Truly, this was not how she had envisioned—had planned the introduction of aunt to nephew.

“He’s a handsome boy. I expect he resembles his father.”

Turning back to him, Charlotte swallowed hard and felt the burn of a guilty blush suffuse her face, not exactly certain how she should respond to Alex’s remark. It was plainly spoken and lacking in artifice, some of which she might have expected given their history. But most people thought Nicholas resembled her with his dark blonde locks and blue eyes. Most never bothered to look beyond those obvious similarities. Alex was unlike anyone she’d ever met, a fact she would be wise to remember.

“Yes, he does. Unfortunately, his father died before he was born.” There, she’d done it, the first lie, the seedling of a multitude more. But then it wasn’t as if this was chaste, uncharted grounds. One would assume she’d be quite accomplished at it by now. Indeed, she was unquestionably a connoisseur should lying be raised to an art form—if indeed it was not.

While her sister’s indrawn breath scalded Charlotte’s ears, Alex continued to stare at her, his thickly fringed eyes devoid of emotion, his expression positively deadpan. “So you married?”

Only the faintest inflection in his tone indicated it was a question, and nothing in his voice hinted that asking had caused his heart to contract in anguish, as hers had done. He sounded politely inquiring, expressing no great necessity to actually know.

But to utter that particular lie aloud—to Alex—was more than her conscience or heart could bear. There did exist a limit to her duplicity. Charlotte inclined her head in a jerky nod, unable to hold his gaze. But if she thought he might challenge her, that somehow he’d seen through the veil of her deception, she couldn’t tell by his expression.

Alex glanced down at Nicholas and only then did she see an infinitesimal warming in his silver-gray eyes. In a surprising move, he lowered to his haunches and extended his right hand to her son. Nicholas inched back against her skirts, shooting a quick look up at her as if to seek assurance as to the safe worthiness of the stranger. Too bewildered by Alex’s unexpected show of kindness to do anything else, Charlotte responded with another jerky nod.

Nicholas slowly lifted his hand to find it quickly enveloped in Alex’s much larger one. “And your name, young man?”

Charlotte opened her mouth to answer, but it seemed her son had had the response primed and ready on the tip of his tongue.

“Nicholas.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Nicholas,” Alex said solemnly, giving her son’s hand a firm yet gentle shake. Charlotte thought her heart would simply break in two.

“Thank you, sir.”

“And how old are you?”

Charlotte’s heartbeat thundered in her ears and her hand tightened on his slender shoulders. Before he could respond, she replied, “He will be four in July.” Lie number two.

Releasing Nicholas’s hand, Alex rose smoothly to his feet. “He’s tall for three.”

Her son was tall for four. He’d be tall like his father. A short silence followed his statement, as Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to agree.

His gaze met hers. Guilt and a swell of wholly inappropriate emotions caused another wave of heat to flood her face in a mad rush.

Alex pulled out a gold fob and gave it a quick glance before returning it to his coat pocket. Inclining his head in a nod toward her son, he said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, Nicholas.” He then directed his attention to Katie who had long gone silent behind her. “Good day, ladies.”

The use of the term ladies should have signified her inclusion, but something in the fleeting look he gave her did not leave her with the feeling that he wished her well at all. In fact, behind his impenetrable stare, she was certain he wished her a trip to hell and back—or perhaps he’d rather she not return.

For the second time in the span of fifteen minutes, Alex took his leave of her and something inside her told her he’d do his utmost to avoid all contact with her in the future. She wanted to weep the same way she’d done when she had been the one to walk away all those years ago.

It was only after the distant click of the front door closing that Katie took those few steps to come to her side. “You were married and didn’t say a word of it to me? Not in one of the twenty letters you’ve written over the years might you have mentioned a husband…and a son?” From her tone, it was difficult for Charlotte to discern whether her sister was more angry than hurt, but she estimated— or rather hoped—it was the former as that emotion was easier to handle.

Nicholas turned and looked up to view his aunt. He became wide-eyed and began frantically tugging on Charlotte’s hand resting on his shoulder. “Mama, she looks like you,” he exclaimed in a high voice.

