Page 17 of How the Earl Entices

Forcing her smile not to waver, Grace pressed her lips tightly together to hold back a sob of emotion and nodded jerkily.

If Ethan saw her eyes glistening, he didn’t pay it any mind as he hurried upstairs, his shoes thumping just as loudly as when he’d come down. Except now much faster in his rush to be away.

“He’s a boy who wants to be a man,” Alice explained quietly in an attempt to assuage the pain of his rejection. “You remind him that he was a babe not so long ago.”

Grace knew that. Yet that bittersweet knowledge didn’t lessen the sting.

Alice handed her a mug of tea, then fixed her with a hard look. “He needs a man’s influence in his life. It was fine before, when he was a babe and you took care of everything for him. But he’s growing now, and he needs a man to show him how to behave.”

“He has men in Sea Haven who can teach him that.” She bristled at the implication that Ethan lacked anything so essential. She’d given him everything. Including her life.

Alice scoffed. “The men down at the docks and in the public house?”

“His schoolmaster,” she countered, listing every man whose orbit brought him into her son’s life, “Vicar Brennan, Mr. Dawson at the mercantile…” Even as she said their names, the list of men seemed pathetically weak. “I’ll teach him what they can’t.”

“You’re going to teach him to shave, are you?” she pressed. “The difference between when a man needs to answer with his fists and when he’s better off walking away? What he needs to know about being with a woman and how babes are got?”

“Yes, I will,” she said as resolutely as possible, despite the doubt pinching in her belly.

The dubious look Alice sent her was piercing. “He needs a man in his life.” She gave a curt nod. “And so do you.”

Grace nearly choked on the tea. Oh, the very last thing she needed in her life was a man!

“You should have a man to take care of you, one who spoils you the way you deserve and protects you.” Alice’s face softened. “One to put another babe in your belly. You know you want that.”

Her chest tightened at that temptation. How many nights since David died had she lain awake, staring into the darkness and wanting exactly that…for a man to put his strong arms around her and make her feel safe? To make her feel desired and beautiful again? To give her another child that she could love as much as she loved Ethan?

But all that died with David and was buried deep beneath his brother Vincent’s threats.

The tea turned to acid on her tongue. “I can never have that, you know it.”

“What Iknowis that you’ve been keeping secrets for so long that you don’t recognize the truth. It’s time you stopped now. For your sakeandEthan’s.”

Alice’s quiet words stabbed her with a spike of fresh guilt.Secrets. So many secrets! How could she even begin to sort through them all? At that very moment, in fact, she was keeping one very large, hard bodied, and handsome secret from the world.

She swallowed down the urge to confide in her friend, knowing the risk was simply too great. Later, when Ross was gone and no longer a threat, they could both have a good laugh at the desperate measures she’d once again been forced to take. Until then, he had to remain her secret.

“The boy has to be told the truth about his father.”

Her shoulders sagged with exasperation. That Alice would bring this up, now of all times, nearly ten years to the day when she’d fled the only life she’d ever known—she was overstepping.

But Grace would never have survived without her. When she’d first arrived in Sea Haven, with her large belly nearly bursting, she had no money, no family, and nowhere to go for sanctuary. By sheer luck Alice had stumbled across her, quite literally, when she’d collapsed outside the apothecary shop. The woman took her in, at first only to nurse her through the birth and help with the newborn whom Grace knew nothing about how to care for. But then the two became best friends, and Grace stayed in Sea Haven long after she should have moved on, settling into the old cottage on the bluff with Ethan, helping Alice in the shop, and taking whatever work she could find to support them.

She’d struggled to make a safe life for herself and Ethan here, and she hoped to continue to live unnoticed, in peace and security, dead to the rest of the world. Given her past, she didn’t dare ask for more. She wanted only for Ethan to grow into a good man, one who was successful but not so accomplished as to ever move to London, where someone might see his resemblance to David, might put the pieces together and realize—

Worse, that Ethan might meet his Uncle Vincent.

“Ethan has to be kept safe.” Even if that meant never sharing his true past with him.

Alice’s face grew grim. “What would your husband have wanted for his son?”

That simple question cut Grace to the quick. She’d wondered exactly that nearly every time she looked at Ethan.

“He would have wanted his son to live,” she answered in a whisper, unable to put voice to that half-lie.

David would have wanted Ethan to have the life of privilege and status he deserved. That was why she’d gathered whatever evidence she could about Ethan’s conception and birth. Her diary and household records that showed she and David had been together when her baby was conceived, a statement from the midwife who helped Alice deliver Ethan that proved the date and time of his birth, the record of his christening in the parish church in Sea Haven…everything she could to prove that Ethan was David’s son. But the timing had never been right to attempt to reclaim his inheritance. The threat to Ethan had always been too great.

Not that it mattered. Even if she wanted to pursue justice, what good would it do? She’d spent too many sleepless nights trying to think of any way to claim what they were due, only to come up with nothing. She had no one to help her present a petition, and no way to pay for attorneys even if she did.