“You are not coming with me, and that is final!” The storm had stopped, but the temperatures were still near frigid. In no way, James was going to risk Lucy out in that cold.

Except Lucy wasn’t going to listen to him any better now that he knew she was his mother than she had as his governess. She sat, arms crossed under a multitude of blankets in the cutter, that she somehow had managed to arrange in the few moments James had taken to dress warmer for the coming trek back to the home of the Duke of York.

“We would waste less time if you were actually in the cutter with me, rather than standing out in the snow,” Lucy suggested her tone at once sweet and hard as steel.

“I thought you were dying,” James muttered as he climbed into the conveyance, all the while thinking that there was little he could do to salvage his good name as the Duke of Anywhere, save to fire his entire staff and install his mother as the Dowager Duchess and be done with it. Not that things could actually work that way.

James shuddered. Please tell me they cannot work that way…

Actually, now that the truth had come out — and it would come out after tonight, of this he was certain — maybe there was some way he could legitimize Lucy, that would remove her as a servant from his household and install her instead as a beloved family member. IF this escapade didn’t kill her first.

“How is your heart?” he asked, leaning over to adjust her blankets as the vehicle rocked in heavy ruts that lay just beneath the new-fallen snow.

“My heart would be more sound should my boy find a bride worthy of him,” she said, a hint of sharpness in her words, but her voice had lost something of the strength it had always had.

“And you think Lady Barrington is worthy?” he asked, pretending he hadn’t noticed this, and wishing he had had her carried bodily back into the house rather than allow her this excursion.

“I knew she was when I met her, and she suggested that I take that brooch home with me,” Lucy said with a cheerful smile that tugged at his heart.

Had he not been so worried about Helena, James thought that his heart would burst with joy at that very moment. The initial anger at her having kept her true relationship with him a secret all these years was far outweighed by the knowledge that he’d had a true mother all along. That the woman who had left him without so much as a backward glance had never truly accepted him as her own. He could let go of the past now.

Which oddly enough allowed him to finally let go of the anger he’d carried for far too long by that abandonment. Not that it had been right — Amelia had adopted him as her own child but had made no effort toward him after that paper had been signed. For he’d seen the paper by now and the promise it had represented. No, Amelia had never actually claimed him as her child despite her promise to his father.

And while that coldness on her part might have hurt at the time, had he not always had his true mother right there at his side, guiding him and teaching him? Had she not always been there to give him the love that his child’s heart needed?

“All this time…” He stared at her, and she could only nod at him and smile, her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“All this time,” she echoed. She reached for his hand.

“But Helena…” he said, and he ached anew with the worry that he’d been trying so hard to suppress. “You think she is genuinely in danger?”

“I do not know, my son…I wish I had more confidence. Maybe we are both wrong.” She bowed her head to pray.

The manor gates loomed before them in the darkness. James nudged his mother, pointing them out to her, but she’d already seen them. “Go,” she said to him before the cutter had even slid fully to a stop. “Go and find Helena. I will follow.”

James hesitated. She was too newly ill, but he saw the footmen hurrying from the house. He leapt from the sleigh and grabbed the sleeve of the first man he saw. “Where is the Lady Barrington?”

The man could only shrug. James glanced back at the sleigh and saw that his mother was already being helped from her nest of blankets, half carried despite her protests. There was nothing he could do except get in the way even if he did stay. So, it was, he leaped up the steps to the door, nearly falling into the arms of Barrington’s own man who hovered just inside.

“You there, where is Lady Barrington?” he asked before he’d even righted himself.

“I believe she is in the parlor—” Antony started, but James spared not a moment to explain but left quickly. Had it only been a few hours since he’d left home? It seemed at once forever and no time at all.

There was no time for knocking or niceties, despite the protests of the man who’d followed behind him, intent on doing his duty. James threw open the door which hit the wall behind it with such force it was a wonder it didn’t come off the hinges. But he was too late, for he saw Barrington kneeling over her prone form, her body limp.

Lady Helena Barrington did not appear to be breathing.