Page 52 of A Remarkable Rogue

“He has both.” She tried to pull her arm away, but he refused to let her go. Not now, not when she had a great deal of explaining to do. In frustration, she added, “I bought a farm in the country where he lives with a wonderful governess. He has toys, books, friends—for God’s sake, he even has a pony!” Her anger matched his own. “I have given him everything he needs.”

His eyes locked with hers as he accused quietly, “Except his mother.”

“He has me,” she said firmly, as if trying to convince herself as much as him. “As much of myself as I can give.”

This time when she pulled away, he let her go, but not before he saw her glistening tears.

She slipped off the chair and crossed the room to the fireplace to stare down at the flames. Her arms folded over her chest like a shield. At that moment, she appeared so fragile and vulnerable that he feared a harsh word would shatter her. Anguish for her rose inside him, and although he was too ashamed to admit it, so did a deep jealousy.

Fate had given her what it had so cruelly ripped away from him. Yet she chose to reject the joy and love of her son, simply because she feared scandal. “You should be with him.”

She silently shook her head. Squeezing her eyes shut, she reached for the locket at her neck and folded her fingers around it.

He shoved himself away from the table and winced at the pain shooting up his arm. Yet it was nothing compared to the pain he’d carried for the past three years. “You should be the one raising him, not some governess who—”

“I wanted to!” she cried out, her emotional restraint breaking. “They wouldn’t let me!”

She hung her head in her hands and sobbed openly. A sound of such utter desolation and helplessness tore from her that Nate’s heart broke.

He went to her and slipped his good arm around her to draw her against him. “Sydney, tell me about your son.” He placed a tender kiss to her temple in desperation to comfort her. “Help me to understand.”

At his soft pleas, she stilled against him, except for her hands which clasped at his chest as if she were afraid he might leave her.

But he had no intention of going anywhere.

“I wanted to keep him with me,” she confessed in little more than a soft breath. “They’d told me that I could… But it was all a lie.”

Large tears rolled freely down her cheeks, and she buried her face in shame and pain against his shoulder. He placed his hand against the back of her head to silently encourage her to let the sobs come and purge the pain.

“I begged them to let me keep him.” Her whispers were muffled against his shoulder, but his heart heard every word. “He was only three days old. I only had him for three days…” The choked words poured out between body-racking sobs. “They pulled him from my arms, and they… I couldn’t stop them!”

His arm tightened around her.Dear God… “Who took him?”

“My parents.” Her hands increased their hold on him, and she pulled in a ragged breath as she admitted, “Robert was Michael’s baby.” She lifted her head from his shoulder but didn’t raise her eyes to meet his. Her lashes were wet and spiked with tears. “We were engaged and in love, and we… I found out three weeks after he died that I was increasing.” Her gaze trained at his chest as she confessed, barely louder than a breath, “I was eighteen, and I wanted to die.”

Raw grief for her overwhelmed him. Eighteen…Christ.Barely more than a child herself.

“My parents took me away to the country,” she continued in a hoarse rasp, “to a rented house where they told all the servants that I was their niece and that my husband was a soldier who was away in the wars. I stayed there for my confinement.” Her trembling lips formed the silent words as she corrected herself. “My imprisonment.”

He nuzzled his mouth against her hair. “You didn’t try to run away?”

“I was too ill to flee, too upset over losing Michael, and I had no money of my own, no other relatives…nowhere to go even if I’d had the strength.”

“Surely, Berkley’s family would have helped.”

She shook her head, her beautiful face contorting with shame. “I wrote to them about the baby, but they didn’t believe me. Or if they did, they wanted no part of a bastard child. And I had no proof Michael was the father.”

“But you were engaged.”

“That didn’t matter to them. Michael’s family could easily have started rumors that I was a woman of loose morals and had been with other men. After all, society already viewed my family as upstart cits with scandalous ties to the Americans.”

“You married Rowland after Robert was born.” On the very day her mourning period ended for Berkley, according to Lady Agnes. “Why didn’t you marry him before and give your son a legitimate birth?”

That was what unmarried society daughters did when they found themselves with child. They married a man who claimed the baby as his and raised it as his own.

“Rowland refused to marry me until after the baby was born. He’d rather have let the barony die than risk another man’s son inheriting his title.”

Ignoring his own wound, he wrapped both arms around her in an attempt to comfort her. “Yet you still married him.”