was all the old man had,” Hugo managed to say, aware there was a kind of earthquake in him, tearing through him and reducing him to rubble. And yet he stood. “And I was a terrible disappointment to him.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” Eleanor breathed, that honey in her dark eyes gleaming with sympathy. “Maybe you only thought he felt that way.”
“I know he felt that way, little one.” Hugo’s voice was soft. “He told me so.”
And he stopped trying to fight that feeling inside of him then. That sharp thing in his chest only seemed to bleed out more at that stricken look on Eleanor’s lovely face. As if she couldn’t imagine such a thing, that an old man could think so little of his only son.
But Hugo knew he had.
“My father was prepared to put up with a certain amount of foolishness, because he was old-school and he’d had what he called his ‘day in the sun.’ He very much believed that boys were indeed boys.” Hugo felt his mouth curve, though it was no smile. “But his expectation was that such conduct unbecoming in a Duke of Grovesmoor would end. If not during my university years, then shortly thereafter. Except I met Isobel two years after I left Cambridge, when I was still committed to every wild oat a man could sow. And that was when she started her campaign.”
“Surely your father didn’t believe the tabloids.”
“Of course not. My father would never sully his eyes with such trash. The trouble wasn’t the tabloids themselves. It was that everyone who did read the tabloids accepted everything they read in them as fact. And it wasn’t only the scandal rags. There were cleverly disguised hit pieces in more reputable magazines that made me seem seedy and vaguely disgusting. And soon enough, that was how I was discussed. Not just in salacious news programs, but right here, in my father’s own home. To his face.”
“Who would do something like that?” Eleanor asked, and if he hadn’t been looking right at her, with her eyes wide and filled with distress, he might have imagined she was faking. “And why would your father believe the kind of person who would slander his own son directly to him?”
It was an excellent question, and one Hugo wished he could ask the old man.
“Sometimes a rumor is far worse than a fact,” he said instead. “Facts can be proven or disproven, most of the time. But rumor can live on forever. It commands a life of its own and dignified silence doesn’t refute it. And sooner or later, whether you mean to or not, you find that you’re living in it. Against your will.”
“There was nothing you could do?” She shook her head as if to clear it. “No way you could tell the truth?”
“That’s the thing about rumors like that, little one,” Hugo murmured. “They’re more believable than the truth. My father was a man of the world. He’d flirted with his own share of potential scandals in his day. It made no sense to him that a pretty girl like Isobel, who could have anyone, would waste her time pretending to have a relationship with the one man who didn’t want her. And I think you’ll find that it didn’t make sense to anyone else, either.”
“But surely you could prove it.”
“How?” Hugo wasn’t surprised when Eleanor didn’t have an answer. “Where there’s smoke, people always look for a fire. And the more that fire burns, the more everyone believes that you must have had a hand in setting it, or you’d put it out. But Isobel had no intention of ever letting it die down.”
He thought of that endless blue afternoon in all that Santa Barbara sunshine. The way Isobel had smiled at him.
You’ll always be mine, Hugo. Always. No matter where you go or what you do, no one will ever see you without thinking of me.
“I’m surprised you didn’t date her just to keep her quiet,” Eleanor said then, scowling furiously—but not, for once, at him. “Just to make her stop.”
Hugo let out a low noise. “I thought about it, of course. But I didn’t want to be anywhere near her. And then, of course, came Geraldine.”
“None of this is her fault,” Eleanor said at once. Fiercely.
“Of course not,” Hugo said shortly. “I don’t bear the child any ill will.”
“But—”
“But I don’t mind if the world thinks I do,” he finished for her. He shook his head. “Before there was Geraldine, there was Isobel and her pregnancy. And believe me, she used it like a hammer.” He dropped that piece of Eleanor’s hair then, because his hands were curling into fists and he thought he’d better keep them to himself. “She told my father the child was mine.”
“She left you. She married your friend. How could it be yours?”
“She didn’t leave me.” Hugo realized he’d growled that out like a savage, and fought for calm. “We were never together. But she told my father that we had been. And then she told him that I refused to do my duty. That I told her to get rid of it. That I was, in short, every bit the callous and unfeeling character she’d painted me in the tabloids. And in those rumors.”
“You must have insisted on a blood test to prove that you’re not the father.”
“I did,” Hugo bit out. “But he died before I could show him that proof. He had heart failure and never recovered, and doctors can use any terms they wish to explain what happened. But I think the shock killed him.”
He’d forgotten that they were standing in the middle of the ballroom. Because all he could see was Eleanor, and that terrible look on her face. As if there was nothing in the world but the two of them and the way they stood so close together, as if what he was telling her here was far more important than a mere story. As if it was something infinitely more critical than the past he was still paying for.
It was, he understood. He was telling her the truth about the most hated man in England, and she believed him.
She believed him.
Eleanor moved then, tipping herself up on her toes and fitting her palms to his chest. One of them right there where his heart still hurt.
As if she knew.
“I’m so sorry, Hugo,” she whispered, her voice intense and low. “I’m ashamed to say I believed the stories, too.”
Hugo felt a kind of bitterness twist through him then, though there was a warmth in it this time, as if it was something a little more complicated. He reached up and covered the hand over his heart with his.
“Do you know,” he said quietly, “that you are the only person I have ever met who’s apologized? When you are the one who’s done the least damage.”
She bit her lip, and electricity pounded through him, reminding him of all the ways this woman got to him. All the ways she was clearly the death of him.
“I’ve spoken to you as if I knew you. As if the stories I read were the truth, when of course they couldn’t be. The truth is never so black and white, is it? No heroes, no villains, just people.”
“Perhaps. But there are also Isobels in this world. They prey on others because they can. It gives them pleasure. And Eleanor, your sister is one of them.”
