Miss Marianne's Disgrace by Georgie Lee

respect as anyone else. She should stay silent, but under the influence of his sincerity, she couldn’t hold back the story any more than she could have held back the tears of relief in Lady Ellington’s embrace.
    â€˜All my life, I and everyone else thought she was my sister. What few people really know is she was my mother. She had me long after her husband, the Chevalier de Badeau, died. She passed me off as her sister to hide her shame. I don’t even know which of her many lovers was my father.’ Her stomach clenched and she thought Mrs Steven’s lemon cakes might come up. She shouldn’t have told him. No one outside the Falconbridge family knew and there was no reason to expect his discretion. If he repeated the story, then the faint acceptance Lady Ellington provided would disappear as everyone recoiled further from the illegitimate daughter of a whore.
    She waited for his reaction, expecting him to curl his lip at her in disgust or march into the sitting room and demand his mother have no further dealings with her. Instead, he nodded sagely as if she’d told him her throat hurt, not the secret which had gnawed at her since she’d riffled through Madame de Badeau’s desk four years ago and found the letter revealing the truth.
    â€˜Your mother isn’t the first woman to pass her child off as her sibling,’ he replied at last.
    â€˜You’re not stunned?’ She was.
    â€˜No.’ He turned back to his desk and slid a book off of the top of the stack, an ancient tome with a cracked leather cover and yellowed pages.
    His movement left the path to the music room clear. Marianne could bolt out the door, leave him and her foolishness behind, but she held her ground. She wouldn’t act like a coward in front of a man who’d been to war.
    He flipped through the book, then held out the open page to her. ‘Lady Matilda of Triano did the same thing in 1152.’
    Marianne slid her hands beneath the book, running them over the uneven leather to grasp it when her fingers brushed his. She pulled back, and the tome wobbled on her forearms before she steadied it. It wasn’t fear which made her recoil from him as she used to the men at Madame de Badeau’s. It was the spark his touch had sent racing across her skin. She’d never experienced a reaction like this to a gentleman before.
    She stepped back and fixed her attention on the beautiful drawing of a wan woman holding a rose, her blue and red gown a part of the curving and gilded initial, trying not to entertain her shocking response to Sir Warren’s touch. She stole a glimpse at his hands, wondering what they’d feel like against her bare skin. She jerked her attention back to the open book, wondering what she was going on about. She’d spent too many years dodging the wandering hands of Madame de Badeau’s lovers to search out any man’s touch now.
    â€˜She hid her son to keep her brother-in-law from murdering the child when he seized the Duchy of Triano,’ Sir Warren explained, his voice soothing her like a warm bath. ‘The truth came out ten years later when the uncle lay dying and Lady Matilda revealed her son’s identity to secure his rightful inheritance.’
    She returned the book to him, careful to keep her fingers away from his. ‘A lovely story, but my mother’s motives weren’t so noble.’
    â€˜You’re not to blame for what your mother did.’ He set down the open book on the desk.
    â€˜You’re the first stranger to think so. Lady Cartwright and the others are determined to believe I’m just as wanton and wicked as Madame de Badeau and they only think she’s my sister. I’m not like her. I never have been.’ It was a declaration she wished she could make in front of every family in the country and London, one she wished deep down even she believed. She was Madame de Badeau’s daughter, it was possible her