An Heir of Deception Read Online Free PDF Page B

a hug?”
    Perhaps it was the familiarity of the face that eased Nicholas’s usual reticence with strangers, for he gave a shy nod of assent without seeking the assurance he’d sought from her when Alex had offered him his hand. Quickly he was enfolded in her sister’s arms, his own trapped at his sides like a toy soldier. Nonetheless, he permitted her to hug him for a very long time.

    The next hour passed in a blur of activity. Katie enthused over her nephew as if he were the greatest archeological find of all time. She hugged and petted him as much as Nicholas would permit, which was considerable given her son too seemed enthralled at the living and breathing creature whose face was the mirror image of his mother’s.
    Charlotte introduced Jillian to her sister. Relieved of her bonnet, the full glory of her maid’s beauty caused Katie to halt and stare. A discernible blush appeared beneath Jillian’s café au lait complexion. And Charlotte knew precisely what her sister was thinking; a servant that uncommonly pretty would be trouble in deuces and spades. But they would cope. They’d had to cope before.
    Two footmen clad in liveries of the family colors, gold and green, were dispatched to collect their bags and trunks from the hackney. It was quickly determined that Nicholas would sleep in the nursery, and Jillian would sleep in the adjoining room until the children and their nanny returned. Charlotte would take her former bedchamber.
    After they’d all eaten, Jillian insisted on putting a sleepy Nicholas down for his midafternoon nap. Charlotte dearly wished she could follow, but the look on her sister’s face told her an explanation would not wait. The moment of reckoning had arrived.
    Jillian and Nicholas had barely departed the small salon before Katie marched her down the hall and into the morning room. She steered her past the piano and harp, and dragged her down onto the chintz settee to take a seat beside her.
    “You left because of what we learned about our mother, did you not?” No preambles. Her sister gave a whole new meaning to tackling difficulties head on.
    Charlotte took a deep, fortifying breath, for she had to be convincing above all else. “That may have played some part in my decision to leave, but it wasn’t the whole of it. I met someone two months prior to the wedding. We fell in love.” In order to accurately affect the look of a woman in love, she thought of Alex.
    Katie’s jaw came unhinged, but soon shock gave way to disbelief. In the narrowing of her eyes, suspicion dawned clear and blue.
    “I know it sounds extraordinary, does it not? I mean Alex had been the love of my life. But I realized what I felt for him was a blind devotion. A case of mad passion. Perhaps even the want of something I believed I could never have. I mean truly, Alex interested in me? I was not at all the kind of woman who could hold the attentions of a man like him for long. Peter—that was his name—was more…suited to me. ”
    The disbelief faded from her sister’s eyes and the puzzlement returned.
    Relieved at the progress she’d made, Charlotte pressed on. “In the end, although I cared deeply for Alex, a marriage between us would have been a mistake. But I should not have waited so long to tell him and should have had the courage to tell him to his face. For that I will always be more ashamed and sorry than you can ever imagine.”
    “But how could you leave me? Have you any idea what we—what I —went through these past years without you? Without being able to even write to you? One-sided correspondence might suit your purposes but it didn’t mine.”
    Upon her return to England, Charlotte had planned on telling her sister about the dowager’s letter. But with the woman gone, what good would it serve? Whose good would it serve? Katie had had a difficult enough time in Society.
    “If you only knew how much I regret what I did. But it had to be that way. I knew if I told you of my plans, you