Free Never Surrender to a Scoundrel by Lily Dalton

with the housekeeper turning to give them both one last look before pulling the door closed.
     Clarissa remained on her knees beside the bed. Numb and broken by the events of the last hour, she prayed this was all a bad dream and that she would awaken to find her life as it had been before. Mr. Kincraig reached down and assisted her up.
    “Come,” her grandfather said weakly, reaching for her. She grasped his cool palm, enveloping his aged fingers beneath her own and leaned beneath the canopy, complying when he pulled her down beside him.
    “You as well,” the earl commanded in a gravelly voice to the silent shadow behind her.
    Mr. Kincraig leaned inward, also giving his hand.
    Wolverton’s eyes met hers, full of love and, yes, hurt. She had hurt him so badly. How could she have made such a terrible mistake?
    “Mr.…Kincraig—” Wolverton rasped. “—has agreed to marry you. Tomorrow, by special license.”
    She had already known this and still her heart sank at the words, like a stone to the bottom of the ocean.
    “He should not have.” She shook her head and looked at Mr. Kincraig, who refused to look back at her, which made her feel even more horrible because he was clearly very unhappy at the prospect of marrying her. Tears spilled over her cheeks. “He should suffer no consequence for merely trying to be kind to me in my moment of need.”
    “You will…do this, Clarissa, for yourself and your dear mother and the rest of this family, but mostly…for the child.” The earl placed her hand in Mr. Kincraig’s, who stared down at their joined hands, stricken, as did she. “You must never tell anyone the truth.”
    “But I must tell Mother.” She blinked. “My sisters. Unless I do they’ll all believe he’s a…a scoundrel who seduced me—”
    “Then so be it,” growled Mr. Kincraig in a low but forceful voice. “It is the only way I will agree to marry you and to be a father to this child. If the child is to have my name, I will have no one believing that he or she is anything other than my own.”
    “They would protect my secret.”
    “Secrets never stay secrets, Clarissa,” he argued, his dark eyes blazing like onyx on fire. “If the truth is spoken outside this room, then someone will overhear a whisper here, a sideways comment there, and the talk will start, and it will never stop. I won’t have it. I won’t. ”
    Wolverton nodded his head wearily. “Do you understand, Clarissa?”
    She remained silent, frozen by one thought. As angry as she was with Lord Quinn right now, what if he had been forced into marriage with someone else, perhaps by his father, for political reasons? Yes, he had betrayed her, but didn’t he deserve to know about the child?
    “But Lord Quinn—”
    “Has married another,” Wolverton replied in a sharp tone. “It is too late…for recompense. There can be no recourse, no satisfaction without bringing shame and scandal upon us all, not to mention your innocent child. Would you have him or her live under the shadow of illegitimacy for the rest of his life and suffer for the consequences of your actions?”
    “No! But neither do I want Mr. Kincraig to suffer the consequences. What if I agree to go away,” Clarissa answered, her voice frantic with hope that somehow she could spare him, “and have the child in seclusion?”
    “And give the baby away, for strangers to raise?” The earl scowled, his hand seizing atop hers and Mr. Kincraig’s, binding them more firmly together. “I won’t have it. The child is my blood and will be always and forever part of this family.”
    His words broke her heart, because they revealed such a depth of love for a child who hadn’t even been born yet. Yet the effort of speaking with such vehemence had clearly been too much for His Lordship. The earl gasped and fell back upon the pillow. Clarissa abandoned Mr. Kincraig’s hand and reached for her grandfather, embracing him, wanting to soothe his distress.
    She could not