Once the people of Mayfair learned the truth, none of them would speak to him ever again. They'd look right through him as though he weren't there. And should he marry Corinna, she and all of her family would be rejected along with him.
How had he not realized this? How had he convinced himself that he, an Irish vicar's son, could ever dream of wedding the daughter of an English marquess? The two of them had been doomed from the first. If not by his background, then by Hamilton's games. Damn the rotter.
Damn him to hell and beyond.
The fact that Sean would never have met Corinna if not for Hamilton was entirely inconsequential. He'd been happy before he met her, or if not happy, at least content.
Now he'd never be either again.
And how was he going to explain all of this to her? Although they'd never discussed marriage, he wasn't a knothead. He knew she was thinking in that direction. Sweet Jesus, she'd offered herself to him. And she had but three days to fix Lincolnshire's portrait before she had to submit it.
After Sean posed for her this afternoon, she'd have only two days left to paint. The truth would devastate her, break her concentration, destroy any chance she had of achieving her lifelong dream. How could he tell her now?
He couldn't.
He couldn't tell her for three long days, until after the painting was finished. He was going to have to lie again, for her sake. He hated lying. And lying to the woman he loved seemed the worst lie ever.
It felt like a knife had sliced his heart, and his gut felt heavy. Like an anvil was lodged in it.
"Nephew… Sean." The earl was tiring. And clearly struggling to make amends. His eyes were pleading. "I wish I'd…known you all these years. I'm so…sorry—"
"Please, Uncle," Sean ordered himself to respond. "It's all water under the bridge, isn't it? We've come to know each other now, haven't we? And nothing makes me happier than seeing how very gratified we both are at the outcome."
"Gratified? I am…euphoric. You came running when I asked…you've cared for me like a son. You've found positions…for my servants…seen all my concerns…are alleviated."
Lincolnshire wheezed, then coughed, then placed a hand on his chest. His lids fluttered, then slowly shut. Before he drifted off to sleep, he uttered one last sentence in a ragged whisper.
"You're the best man…I've ever met."
But Sean felt like the worst man who'd ever lived.
THIRTY-FIVE
ICED CAKES
Mix sugar together with butter and rose-water. Mix this together with six eggs leaving out two whites and beat for a quarter of an hour. Put in your flour and mix them together well. Put them in your patty pans in an oven as hot as for manchet. Then make your icing. Put fine sugar in a mortar with rose-water and the white of an egg. When the cakes are cold put them on a tin then dip a feather in the icing and cover them well. Set the cakes back in the oven to harden.
These are sweet as a newborn baby. Eat them for the baby's health.
—Belinda, Marchioness of Cainewood, 1799
"OH, AUNT Frances, she's beautiful." Balancing her own son on her hip, Alexandra leaned close to run a finger down Frances's daughter's tiny, downy cheek. "Is she a good baby?"
"When she isn't crying." Frances cuddled Belinda closer. Reclining on a chaise longue that had been moved to her drawing room, she looked around at all the seated ladies who were visiting her and smiled a weary smile. "Which seems to be most of the time."
"For her first three months, my youngest daughter cried all the time too," Lady A said. "She nearly drove me to Bedlam. Luckily she soon outgrew that and turned into a lovely child."
"I'm certain Belinda will outgrow it, too," Claire said.
Elizabeth nodded. "And besides, you do have the monthly nurse."
Rachael took an iced cake from the plate Juliana offered. "I expect the nurse sees to the baby's needs?"
"True," Frances said wryly. "The monthly nurse currently sees to her needs, and she's instructing the permanent day nurse and the night nurse. I'm only surprised Theodore hasn't hired a governess to start teaching Belinda her letters and numbers already. Nothing is too much for his daughter."
"As it should be," Lady A said approvingly. "It was the same with mine."
"But three nurses? When I'd as soon care for Belinda myself?"
"Alexandra feels the same way." Juliana set down the platter. "I expect I may be that way, too. May I hold her?"
"Of course." Frances held out the baby. "Support her head."
"I know," Juliana said, taking Belinda like an expert. "I learned that with little Harry."
Watching her sister, Alexandra smiled and cuddled her son. "Does she make you want one of your own?"
"I'm going to have one of my own," Juliana said quietly. "In the winter."
A hush fell over the room while all of the ladies absorbed that information. Someone let loose an excited squeal. Then it seemed everyone was talking at once, exclaiming and congratulating and jumping from their seats to rush over and give Juliana hugs.
Except for Corinna, who seemed riveted in place.
While she was happy for her sister, suddenly she wanted a baby of her own more than she'd thought possible.
Regardless of her protests the day Belinda was born, she'd never considered that she might not ever have a child. She'd always figured she'd marry eventually, after she made her mark on the art world. Though she'd never shared her brother's urgency, because her painting came first, now she was thinking there might have been another reason, too. It had been difficult to feel urgent when she'd never had any mental picture of the man who would father her children.
But now she did.
The man in the mental picture had dark hair and fathomless, deep green eyes. Square, masculine hands. A firm, defined chest.
