His voice cracked in a sound that might have been a laugh. “I might as well have been dead. Losing everything due to my own folly and cowardice, leaving you to make your own way…”
“I have been well,” she said. “Hartsmere is prospering.”
“Hartsmere,” he whispered. “I had not thought that you would go back.”
“Nor did I.” She looked down at her remarkably steady hands. “Spencer died almost a year ago. It was necessary to retrench and restore my income. Hartsmere seemed the best option at the time.”
Lord Bradwell bowed his head. “I believe I understand you. Spencer left nothing but debts.”
“Yes.”
“And when the allowance stopped coming—when I disappeared—what remained could not have lasted long. Spencer—” He pulled his hand over his face. “Eden, I did not realize his true nature when I encouraged you to wed him. All I could think of was to…” He shook his head. “I am… deeply sorry.”
So he had known what Winstowe was. But he had not remained to support her with a father’s love, even his haphazard sort of affection.
And he had stolen her child.
“I have much to atone for,” he murmured. “So much.”
“Such as sending my son away to strangers?”
His head jerked up. “What?”
“My son, Donal—the one you sent to live in Ireland.” Her bitterness leaked out. “Spencer told me of his existence before he died. Donal has been living with me at Hartsmere.”
“But that is im—” He looked as ill as she felt. “The boy is alive?”
If this was some cruel game on his part, he had changed more than she could imagine. “Why do you ask, Father? Did you not know? Did you not lie to me by telling me he was dead?”
He tried to stand, bumped his head on the coach’s ceiling, and fell back into his seat. “No,” he croaked, holding out his hand. “No, Eden. I… I was told that the child had died at birth.”
Eden became perfectly composed, her mind working like a machine made of frigid steel. If he spoke the truth, then only one other person could have told him that Donal was dead. Only one other person could have arranged to have a child spirited away and maintained the fiction that the tiny casket they had buried contained her son.
Claudia.
But why? What earthly reason could she have for saying Donal had died? Why had she given him to common Irish peasants? And how had Spencer learned of Donal’s existence, when Claudia had so hated Eden’s husband?
Papa had told Claudia of his devil’s bargain and Cornelius’s true nature. She must have sent Donal away for the very reasons she had attributed to her brother—to protect Donal from his father—and had feared confiding even in Lord Bradwell. Perhaps, having failed to assure Donal’s welfare in Ireland through poor judgment or simple carelessness, she had been afraid to reveal her part in his abduction and was now attempting to make amends for her mistakes.
But that explanation left too many questions unanswered. It made Claudia into a liar who had pretended surprise even after Eden learned Donal was alive, who actively discouraged her niece from seeking her son. It turned Claudia into a woman Eden did not recognize and could not trust.
Donal was with Claudia at this very moment, but she had no reason to do him harm. She was still his great-aunt. But suddenly, urgently, Eden wanted Donal safe and sound in her arms. And her thoughts flew to the man whose arms would never hold his son again.
Or hold her again.
A piercing headache started behind Eden’s eyes, harbinger of another bout of debilitating lethargy. Where had Claudia taken Donal?
“I did not know, Eden,” her father repeated, tears thickening his voice. “You must believe me. Where is… Donal now?”
How could she begin to explain all that had happened since her father’s disappearance? He did not realize how much she understood of what he had done in offering her to Cornelius, let alone that the Forest Lord had returned to haunt her. She wondered if he ever intended to tell her the full truth.