“It was the idea of children, wasn’t it?”
I turned to face the young man questioning Sin. It was around the same age as my partner but boyish looking with his floppy curls and dimpled smile. I remembered his face from the news and magazines. He was the son of the New York Senator and one of Sinclair’s friends from boarding school.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of Sinclair. God knows, I don’t see the appeal in spawning little brats,” Liam Reed continued to say. “Deal breaker for Elena though, huh?”
“Don’t be stupid, Liam,” a beautiful blonde said from the other side of him. “Everyone knows he left Elena for the sister.” She inclined her head towards me with pursed lips. “Didn’t you read about it in The Times?”
Liam looked vaguely surprised before he threw his head back with laughter. “You dog. I never would have guessed you for a cheat.”
Sinclair was still and cold as an ice sculpture, his jaw so tight that I wondered if his teeth would crack under the pressure.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Liam leaned forward to wink at me. “This one is a lovely little thing. But you can’t tell me kids didn’t play a role in it?”
I clenched and unclenched my sweaty hands in my lap, worried that Sin would say something and worried that he wouldn’t.
I was right to worry.
Sinclair leveled his freezing glare on both Liam and the blonde, staring them down until they looked away nervously. “Marriage and family was never the problem, at least not with the right woman. Giselle, the lovely little thing, who has done me the greatest honor by consenting to be with me despite the havoc I have wrought on her life, is that woman for me. In fact,” he paused dramatically and I realized that the entire table had quieted to listen to his little speech, “we’re expecting and I could not be happier about it.”
The silence that blanketed the room was so heavy that it crushed the air from my lungs. Sinclair reached for my hand under the table and took it in his, rubbing his thumb comfortingly back and forth. I tried to take reassurance from it but the anger and shame that warred inside me beat it back.
“Sinclair?” Willa asked, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “Is this true?”
“It is,” he confirmed.
I watched his face transform with a glorious smile, his cobalt blue eyes alight with pride and joy.
Damn, it was going to be hard to stay angry with him.
Willa struggled for a moment with the news. She stared down at her plate, blinking rapidly, before she looked over at her husband at the head of the table. He inclined his head at her, his smile gentle.
“Well,” she finally said, “I cannot believe it. I’m finally going to be a grandmother!”
It was my turn to blink rapidly as tears rushed forth and spilled over my cheeks before I could help it. Sinclair tugged my chair closer and put his arm around my shoulders as he began to accept everyone’s congratulations.
I decided to rest my head against his strong shoulder, smiling weakly at everyone as they beamed at us. Apparently, procreating trumped the shame of adultery, at least in the high circles the Percy family ran in. I was both relieved and repulsed by their congratulations but after months of antagonism, I was willing to take whatever niceties I could get.
“T’es fache?” Sinclair murmured into my hair when we had a moment to ourselves.
“I’m not angry, even though that would be justified.” I scowled up at him. “How can I be angry when you are so excited for this baby?”
His fingers skimmed over my satin clad belly and rested there but it was his eyes, brighter than I had ever seen them - so blue that they were almost neon - that captured my total attention.
“I have never been happier.”
I swallowed the sob that rose in my throat. “Me too.”
“Sinclair, I would like to speak with you,” Mortimer Percy said, suddenly appearing over our shoulder.
He frowned at his father and then me before nodding. “Okay, but Giselle is coming with me.”
Mortimer stared at me for a moment before inclining his head in consent.
I puzzled over him as I followed them both from the room. He was a mystery to me in a way that Willa was not. I understand that the woman lived for her role as a matron of New York society, that she loved the power bestowed upon her as a Governor’s wife and that, in her own way, she loved the son she had found and molded in France.
But Mortimer was a different entity, one that Sinclair didn’t talk much about. I knew that he wanted Sin to follow in his political footsteps, that he was charismatic and generous. But whatever his qualities, I knew that he too had used his adopted son for his own gains and I would never forgot my Frenchmen’s sadness as he related that to me in that little cove in Mexico.