That was all he cared about now, although he knew he’d care about much more once his mind came to terms with what she’d presented to him. He immediately dismissed any possibility that she’d found this document in the last day or so. She looked too guilty for that to be true.
“I… I discovered it in Barstowe Hall’s library a couple of weeks ago. It was… it was folded inside the back cover of the second volume of Don Quixote.”
“Of course you immediately recognized the document’s significance.” His tone was flat. He should be overjoyed. He held his parents’ marriage lines. All his childhood dreams came true.
Under the bite of his voice, she seemed small and vulnerable. Just at the moment, he couldn’t find it in himself to pity her.
“Of course.”
“It didn’t occur to you to tell me?”
She didn’t cringe, but nor was she the brave, defiant woman he knew. Except everything he knew about her turned out to be false. In a petty, mendacious world, he’d believed she was the one pure, shining beacon. How tragically wrong he’d been.
He rose on legs that felt shamingly unsteady and stepped toward her. She flinched away. His laugh was bitter. “Just because I’m now Lord Hillbrook, it doesn’t mean I’ve turned into William. I won’t hit you.”
When she bit her lip, it usually touched his heart. Damn her, it still did. She wasn’t what he’d thought she was. She was a liar. The woman he’d called his life and his soul and his beauty was a gorgeous shell over a pit of foul deceit.
“I… I had my reasons for keeping it from you,” she whispered.
His smile felt like a rictus grin. “I’m sure.”
She spoke in a rush. “You don’t understand what it was like living with William and Roberta. How… how terrifying it was when he beat her. Finding the marriage lines seemed like a gift from heaven. I… I planned to use them to blackmail William into letting Roberta go. They were the only power I had against him.”
“While the world continued to believe my father was at best a fool and at worst a liar. That my mother—” He paused and sucked in a shuddering breath. “That my mother was a whore.”
She paled and twisted her hands together. “I know… I know I was wrong to hide the discovery, but you and your parents were unknown to me. William went near to killing Roberta last time he beat her. Her need… her need seemed greater than yours.”
“And justice go hang,” he said sourly. He tried to make himself view her as a stranger. Because a stranger was just what she was. What a fool he’d been. What a pathetic, needy, gullible fool.
He could almost understand what she’d done. After all, her sister’s life had been at risk and nobody knew better than he just how destructive William’s temper was. He just couldn’t forgive the decisions she’d made. He couldn’t forgive that she’d made him believe she was honest to her soul when she wasn’t honest at all. Above all, he couldn’t forgive that by making him believe in her, she’d made him as vulnerable as that boy screaming under his cousin’s knife.
With a faint revival of spirit, she straightened. “You’re a grown man. I didn’t know… I didn’t know then how you’d suffered, how illegitimacy ruined your life.”
He made a dismissive sound in his throat even as his pride cringed to remember what he’d confided in her during those sweet nights in Devon. He’d trusted her with so much that he’d never shared with anyone else. And all the time when she’d pretended to care, she’d nursed this betrayal.
“No, you’d rather William retained the title he disgraced. If he hadn’t died, would you ever have told me?”
Her voice was low and her gaze flickered away from his. “I needed to work out what to do. That week… that week with you shook my certainties. But then the duke told you about William’s rampage. I’d hoped to settle Roberta somewhere safe, then tell you, but I had to see whether she was in danger first.”
“It didn’t occur to you to tell me the truth and let me look after Roberta?” That was a huge part of her treason, that she’d given him no chance to decide his future or find some solution that protected Roberta and her sons.
“I—”
“Of course it didn’t. I might have unfettered access to your body, but you trusted me with little else.”
“Don’t.” She shut her eyes as if she couldn’t bear looking into his face. She was as white as paper. Jonas told himself he wouldn’t take pity on her. He wouldn’t. But her misery still tore raw strips off his heart.
“I find myself bewildered that you gave yourself to me at all.” Damn it all, he should shut up. Now. Berating her only confirmed what a gullible idiot he’d been. After all these years of trusting nobody, he’d trusted Sidonie. And she’d played him for a dimwit. “I suppose you were curious. Or perhaps you felt you owed me some recompense for stealing my inheritance.”
She sucked in a breath that sounded like a sob, but to her credit, she didn’t retreat. “Please, Jonas, you know that’s not how it was.”
He gave another of those unamused laughs. God help him, he could either laugh or cry and he’d humiliated himself quite enough. “It turns out I know nothing about you.” His voice lowered to acrid self-castigation. “I thought you were the only true thing in my misbegotten life. I discover you’re nothing but a pretty parcel of lies, base metal not gold.”
“You’re… you’re not fair.” She raised her head and stared at him with a spark of defiance. “Roberta is my sister. I knew you a week. A mere week. Once I discovered what your illegitimacy cost you, I agonized over whether I was doing the right thing. I agonized the whole time.”
He stepped away, partly to break the physical pull she exerted, no matter what he’d discovered about her. “Not enough to tell me the truth.”
“I told you the truth in everything apart from this,” Sidonie whispered, twining her arms around herself in a defensive gesture that shouldn’t stab his conscience.