Swan's Grace (32 page)

Grayson eyed him, understanding that Hastings had made a choice between him and his father. His eyes narrowed as he flipped open the note. He read once, then twice.

"What is it?" Lucas asked from behind him.

Hastings's eyes went wide.

"Master Hawthorne!" Hastings blurted, panicked. "I didn't see you there."

"That's an understatement. What's all this about?"

"Nothing, little brother," Grayson said carefully. He would handle this himself.

And before another question could be asked, he strode out the front door, anger pushing him on.

His hands brushed against her arms, his palms drifting along her skin, barely, just a hint, stopping at the puffed spring sleeve. She felt a sweet, tender shudder of yearning, a heady feeling, making her want more.

"Em," he whispered, his breath warm against her ear. "You are incredible."

Whether she was or not, he made her feel as if she were beautiful and young, with life and possibilities stretching out before her.

His hands slipped up her neck, briefly cupping her cheeks before continuing on to her hair. With a few gentle tugs to the pins, the long coil tumbled like a waterfall down her back and shoulders. She felt it against her skin, the strands brushing over her as gently as his fingers did.

She wanted to feel more. Needed to feel more—as if she were finally living.

Perhaps sensing her thoughts, Richard pushed the capped sleeves from her shoulders, running his fingertips along the soft ridge, slipping beneath the material at her arms.

Her head fell back and he kissed her neck, a gentle sucking that made her body tingle and yearn.

He wore shirtsleeves, his coat and tie gone, and when he stepped away, setting her at arm's length, she felt an urge to touch the golden vee of skin at his neck.

But before she could summon her courage, he turned her around until her spine was to his chest. Then he pointed.

"Look," he said.

When she did she saw herself, her reflection in a mirror in the corner. The sight surprised her.

"You are so beautiful."

"I'm old."

"No," he whispered.

She watched, mesmerized, as he bent his head to brush his lips against her hair, his strong hands on her shoulders. In the mirror, she saw someone she hadn't seen in years, a woman with eyes shining, hair flowing, and a smile that erased years from her face. But more than that, she saw a woman who looked happy, so happy she could cry.

His hands drifted down her arms, then across to her abdomen. Very slowly, he pulled her back against him.

"Do you understand how much I want you?"

His voice was deep and low, and she could feel that he wanted her. Her mind tightened with something she didn't recognize. Panic, perhaps, but it was more than that.

She turned in his arms as understanding came clear. "I want you, too." Despite everything, or perhaps because of it.

He didn't respond, merely looked at her. Her heart raced, and she knew she should pull back—for so many reasons. Propriety, decency. The fact that she was married. Instead, when he pulled her close, she went to him.

His kissed her then, his mouth meeting hers, his tongue seeking entrance. She opened to him, then shuddered with intensity when his tongue touched hers.

Sensation she hadn't experienced in decades came back to her, filling her until she felt weak with desire—and gratitude. She wanted to cry for the touch, to weep at the pleasure that she had thought was lost to her.

Right or wrong, she would always remember this day and this kiss, perhaps remember it more than the kisses she had received from him years before. Because now it was like a gift, something she had thought she'd never have again.

His hand ran up her back, molding her to him. Despite his age he still had the hard, well-defined physique of an athlete.

The need to flee was gone, pushed aside by the sensation of his fingers burning a path across her skin. And when he replaced his fingers with his lips, she could only sigh.

He looked at her again, hesitating, as if giving her one last chance to pull away. But she didn't move; she met his probing gaze before he closed the distance between them, then touched his lips to hers once again.

The kiss was tender but demanding, and she had the fleeting thought that she wanted something more from this than simply the embrace. She wanted to feel loved and cherished.

She had turned to this man once before when she had needed to feel loved. She had wanted someone in the world to see her, to make her feel as if she weren't overlooked, as if she were cared for.

And she realized then that she was seeking the same thing from him again.

Understanding that, how could she go through with it?

The thought startled her.

Earlier she had thought she was older and wiser. Was she?

But more than that, could she live with herself knowing she had lost her decency? Not once, but twice.

The thought seared her, taking her breath much as his touch had taken it earlier. She had no answers, no answers other than one.

She deserved to be loved, but not by a man who wasn't her husband.

With that she pushed away.

Richard's eyes were clouded with passion. "What's the matter?"

"I can't do this!"

It took a moment for him to gain control as he pulled a deep breath. "Em, I love you. Surely you know that."

"All I know is that this is wrong, at least for me."

"Your husband ignores you! How could it be wrong to be with someone who loves you?"

She stared at him. "If you really loved me, you never would have asked me to act without honor. Honor isn't only for men, Richard. Women have it, too."

"Emmaline," he whispered, stricken.

But she no longer heard. She frantically pulled herself together, this time knowing that she would never see this man again. She deserved something more in life, and she would find it.