With her eyes, Charlotte pleaded for her sister’s understanding and cooperation. The last thing she wanted was to have this particular conversation in front of her son, her maid, and anyone else whose interest was piqued by a salacious bit of gossip.

Katie acknowledged her silent request with a brisk nod, before doing just as Alex had done, and going down on her haunches in front of her nephew.

“Do you remember when mama told you that I had a sister who looked exactly like me? Well, this is your Aunt Katie. Now be a good boy and say hello,” Charlotte urged gently.

Tears gathered in her sister’s eyes as she stared at Nicholas with a focused attention.

“Hullo, Aunt Katie,” he whispered, staring at her with the same sort of fixation.

Her sister’s fingers skimmed his face in feather light brushes. “Hullo, Nicholas,” she said in a choked voice. “Would you mind terribly if I gave you a hug?”

Perhaps it was the familiarity of the face that eased Nicholas’s usual reticence with strangers, for he gave a shy nod of assent without seeking the assurance he’d sought from her when Alex had offered him his hand. Quickly he was enfolded in her sister’s arms, his own trapped at his side like a toy soldier. Nonetheless, he permitted her to hug him for a very long time.


~*~*~


The next hour passed in a blur of activity. Katie enthused over her nephew as if he were the greatest archeological find of all time. She hugged and petted him as much as Nicholas would permit, which was considerable given her son too seemed enthralled at the living and breathing creature whose face was the mirror image of his mother’s.

Charlotte introduced Jillian to her sister. Relieved of her bonnet, the full glory of her maid’s beauty caused Katie to halt and stare. A discernible blush appeared beneath Jillian’s café au lait complexion. And Charlotte knew precisely what her sister was thinking; a servant that uncommonly pretty would be trouble in deuces and spades. But they would cope. They’d had to cope before.

Two footmen clad in liveries of the family colors, gold and green, were dispatched to collect their bags and trunks from the hackney. Nicholas would sleep in the nursery, and Jillian would sleep in the room next to the nursery until the children and their nanny returned. Charlotte was assigned her former bedchamber.

After they’d all eaten, Jillian volunteered to put a sleepy Nicholas down for his mid-afternoon nap. Charlotte dearly wished she could follow, but the look on her sister’s face told her an explanation would not wait until after she’d rested.

Jillian and Nicholas had barely departed the dining room before Katie marched her down the hall and into the morning room. She steered her past the piano and harp, and dragged her down onto the chintz settee to take a seat beside her.

“You left because of what we discovered about our mother, didn’t you?”

Charlotte took a deep fortifying breath, for she had to be convincing above all else. “That might have played some part in my decision to leave, but it wasn’t the whole of it. I met a man two months prior to the wedding. We fell in love.”

Katie’s jaw came unhinged, but soon shock gave way to disbelief. In the narrowing of her eyes, suspicion dawned clear and blue.

“I know it sounds extraordinary does it not? I mean Alex had been the love of my life. But I realized what I felt for him was a blind devotion. A case of mad passion. Perhaps even the want of something I believed I could never have. I mean truly, Alex interested in me? I was not at all the kind of woman who could hold the attentions of a man like him for long. Neil—that was his name—was more…accessible. ”

The disbelief faded from her sister’s eyes and the puzzlement returned.

Charlotte pressed on, relieved at the progress she’d made. “In the end, although, I cared deeply for Alex, a marriage between us would have been a mistake. But I should not have waited so long to tell him and should have had the courage to tell him to his face. For that I will always be more ashamed and sorry than you can ever imagine.”

“But how could you leave me? Have you any idea what we—what I went through these past years without you, without being able to even write to you? One-sided correspondence might suit your purposes but it didn’t mine.”

Upon her return to England, Charlotte had planned to tell her sister about the letter threatening to expose the truth about who their mother was. But with the dowager gone, what good would it serve? Whose good would it serve? Katie had had a difficult enough time in society.

“If you knew how much I regret what I did but it had to be that way. I knew if I told you of my plans, you would tell James. And if James knew, it was only a matter of time before Alex discovered. That wasn’t a risk I could take.”

“But even if Alex did discover you’d fallen in love with someone else, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. You didn’t have to run away.”