But she loved Donal. She had not sent him away or been part of the lie of his death. She had rejected Hartley—his real self—with horror, but that did not stop her from loving their child. He could recognize love, even though he could not feel it.
He could feel desire. Eden was nearly in his arms. One small motion was all it would take.
She interpreted his silence as more disapproval. “Donal has already lived with many disadvantages,” she said earnestly. “He must be brought up like every other child of his class. I do not want him to be different.”
Sympathy evaporated like dew on an August morning.
The tender twigs of the rosebush nearest him shriveled at their tips.
“Different?” he said. “What is this difference you fear in him, Eden?”
Real fear woke in her eyes. “Nothing. And I wish to keep it that way.”
“You would cage him,” he said. “You would make him like the man who took him from you.”
“Never.” She placed both palms on his chest as if she had the physical strength to push him back. “Never.”
He struggled to ignore the mortal magic of her touch. “We made a wager before, Lady Eden. I’ll make you a second. Your governess will not remain above a week, and you shall be the one to wish her gone. She and all of her breed.”
“I will not,” she said. “I will not wager with you again.”
“Because you know you’ll lose.”
She closed her eyes to block the sight of him. “Please. Let me go.”
A command he could have refused, but not this quiet request. He might have appeared a monster to her six years ago, but he wouldn’t behave like one.
He drew back, giving her the freedom to leave. But she remained where she was. At last she opened her eyes and looked at him, not with anger or fear, but bewilderment.
“I believe that you care for my son,” she said. “I believe I can trust you to protect him. For that, I can forgive you… anything.”
“I may require your forgiveness,” he said grimly. He turned on his heel to go, pausing to touch the withered branches of the rosebush. Healing life swelled up from the earth to repair what had been damaged by his anger.
He did not wait to see if Eden witnessed his magic.
From her room in the family wing overlooking the garden, Claudia watched the manservant walk away from Eden and knew she had suffered a serious lapse in judgment.
Hartley Shaw. When Eden had spoken of him, she had not revealed any dangerous partiality toward him—at least not of the sort that would ordinarily worry Claudia. Why should she be concerned, when he was merely a servant and Eden had been among the ton’s most sought-after women?
But Claudia had been observing the man, and what she saw had increasingly disturbed her.
This had been a month of such disturbances. The much-delayed answer to her correspondence to Ireland had finally been forwarded from London. It had been written by a stranger, informing her of the deaths of Donal’s original foster parents—those she had chosen so carefully—and the boy’s passing to first one family and then another.
Donal’s arrival at Hartsmere had been a definite shock. But she understood now why he had appeared in so poor a state… why he had been sent back in the first place. The last family to take him in had not wanted him, and had no incentive, in the form of regular payment by Lady Claudia Raines, to keep him.
Claudia was rarely forced to endure the scourge of guilt. But she had felt it when the letter came, and she cursed herself as well as the Irish oafs who had made the boy endure such discomfort.
There was no crying over spilled milk. The boy would never belong in Eden’s world, whatever lies she told, however determined she might be to make him fit in. Even to Claudia it was apparent that compelling him to adapt would be unfair to the child as well as to his mother.
It was true that Donal was not what she’d expected. He was neither so wild nor so intractable as she’d led Eden to believe. But he was a threat to Eden’s future. Claudia had resolved to make certain, this time, that the boy went to a much better—and more distant—home. Weaning him away from Eden, with Miss Waterson’s help, was a first step.