But when she pulled open the door, her mind froze. Her world spun as she realized her insight had come too late.

Grayson stood at the door.

Grayson stood on the threshold of room 3A, trying to make sense of the scene before him.

His mother was with another man.

Thoughts collided, and he hardly understood the feelings that snaked through him. He felt as if he had been punched in the stomach.

During the careening carriage ride to Quincy House, he had willed the few scrawled words to be a misunderstanding. Emmaline Hawthorne would not be sneaking out for an illicit rendezvous in a cheap men's boarding hotel. The idea was ludicrous.

Clearly there was some other explanation.

But standing in the dim hallway, his mother looking at him with guilty distress, her hat gone, her hair unraveling, a man behind her standing next to the bed, Grayson couldn't deny it any longer.

Weeks earlier, it
had
been his mother out with a man. It had been his mother looking so young and alive that friends and acquaintances had remarked on the change.

And his ache turned to anger. Anger he welcomed, anger he understood.

His gaze moved from the woman who had given birth to him to the man across the room. A man who had touched his mother.

Grayson saw him up close for the first time, and for a startling moment his mind went still. Confusion wrapped around him. Somehow this man seemed familiar, looked so like a Hawthorne.

But the spell was broken when Emmaline grabbed his arm. "Grayson," she said, trying to find the words to explain. "It's not what you think."

"Like hell it isn't."

His reaction was primal, but he did nothing to control it. He set her aside, then came into the room like a man possessed, hooking his hands into the other man's collar. Grayson didn't register the look of surprise or regret on the man's face as he slammed him into the wall. Pictures rattled, and the man lost his breath in a rush. But Grayson didn't care.

With little thought for right or wrong, he wrapped his fingers around the strong neck, fury and rage pushing him on, fury born in a tiny garret in Cambridge.

"Grayson!"

Emmaline flew at him, attaching herself to his arm, yanking with all her might. But he barely noticed her. Long pent-up rage let loose, swirling around, making him crazed. But that didn't stop him.

His grasp tightened, and the man's face went red, his veins bulging.

"Grayson, you're hurting him!"

"I'm trying," he bit out.

Emmaline stilled, and a quiet settled in the room. "Then you'll have to hurt me, too, since I'm as much to blame for this as Richard."

Richard.

The words sank in. The intimacy of a name.

With a roar Grayson let go, his breath coming in short, staccato bursts. Slowly he looked from his mother to the man. "Stay away from her," he stated, "or next time you won't be so lucky."

Richard gasped, slumped against the wall, his hands clutching his neck. Grayson didn't give him a second look as he took his mother's arm in a firm grip and led her from the room, then out to the waiting carriage. Like an angry parent guiding a truant child, Grayson helped his mother inside. No sooner had she found her seat than she tugged her arm away.

"I am not a three-year-old, Grayson Hawthorne."

His eyes narrowed. "I know. You're my mother."

She looked away. "For what it's worth, nothing happened. At least nothing that matters."

"I find you alone in a hotel room with a man not my father and you say it doesn't matter?" he snapped.

She looked at him long and hard before she sighed. "Oh, Grayson. Life is not always black-and-white. Sometimes there are shades of gray that you have never been able to understand."

"And an affair is one of those shades of gray?"

She closed her eyes, and she suddenly looked older than her years. Grayson felt a spurt of concern.

The carriage rolled through the streets, drawing closer to the world they both knew, and he had the fleeting thought that it had all been a bad dream. Staring at his mother, he took in the familiar face and clear, comforting eyes, and he thought it wasn't possible that she could have illicit relations.

But then they hit a bump, jarring his thoughts, reminding him firmly of reality.

"No," she answered. "An affair isn't anything but wrong. But life isn't that simple. The paths that lead us where we end up are never that clearly marked."

Grayson stared straight ahead.

"If you feel the need to tell your father, I will understand."

They pulled up to Hawthorne House, and before he could help her, she hopped down to the walkway. She stopped him when he tried to follow.

"Your father is at his club on Saturday afternoons. No doubt you'll find him there."

Then she walked to the front door and never looked back.

When the driver asked where to head, Grayson told him to drive. He didn't know where he was going, didn't care. He needed time to think. But he would not go to his father.

They drove through the streets until they ended up at Swan's Grace. Wasn't that always the way with him? Somehow every path led him back to Sophie.

But as soon as he walked in the front door, Margaret was there, waving her arms as if to shoo him away.

"I cannot have this! Sophie has a concert tonight. She needs peace and quiet, not this revolving door with people coming and going as they please."

"What are you talking about?"

"First you, then your brother, then that butler, now your father."

"My father?" he asked ominously.

"Yes! He's in your office. This is unacceptable. Sophie needs to prepare for tonight!"

