A Worthy Wife by Bárbara Metzger

When he returned to France, Genevieve went with him, with both infants. She took all the Warriner family heirlooms she could carry, to buy favor with the emperor. My money was going to England’s enemies, and she must have known how that galled. My brother was risking his life defending the kingdom, and my wife was supporting the Corsican upstart.”
    “She was French. Perhaps she looked at it differently.”
    “She was a traitor to her lawful husband and to the country that had sheltered her. And it was all for naught. D’Journet quickly realized that his cause was hopeless, that Napoleon would never reinstate the dukedom, that France could never return to the old ways. At least when he recognized that his very life was in danger, he sent my son back.”
    “With Genevieve?”
    “She chose to stay with le duc. She would have been ostracized in England, perhaps even charged with treason. But she would not sacrifice her son. Or D’Journet’s.”
    “She sent both boys?”
    “Yes, those were her terms. My heir would be returned, if her lover’s son was also brought to safety. I can’t begin to explain the dealings with smugglers and spies, all the bribes I had to pay merely to send a message, but I agreed. I swore to be father to both children.”
    “And?”
    “And it was a rough passage. The smugglers’ ship was shot at by a British man of war. The boat capsized in the storm and only a handful of the brigands managed to cling to the hull until they were rescued. Knowing how much I was willing to pay, one of the smugglers saved a boy.”
    Aurora stifled a sob. “Andrew?”
    “Or Henri. There was no way of knowing. The child was too young to understand the question. He answered to both names, having been raised in the same cradle. And he was distraught over the separation from the only parents he’d known, his brother and his nursemaid, in addition to the horrors of the journey. He did nothing but cry, then he took sick. He would have died but for my old nanny. I tried to pray for his recovery, I swear. Then word came that the duke and his mistress had perished of typhus before their castle was stormed. I would never find out the truth.”
    “So you claimed the boy.” Tears were rolling down Aurora’s cheeks by now, but Kenyon was looking inward and did not see.
    He nodded. “I claimed the boy as Viscount Windslow. He has Genevieve’s look, her dark eyes and pointed chin. That’s all I could judge by. But I will never know, will I? Just as we will never know what child came home from India.”
    Kenyon turned and saw that Aurora was crying, and he wished more than anything to take her in his arms and soothe her, but she was not his to hold, to comfort. Until this mess ended, he did not dare. He was going to be a laughingstock, she was going to be a social pariah, and neither was going to find the happiness that had seemed so close. “Don’t cry, my dear,” he told her, wanting to weep himself. “We’ll go to Bath and straighten this hobble out. We can always get married again, when we know the answers.”
    Jumping to her feet, she stamped her foot. “I am not crying because I am not the real Aurora Halle McPhee, you dolt. I am crying because I am married to an autocratic, overbearing, unfeeling brute who didn’t even think to tell me that we have a son. I am crying because the man I thought was almost perfect is actually a pompous prig who doesn’t trust me enough to know who I am.” She pounded her fist on the top of his nearby lap desk. Then she flipped the lid back, knowing what she would find. She reached in and pulled out the proof. “You don’t believe me, you don’t approve of me, and you don’t even like me enough to admit that you wear spectacles!”

Chapter Eleven
    Monkeys were like men, appealing, amusing, and often impossible to live with. Sweety wanted out of his cage; Windham wanted out of his marriage. The monkey was unintentionally destructive; Windham was well nigh to breaking