“And?” Eleanor pushed, her heart racing.
“My brother believed that Samuel might be connected to this family in ways no one has ever dared to speak about.”
Eleanor stared at her husband, struggling to process the cryptic words. “Connected? How?”
Master Whitmore locked eyes with her, all pretenses stripped away. “My brother believed Samuel might be the son of someone from this house.”
The bedroom plunged into a deafening silence. The implications of his words hit Eleanor with the force of a physical blow. A cold chill traced its way down her spine. The rigid, unforgiving social hierarchy of the South was built on the absolute separation of bloodlines. To suggest that an enslaved man in the fields shared the blood of the aristocratic masters was a reality that threatened to tear the fabric of their existence apart.
“Whose son?” she breathed, barely able to form the words.
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