sympathise.
If only he was heart-whole and still innocent when he’d first laid eyes on Lady Daphne’s sister, he’d have done exactly the same. Deep down he probably had, he realised now, then refused to admit it to either of them for a whole decade; which made him more of a fool than Revereux, so he could hardly blame him for diving head first into love with a very different Thessaly twin.
‘After that she used to get lost whenever her aunt took her eyes off her long enough for her to get away from Hamming House and I haunted the hills and moors around my grandfather’s manse like a lost soul, hoping she would and I could meet up with her. Apparently her aunt had a splendid marriage planned for her and the vast settlements on offer that would set her family back on the road to riches. Daphne told me most of her family could go hang, but she was worried about what would happen to you when we wed and frustrated their whole rotten scheme, Lady Chloe. Her only regret was that our marriage would part her from you.’
‘You were married?’ Chloe said incredulously.
‘I loved her far too much to risk leaving her unwed and with child once I was considered fit for service again and sent back to sea.’
‘Then how did she end up in that state and alone anyway?’ she demanded fiercely.
Luke thought her magnificent as she defended her sister ten years after her death. Looking away to distract himself from the heady thought of the day after tomorrow he’d been forced to compromise on for their wedding, Luke saw his daughter and Verity were listening to Revereux’s tale of star-crossed lovers with round-eyed fascination. Perhaps he should send them to bed? No, the last thing he wanted was either of them thinking a runaway marriage sounded deeply romantic, so far better for them to stay and realise the pain and sorrow that impulsive wedding had caused Lady Daphne and her impulsive young lover, as well as Verity and Chloe.
‘I didn’t know she had done so until I cornered your younger brother one night when he had drunk nearly enough brandy to sink a man o’ war and threatened to beat the story out of him if he didn’t tell it of his own accord.’ He paused and sent his daughter and Eve a dubious look and obviously reached the same conclusion Luke had done and decided they ought to hear the sad end of his grand love affair after all. ‘I owed him that much for standing by while his brother and the thugs he’d hired beat me within a hair’s breadth of my life, then had me carried south and put aboard the next ship leaving for the East Indies.
‘Imagine how I felt when I finally came back to my full senses and found out I was halfway to Java with the captain and all the ship’s company to convince I was who I said I was, not some poor pressed fool who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They couldn’t have turned about and taken me back to my wife even if they had wanted to and I was lucky to have ended up on a good ship. The ship’s surgeon treated my new wounds as well as the ones I’d nearly recovered from until the attack and the captain didn’t have me shut in the brig for insubordination, or dropped off at the first port as a lunatic. I raged and resisted, but had to accept my fate and serve out my time until the ship sailed for home three years later.’
‘Oh, you poor man,’ Chloe said sadly.
She looked torn between pity and reluctance to let him off all blame for her sister’s sorry plight. Luke’s heart went out to her, but she had to accept Verity now had a father who deserved some say in his child’s future. He waited for Revereux to finish his story and trusted Chloe to reach the same conclusion.
‘Never mind me, Daphne suffered a fate I wouldn’t inflict on a dog,’ Revereux said, clenching his fists as he had to fight his still-raw feelings for his lost love. ‘You know more of that than I do, Lady Chloe. I was a thousand miles away by the time the poor darling bore my child in that apology for a house your father and brothers sent you both to endure, as if that whole greedy scheme was your fault and not theirs.’
‘Why did they do so when you were married?’ she mused now, puzzlement and pain so dark in her violet eyes that Luke took her hand to show her she wasn’t alone with it this time.
‘Probably because we were wed, not despite it,’ Revereux said gently and waited for her to realise what he couldn’t say in front of the girls.
Unwed Daphne would still be young, lovely and saleable, if shop-soiled; wed she was none of those things and had frustrated them of the fortune the raddled old duke was willing to pay for a virginal wife. Daphne had been meant to die and her baby along with her.
‘No! Oh, Luke,’ Chloe gasped as that fact finally bit deep.
‘What happened when I was born?’ Verity demanded and there was a wobble of uncertainty in her voice that made Chloe drag Luke in her wake as she rushed to Verity’s side to cup her chin in her other hand, then smooth her hair and force her to meet her eyes.
‘It doesn’t matter, my love, you survived and I loved you from the moment you dropped into my arms screaming at the top of your voice. You were so perfect and so very much your own person, how could I help but love you?’
‘I love you too, Mama, but I killed my real mother, didn’t I?’
‘No, darling, never think that. Your grandfather and uncles did that by abandoning us with not enough to eat and no money to pay for firewood or a doctor when her time came, but she never complained as I did while she waited for you to be born and we scratched a living from the vegetable patch and even resorted to poaching now and again, as well as foraging on the moor for whatever we could catch. She loved you so much she would have endured far worse to see you safe and healthy. Daphne loved you before you were born and I took over when she had to leave you, love. I’m a far better person than I would be if I’d gone on my merry way without you.’
‘And when Lady Chloe Thessaly decides to love someone, they stay loved—like it or not,’ Luke added with a wry smile.
‘Even after ten years of stony silence and gruff discouragement to do anything of the sort from certain viscounts I could mention,’ Chloe sniped.
‘Even then,’ he confirmed.
‘You’re a lucky man, Farenze,’ Captain Revereux told him wistfully.
‘Luckier than I deserve.’
‘That’s