One Night of Surrender: The Brothers Mortmain by Evie North

Author:Evie North
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780648311027
Publisher: Evie North
Published: 2017-04-27T23:00:00+00:00

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As the year turned to winter her body swelled more, the child growing strong within her. Sometimes, as she sat dreaming in the parlour with Anila, she told herself it would be a girl. If it was a girl then the earl would not want it and she could keep the child.

“It is a girl,” she told Anila. “I know it.”

But Anila only smiled her wise smile and said nothing.

As spring burst forth, Katherine gave birth to her child. It was early morning and the babe seemed eager to get into the world and see the sun come up. A cock was crowing when he was born.

And of course it was a boy. She would call him Anthony, she decided, after her father.

Even as she held him and smiled at him, touching his fine skin and tiny, perfect hands and feet, and smoothing the down of dark hair on his head, she feared for him.

“Don’t tell the earl,” she begged Anila. “Let him think it was a girl.”

But she knew Anila would tell. She still loved the earl—it was obvious in the way she spoke of him. As fond as she had become of Katherine, with Anila the earl would always come first.

“I cannot lose them both,” Katherine cried, the agony raw in her voice. “The father and the son.”

Perhaps it was the emotion of the baby’s birth— their shared experience—that sent the words spilling from Anila’s mouth. “Hush, hush. Take comfort. He is not dead!”

Katherine blinked in the early morning light. She was very tired and she thought she had misheard, but Anila had covered her mouth with her hands, as if she wanted to take the words back.

“Not dead?” her voice quivered. “What do you mean, he’s not dead?”

Would Anila deny it? For a moment Katherine feared she might, but then the woman seemed to change her mind. Anila’s shoulders sagged beneath her colourful sari, and she sighed and came to sit beside her. She looked tired too, and Katherine realised how hard this was for her. But she refused to feel pity for Anila’s predicament. There was too much at stake for her to give way to pity.

“The Earl of Mortmain is a powerful man, Katherine. He knows many other powerful men. Do you really think he would allow his son to hang?”

Katherine tried to think but her head ached as much as her body. “But I was there. I saw them come to say goodbye. They were not acting. They were grief- stricken.”

Anila shook her head. “The brothers believed he was to die and Gervais believed he was to die. Only the earl knew the truth. They smuggled him away, put another in his place who was to die anyway. Dressed him in Gervais’s clothing and warned him to stay silent till the end. The man’s family were paid well, money they would not have seen otherwise. It was a bargain that suited everyone.”

She tried to think, but she could feel the quick painful breaths crowding in her chest.

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