Surprise sliced through Grayson when he found his father standing behind his desk.

"Did you plan on telling me, or were you going to hide the truth?"

It took a second before Grayson realized that his perfectly proper father had been drinking.

"What are you referring to?" he asked carefully.

"You know damn well what I'm talking about. Your mother and Richard Smythe!"

Grayson's eyes narrowed as he slowly came forward.

"Don't think I don't know where your mother has been. And don't think I don't know you were there. I'm no fool. Though she'd like to make me one. Just as she did all those years before. And now this!" he bellowed, waving a sheet of paper unsteadily in his hand.

Grayson took in the folder of information Lucas had brought earlier, details about Sophie's concerts, lying open on the desk. Judging from his father's countenance it was worse than he had surmised.

Steadily he strode forward, forcing his voice to a calm void that he didn't feel. "I didn't realize you were in the habit of going through other people's papers."

"I do when they are staring me in the face. Who wouldn't? Damn you! Why didn't you tell me what kind of woman you are marrying?"

Grayson didn't bother to tell his father that the betrothal was off. "Let me see the file."

But Bradford wasn't listening. His attention shifted and he glanced toward the doorway.

"Ah, the woman in question," he said with an eerie calm. "Tell him, Sophie. Tell him how you play that instrument of yours."

Grayson turned to face her. The first thing he noticed were her eyes, brown and wide, shot with green, that darkness he had seen so many times before pervading her whole body. She looked wild, provocative. And defiant.

She glanced from Bradford to the folder he held, staring at the sheet. "My guess is your papers there tell it all." Then finally she turned to Grayson. "Did you send out inquiries on me?"

"Hell, yes, he did!" Bradford bellowed. "Inquiries that produced the fact that you are scandalous and—"

"Father!"

The word crashed through the office. The men stared at each other until Grayson returned his attention to Sophie. "I want to hear it from you."

She raised her chin mutinously, or perhaps as if she were finally throwing in the towel on any vestiges of hope.

"What?" she demanded. "You want to know that my gowns are extremely low cut, so I can make every man in the audience lust after me?"

His thoughts solidified, going hard, unyielding.

"Do you want to know about the pieces I play? Provocative works that have little to do with skill and everything to do with making my followers yearn. For me. All men, of course. That's why they clamor after me backstage. Send me gifts. Flowers, candy. Invite me to their beds."

Thoughts flooded through him in a rush.

"Or do you want me to tell you about how I pull the cello between my legs, slowly, like a lover?"

Bradford made a strangled sound, but Grayson's gaze never wavered. And Sophie didn't back down.

"Do you want to hear more?" she demanded.

"I get the picture."

"Are you sure? Don't you want to ask me if I enjoy it?"

"Do you?"

Her eyes flared, then darkened. "Every second."

He should have known. He should have realized. He had seen the way she played when she didn't know he was there. He had felt passion and desire while he watched her all but caress the cello as she ran the bow across the strings.

"You can't do anything right" Bradford bellowed. "Not even find a decent wife."

Something inside Grayson snapped. Long years of doing his best, trying to please this man, exploded inside him.

Wheeling around, he confronted his father. "What do you want from me? Once and for all, tell me!"

"I want you to have been my son!"

He barely heard Sophie's intake of breath.

"Don't look so surprised," Bradford said in a hiss. "You prove more and more each day that you don't have a drop of my blood running through your veins."

Bradford's words snaked through the room, his eyes narrow slits. Grayson stood like stone, trying to take in the words, trying to understand what his mind refused to grasp.

"You're a lowly bastard, and you show it with every decision you make. And no doubt you already know. Did you go to that hotel and have a nice little reunion with your father?"

Suddenly, with a certainty that nearly doubled him over, he understood so much.

He was illegitimate. A bastard.

And then he remembered the man. Tall and broad. Just like him. But he was just like Bradford Hawthorne as well. Then he thought of the eyes. Dark, like his. So unlike the blue of the Hawthorne family.

He was illegitimate. And with the words came the realization that someplace deep inside he had sensed it all along.

"You're worthless," Bradford raged, pounding his fist against the wall. "I raised you as my son—as my heir," he bellowed. "And what do I get in return? Nothing! Well, let me tell you, you're as worthless as that no-good Richard Smythe who lured your mother into his bed all those years ago. She was mine, damn you!
You
should have been mine!"

How hadn't he put it together sooner? The strained relationship between his parents. Bradford's disdain for him standing in stark disparity to his adoration of Matthew. Understanding suddenly came as to why he stood apart from the world, why he tried so hard to be perfect.

Because he wasn't perfect at all.

"And now you sit by while the woman who will soon bear the Hawthorne name prepares to scandalize Boston with a concert that isn't fit for a burlesque show, much less the prestigious environs of the Music Hall. She's no better than you!"