“May I Eat What You Didn’t Finish?” My Son Asks the Cold Duke—Unaware He’s His Father

Chapter 10

“I loved you,” Julian said.

Rowan’s breath caught.

“I came back to marry you.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. For one awful second, she was eighteen again, standing in a rented room with a letter shaking in her hands, reading the words that had turned love into shame. She remembered thinking she would die of it. Then remembered realizing she could not — because something inside her had already begun to live.

Rowan drew in a breath that hurt. “If what you say is true, then someone made certain neither of us knew it.”

Julian’s gaze sharpened. “Who gave you the letter?”

She hesitated. Memory came in fragments. Her father’s pale face. Trunks half-packed. Mrs. Fletcher pressing bread into her hands. A sealed note brought by a servant who would not meet her eyes. A crest — not Julian’s personal seal, she realized now. Northwood’s household seal. The kind used for estate business. The kind many hands might reach.

“I do not know,” she whispered. “A footman. I thought he was yours.”

Sam made a soft sound in his sleep and shifted. Rowan moved toward him at once, but Julian was already there, crouching beside the chair. The boy blinked awake, drowsy and rumpled.

“Mama?”

“I am here, love.”

Sam’s sleepy gaze found Julian. He studied the duke for a moment, then leaned protectively into Rowan’s side. “Were you making Mama sad?”

Julian’s voice roughened. “I hope not.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “If you do, I will have to be cross with you. Even though your potatoes are excellent.”

A faint, broken smile touched Julian’s mouth. “I shall live in fear, then.”

“You should,” Sam said gravely, then tucked his face against Rowan’s shoulder, too tired to maintain justice.

Julian did not sleep that night. Long after Rowan carried Sam from the stillroom, he remained rooted where she had left him, staring at the empty chair where the boy had slept.

Sam was his son.

The words refused to leave him. Denial came first — the room had been dark, the moment brutal, Rowan had been furious, and grief had perhaps twisted her words.

But the illusion shattered quickly against a flood of memories. Sam pointing at the untouched potatoes. Sam bent over the chessboard, tilting his head exactly as Julian had once done as a boy puzzling through Latin verbs. The boy had asked for scraps at his own father’s table.

He walked to the window and pressed his palm against the cold glass. The storm had passed, leaving a sky scattered with stars. Somewhere in the servants’ quarters, his son was sleeping. His son, who had been hungry. His son, who had worn boots held together by hope.

The realization entered like a blade and twisted slowly.

By dawn, the sky over Northwood had turned a cold bronze. Julian sent no formal summons. Instead, he wrote a brief note and entrusted it to Mrs. Vale.

The old orchard. At first light. Please.

Rowan nearly tore the note in half when she read it. The orchard was not merely a place. It was a wound with roots. She had once waited there with grass stains on her hem and impossible happiness in her chest. She had kissed him there for the first time, tasting rain and cider and the future she had been foolish enough to believe in.

But she went.

He was waiting beneath the old apple tree, the one with the gnarled branch where she used to sit and read. His coat was dark against the pale morning sky. He looked like he had not slept.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

“I did not have a choice.”

“No.” His voice was quiet. “I suppose you never did.”

The words hit harder than anger would have. Rowan stopped at the edge of the orchard, unwilling to come closer.

“Who profited?” Julian asked.

“What?”

“Think about it.” He turned to face her fully. “Someone intercepted my letters. Someone wrote a letter in my name. Someone dismissed your father. Who had the power to do all three?”

Rowan’s mind raced. She had been so consumed by grief and survival that she had never stopped to ask the question properly. But now, with the distance of years and the clarity of Julian’s voice, the pieces began to fall into place.

“Your father,” she whispered.

Julian’s expression did not change. He had already arrived at the same conclusion.

“The old duke was dying,” he said. “He had made arrangements for my marriage to a woman of his choosing. When he discovered I had other plans — plans that involved a steward’s daughter — he acted.”

“He dismissed my father for no reason. He sent me a letter bearing a Northwood seal. He made sure you believed I had left willingly.”

Julian’s jaw tightened. “And when I returned, asking questions, the servants who might have known the truth had been replaced. Your father had moved to a village no one would name. You had vanished.”

Rowan’s legs felt weak. She sat down on the grass beneath the apple tree, not caring that the damp would ruin her skirt. Seven years. Seven years of hunger and loneliness and lies. All of it orchestrated by a man who had been dead for five years now.