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

Chapter 11

“Your mother knew,” Rowan said suddenly, looking up. “She must have. She was the one who told me to leave. She said it would be easier for everyone.”

Julian’s face went pale. “My mother?”

“She came to me. After the letter. She said I had brought shame on the house. That you had written to her from London, asking her to break it to me gently. She said you were sorry, but you had realized your mistake.”

Julian closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were dark with a pain that made her chest ache.

“I never wrote to her about you. I never told anyone. I was going to tell my father first, then announce it publicly. I wanted to do it properly. I wanted to protect you.”

“You protected no one.” Rowan’s voice cracked. “You left me alone.”

“I know.” He sat down across from her, not touching, but close enough that she could see the lines of exhaustion around his eyes. “I know, Rowan. And I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it right, if you let me.”

She looked at him. The morning light filtered through the apple leaves, casting dappled shadows across his face. He looked older than she remembered. The boy she had loved had been soft around the edges. This man was all sharp lines and hard angles, carved by loss and duty.

But his eyes were the same.

“Sam is your son,” she said.

The words hung in the air between them. Julian’s breath caught. He had known, of course. But hearing her say it — hearing her claim it aloud — made it real in a way that nothing else could.

“I know,” he said.

“You cannot take him from me.”

The fear in her voice was raw, desperate. Julian’s expression crumpled.

“I would never—” He stopped, swallowed. “Rowan, I would never take him from you. He is yours. He has always been yours. I only want—” He broke off, struggling. “I only want to be part of his life. If you will allow it. And if you will allow me to be part of yours.”

She stared at him. “You want to marry me.”

“I wanted to marry you seven years ago.” His voice was steady, though his hands were not. “Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed.”

“Yes. But not that.”

The confession of the letter’s origin did not remain a secret for long. Lord Vance, whose mercantile fortune had long coveted the Northwood connection, found himself quietly asked to leave the abbey. Lady Rosalind wept dramatically in the morning room before departing with her father, her ambitions crumbling like the fallen leaves on the drive.

The truth spread through the servants’ quarters first, as all truths do. Then it crept up the stairs, passed between whispered conversations in the drawing room. By the time the remaining guests departed, the story had taken on the shape of legend — a duke’s love stolen by a dying man’s cruelty, a child raised in poverty while his father searched, a woman who had survived the unthinkable with nothing but her pride and her son.

Sam took the news better than anyone expected.

“So the Duke is my father?”

Rowan nodded, her heart in her throat. “Yes, my love.”

Sam considered this for a long moment, his small face serious. “Does that mean I have to call him Papa?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Good.” Sam nodded firmly. “I think I will call him Julian. Like Mrs. Vale does when she thinks no one is listening.”

Rowan choked on a laugh. “You cannot call the Duke by his Christian name.”

“I cannot?” Sam looked crestfallen. “But he said I could.”

“When did he say that?”

“Yesterday. He said I could call him whatever I liked, as long as I kept winning at chess.” Sam’s eyes brightened with a sudden thought. “Mama, does this mean we have to live here now?”

“Do you want to live here?”

Sam looked around the kitchen with its warm fire and cluttered shelves, then out the window at the gray stone walls of the abbey. “I think,” he said slowly, “I would like to live anywhere you are. But the potatoes are better here.”