A Scottish Love

Chapter 11

(a few months later...)

Evander was furious.

"What the hell do you mean, you don't know where she is?!" he roared at Cora's father, in the man's sitting room. "You miserable excuse for a man! Pathetic excuse for a father! What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

Cora's father looked at Evander angrily. "Look here, pup, we had everything arranged for my oldest daughter to marry you, as befitting your rank. How was I to know you would run off like a bitch in heat with my youngest daughter?!"

Evander balled his fists. "Either way, what does it matter, man?! I honored the original agreement and married your daughter, I just married Cora instead of Alice!" he yelled back.

"No, the agreement was to marry Alice, not Cora! I had different plans for Cora, and you ruined everything!"

"So I fell in love with Cora! How is that such a terrible thing?!"

Her father sneered. "How could you possibly fall in love with that ugly, fat cow? There must have been something in it for you, perhaps blackmail or some other such thing!"

Evander seethed, his fist shooting out and belting the man right in the nose. "I'll do no more to you for Cora's sake," Evander growled, "but if not for her, I would be beating you into the ground now."

Her father scoffed at him, despite  the blood streaming down from his broken nose. "Best beat her, she has already moved on, I have heard. She is with child."

Evander stilled, his fist still in the air. "What did you say?" he choked out, his fury doubled by the man's statement.

"She was visiting the Marquis when it was discovered. She was not asked to leave, but no one has seen her for months, except my daughter Catherine, and the Marquis' daughter. It could be the Marquis' child, for all I know. Good riddance to them all."

Evander stared at the man, horrified. "I canna believe you. Really. That is the most hateful thing I have ever heard anyone say about his daughters."

Cora's father snorted. "I couldn't care less what you think, Lord Banner. Get the hell out of my house. And don't be looking for a dowry for Cora. I never had one for her. She is useless, and has been ever since she was born to that whore of a mother of hers."

Evander went very still, his hands dropping to his sides, his face pale. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, Cora isn't my daughter by my wife. She's the daughter of a whore in London I used to visit from time to time. You could tell the girl was highborn, and had somehow been ruined, but that was none of my business. She believed the babe was mine, as I had been the first man she had been with after being used quite roughly by another patron a few months prior. She had had to stay in bed for 3 months before I could be with her again, and seemed to be with child immediately after she laid with me. Cora has the look of her mother. They could be twins if she was still alive."

Evander dropped into the nearest chair, stunned. It suddenly made sense. The favoritism. The feeling Cora had that she wasn't good enough. Trying to steer him toward Alice. He shook with fury, turning to the father. "How did she come to be in your care?"

Cora's father shrugged. "Apparently, the Golden Lantern allows any offspring to remain with their mothers until they are 2 years of age. That was when the mother located me, and let me know that I needed to care for the child. She has a brother, an Earl, but she could not contact him. He may have been on the Continent at the time. Talking about it with my wife, she kindly agreed to raise the child as her own, but Cora began to have more the look of her mother, it became harder on my lady wife to overlook."