Loving Lady Georgianna (Spirited #2)

Chapter 32

The Duke of Burkeley is your half brother.

The words rang in his head. He would have thought he had mistook his mother if not for the gravity on her features and the graveness of her tone. God, that starched, stick-up-his-arse, wanker of a duke is his brother?

"It's not possible."

Louisa smiled, grimly. "Considering the man is walking about, I rather think it is."

"Why?" Thorne's head came up as he looked at his mother. Dust motes shimmered behind her head from the meek light coming in from the window. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because..." His mother stood, slowly, collapsing into the chair as she gazed at some point above Thorne's head. "I don't want you to make the same mistakes I did. Perhaps if I had introduced you to that part of your family or if I had asked for his protection or claimed a connection between our families, we could have avoided our fate with Randall. I could have been there for you more."

"You did the best you could." Thorne knew that to be true. "I am still a bastard—"

"My son is no bastard."

Thorne ignored the soft, but harsh words from his mother. "—but the what if's...they do nothing. They mean nothing."

"That may be so, but that doesn't change that it was my duty as your mother to tell you the truth. Even though Burkeley's father was of such high stature—much higher than I could ever attend to—and his wife isn't the kind to be duped, of course..."

"Mother—"

"But as I lay in my sickbed, reading that bit of gossip in the papers, I realized it was finally time for us both to end whatever cycle we have adopted. And to confront you..." Louisa licked her dry lips. "I know why Randall stopped beating me." Thorne flinched, standing up abruptly and pulling at the ends of his hair. He didn't want to hear this. "Beating you. That day you fought back saved us all."

Thorne scoffed. "Don't make me out to be a bloody hero, Mother. I'm not. I'm as despicable as Randall is—"

"You bloody well are not."

Spinning on his heel, Thorne glared. "What is it with women declaring something is or isn't so and acting as if it is or isn't so. As if I'm not capable of making my own conclusions or acting without a thought in my head. My birth was the cause of it to begin with. I'm always the cause of what harm befalls us. It is why I lost..." The burning in Thorne's eyes stopped him flat, and he turned away, breathing deeply.

Louisa's chair scraped as she came to a stand behind him. Thorne was twisting around, worried she may tumble, but she raised a hand to stay him. Her hand wavered as she fought the grip of weakness and it filled his throat with bile. Nevertheless, her words were solid when she spoke. "Randall's sins are not yours. My sins are not yours, and it's bloody well time you come to grip with those facts. I made the decision to land in another man's bed, and I made the decision to keep it from Randall. And it's on Randall how he reacted to the news. He became a hateful, spiteful man, and he tried his damndest to turn you into one as well. He succeeded in bringing me into a low state, but he cannot—he will not—do so with you. I will murder him myself before that happens."

Her chest fell and rose in great gusts with her speech, and Thorne felt a blare of pride ripple through him. His mother was strong to have survived such a fate. To fall in love, be tricked by a man she loved and then be relegated to the violence of Randall.

And yet...something in the back of his mind asked the same thing of him. What would it mean to turn his back on Georgie now when she needed him most?