All the Time in the World

Chapter Fifteen

Tom Riddle sat staring at the address on the piece of paper the strange boy had given him. Could it be true? Could the doctors have been wrong? Could he actually have fathered a child?

He read the address again. It was in London. He stood up. He would go there. He would meet this child. He would decide what to do later.

He frowned suddenly as he realized that the child's name was not mentioned in the paper. Only the name of the orphanage and that of the matron, Mrs. Cole.

How in blazes was he to find the child without knowing his name? He scowled. He would go there anyway. If it indeed was his child, he had a rough estimate of how old he might be. This Mrs. Cole might remember Merope.

He felt a twinge as he thought of her. At the time, he'd been too angry at her. After all, she'd raped him for all intents and purposes, used him, abused him. Whatever happened between them had happened because of some potion she gave him and not of his will. And he'd been furious at how his will had been taken away and he'd been trapped into marriage. He was also one hundred percent certain that the child she was carrying was not his.

And that had just made everything so much more worse. After taking his will away, after tricking him into marriage, after indulging in sexual acts with him, again without his consent, she'd cheated on him too. He'd not believed her tearful protestations of love, nor her assertion that the child was his. He'd left her and come back home only to learn that Cecilia had married an Earl.

He'd been quite bitter to actually spare a thought to Merope. But he'd gone and met his doctor again and had run all the tests again. And the doctor had confirmed what he'd said earlier. He would not be able to father a child.

But now, there loomed before him the possibility that he'd actually fathered a child. If Merope had been telling the truth, then he'd abandoned his child too when he left her. And whatever the circumstances, no gentleman of his station abandoned his pregnant wife. Not unless the child was not his. But if the child was, then... then what he'd done was indefensible.

Tom Riddle strode out of the room. He'd go to London. Today. Before he thought too much and talked himself out of going. Before the anger and the fear came back, anger at Merope who had died, giving birth to his child in an orphanage. Fear, that still gave him nightmares, of the times they were together, when he was reduced to a mindless puppet doing her bidding. Would her child be like her? He shook the thoughts aside. Whatever he was, if he was his, he was a Riddle. And he belonged here, not in an orphanage. A Riddle could not be allowed to continue living in a place like that. Not now, not now.