“Why not indeed.” It was all he could come up with considering the accusation he’d just levelled at his new wife. He supposed there were some pieces of this puzzle missing. Like why she would commit to a marriage of convenience if she was going to make a baby magically appear a week later. If it was him, he would consummate the marriage immediately to ensure there was little he could do once said baby was produced. He sighed. “That is not the story about the village.”
Eliza raised her hands to her hips and her glare became ferocious. He deserved it. And more. “I know what they say in the village. Why do you think we have no callers? How would we have hidden our desperation had we friends nearby? Blast it, if we had friends, we would have been calling on their hospitality rather than yours in the first place.”
Darius knew she wanted to call him all sorts of names after that statement but her breeding obviously disallowed her from insulting a man. He may have been born on the wrong side of the blanket but he had manners. Somewhere. “My apologies,” he offered with a deep bow.
“Yes, well, perhaps the next time you feel like passing judgements, you might take a moment to ask questions? That child is your sister. You must decide what will happen to her.”
“Happen to her?”
“You must find her a family. Somewhere she can be safe from ridicule. She needs to be fed and cared for, hidden away from Wickham.”
He had been fed and cared for once upon a time. Even though his father refused to claim him, the old earl, Darius’s grandfather, had given him a home, some measure of love, of acceptance. He hadn’t cared that Darius was a bastard. He hadn’t cared how his first grandson was conceived or who the unfortunate woman had been. Darius had let him down by not sending word that he was still alive. He hadn’t wanted his sire to know he’d survived. He’d waited for a day to reveal his living state and knock his sire on his arse, but he’d waited too long. His grandfather had passed away and Darius hadn’t heard about it until it was too late. The old man died thinking that Darius had run away rather than live the life of a servant.
The absolute truth was that Darius would have been quite content as a stable lad and servant. For years before his abduction, he’d known what bastard meant in its entirety. He could have lived with it. But then his father and his brother had taken him from his bed in the dead of night and beaten him unconscious. They had then paid a sailor to stow him away in a rat-infested hold until they were days away from England.
When his presence had been discovered, he was stripped and then whipped and then put to work. Degraded, abused, treated far worse than any boy ever should be. He’d grown into a man without affection, without a caring word or thought. Surrounded by torture. Surrounded by filth. He would not allow any man or woman to endure what he did. He would certainly not let his tiny, innocent sister be taken in by strangers and treated for her whole life like an outcast.
“Does Wickham know about her?”
Eliza relayed the short story of the housemaid who had delivered the baby. “I don’t know what the earl knows but it sounds like Sarah is much better off anywhere than with him.”
“Sarah? Is that what she is called? Where is her mother?”
“Disappeared. Sarah needs a family, Darius. You should send word to London and enquire as to a carer for her.”
“No.”
“No? What will you do with her?”
“May I see her?”
“I suppose, though do not wake her. She does not like being cleaned and cries a lot.”
“You cleaned her? Got her to sleep? You’ve been caring for her?”
Eliza nodded, her gaze dropping to the floor as she turned to go back up the stairs.
“Thank you,” he said to her back as he followed. What must she think of this new development? He had no thoughts yet. No thoughts beyond what he would do to his sire when he saw him again. He did have to wonder how many bastards there were in the world with their particular colouring, their unmistakable Meddington bloodlines, muddied only by the poor women the earl forced to his depraved will.
When Darius had landed in London, he’d been intent upon ruining his sire, vengeance for the path he’d set his illegitimate son on, one of them at least. Then Eliza’s situation had forced him to admit he would never get his money from Wickham and that it didn’t matter so long as the man was ruined. He had been willing to give it all up to get Eliza and her siblings far away from England’s shores.
Sarah changed things. She changed everything. Wickham was going to pay dearly. Castration would be the best start but would it be punishment enough? He doubted it. Darius was going to see to it, if it was the very last thing he did, that his worthless sire paid. And he was going to enjoy every second.
*
Later that same evening, all thoughts of revenge and death were overridden by an angelic, peaceful face. Darius couldn’t believe how impossibly small his half-sister was, how vulnerable she was or how her tiny fingers wrapped about just one of his would wake something deep within his heart.
He wasn’t the only one irrevocably changed. It seemed as much as Darius was a magnet for damsels in distress, then Eliza was one for abandoned children. When he’d suggested they search
