The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [101]
Mary Rose turned to her mother, who’d said nothing, just sat on the settee, gowned in lovely light-blue muslin, looking both pale and worried and quite happy. “Mama?”
“Yes, my darling, I would very much like to marry Miles.” She drew a deep breath, rose slowly. “You see, he could love me because he was the only one to whom I was never a madwoman. It has been a long time, for both of us. But now you are settled and it is time.”
Tysen said, “I congratulate both of you. Mary Rose, what do you think about this?”
“I just don’t know. So many things have happened. I thought Mama would come with us back to England, that I wouldn’t be alone in a foreign country, that—”
“Oh, dearest,” Gweneth said, her hands outstretched, walking quickly to her daughter. “We can wait if you wish. I will accompany you and your husband back to England.”
Mary Rose was shaking her head. “No, Mama, that was very selfish of me. I am so very happy being married to Tysen that I cannot imagine you not having that happiness as well.” But as she said those words, Mary Rose thought of her mother and Miles MacNeily in bed together, their clothes on the floor, pressed together like she and Tysen had been last night, Tysen’s mouth all over her, and she simply couldn’t imagine such a thing. She stared at the toes of her slippers. “Oh, goodness,” she whispered.
Tysen said, “Excellent. We have need of some champagne.” He paused then and said, “May we end it here, ma’am? It really is time, you know. Time for Mary Rose to learn about her father, to learn about the trust he left for her.”
“Yes,” Gweneth said, “it is past time. It’s just that there is tragedy as well, Mary Rose, and it will hurt you to know.”
“How can learning who my father was be a tragedy?”
“Because your father was Ian’s grandfather.”
Tysen could only stare at Gweneth Fordyce. “You’re saying that Old Tyronne was Mary Rose’s father? That he left her money?”
“Yes,” Gweneth said. “He was past sixty when I met him. His wife had died, and he was desperate to have more heirs waiting in the wings. It had become an obsession with him.
“I had come to visit my sister and her new husband. I met Tyronne. I was fascinated by him.” Her hands fluttered a bit, and she turned away from all of them to walk to the large row of windows. “I’ll never forget that he told me he wanted sons, he had to have more sons, that life was too uncertain, too fragile, even with the male heirs he had at that time. Five males, I believe.”
She turned then, splaying her fingers, as if beseeching her daughter to understand. “I was intimate with him, Mary Rose, and you were the result. He refused to marry me until he knew if you would be a boy. You weren’t, and so he said that he had to find another woman to birth him another boy child.
“He told me about the trust he would set up for you in Edinburgh. The only requirement was that his identity as your father had to remain a secret. I hated him. I wanted to kill him. But I kept silent because he’d promised to provide very well for you. He said that I could never tell you that he was your father or he wouldn’t keep the money there for you. I suppose he didn’t want you hanging about all his heirs.
“I had nothing at all. I moved in with my sister and Sir Lyon and very shortly thereafter began my madness. It was Sir Lyon, you see. He wanted me. It was the only way I could discover to keep him at bay.”
“Mama,” Mary Rose said, barely above a whisper, “I am so very sorry.”
“No, wait, that isn’t all of it, dearest. There is Ian, Tyronne’s last heir. As you know,