Three Little Secrets from My King by itsvlada
Three Little Secrets from My King
Description
Seven years ago, I spent one unforgettable night with a stranger in a Carvenmoor tavern. He vanished by morning. Nine months later, I gave birth to triplets-alone, unwed, and determined to survive. Now, desperate to provide for my children, I accept a tutoring position in a noble household under a borrowed identity. The moment I walk into the interview, my carefully constructed world shatters: the man conducting it is him. Domnall Morvaine-father of my children, though he doesn't recognize the exhausted tavern maid transformed into a respectable widow. I'm raising his children under his roof while he remains oblivious to the truth. But proximity breeds danger. Stolen glances become lingering touches. Professional distance crumbles into forbidden passion. And his cold, calculating mother begins investigating the tutor who's captured her son's attention-just as he's weeks away from a politically crucial arranged marriage. Caught between a love that could destroy us both and secrets that threaten everything I've built, I must decide: keep hiding in the shadows, or risk exposure for a chance at something real. Some lies protect. Others ignite revolutions.
Chapter 1
Apr 24, 2026
Mairead’s POV
When I tumbled into bed with a stranger in a Carvenmoor tavern seven years ago, I had no idea it would result in three small tornadoes who believe bedtime is merely a suggestion I make out of habit.
"Tavish, put down the boot! Lachlan, get off your sister." My voice has gone hoarse from repetition, from saying the same words in the same order for what feels like the hundredth time tonight.
Tavish drops the boot and grabs a wooden horse, swinging it in an arc that nearly takes out the candle. Lachlan launches himself across the room, colliding with the wall. The floorboards rattle.
Fenella scales the back of the only chair I own, her bare feet finding purchase on wood I can't afford to replace. She grins at me with gap-toothed defiance that would be charming if I wasn't so exhausted.
I deploy my most reliable weapon, the one that never fails. "If you don't settle down, there's no story tonight."
Three bodies scramble toward the shared bed, elbows colliding in the rush. They settle into a tangle of limbs and expectant faces. I sink onto the floor beside them, my back against the bedframe, and begin inventing.
"Once upon a time, there was a knight who loved a princess across the sea."
Tavish leans forward, eyes wide. "Was he brave?"
"The bravest. He crossed oceans and fought dragons just to prove his love was real." I'm pulling from scraps of stories I've read, stitching them into something that might make them believe.
"Did the dragons breathe fire?" Lachlan interrupts, bouncing on the mattress hard enough to make Fenella squeak in protest.
"The biggest fire you've ever seen. But the knight had a magic shield that turned the flames into roses." Fenella's small hand grabs a fistful of my skirt, holding on without speaking, and I wonder what she understands that her brothers don't.
I keep going, painting a world where love conquers distance and everyone gets chosen in the end. My voice softens into the rhythm that makes eyelids heavy. Tavish's head tilts against the pillow, his breathing already slowing.
Then he asks it, his voice small and uncertain. "Where's our father?"
My throat closes around air that won't move properly.
Lachlan sits up. "Is he a knight? Is he bringing us roses?"
Fenella watches my face, reading silences better than words.
I've practiced this answer until it sits smooth. "Your father is a brave man doing important things. He'll come back someday."
"When?" Lachlan demands, his jaw set in that stubborn way he gets when he knows he's not being told the whole truth. The same look his father had seven years ago when I tried to leave before he woke.
"When the time is right." I lean forward and kiss Tavish's forehead, then Lachlan's, then Fenella's. My lips press against their warm skin. "Now sleep. Tomorrow is important."
"Why can't we come?" Tavish's question is muffled by the pillow, his voice already blurring at the edges with exhaustion.
"Because I need you to be brave here. Can you do that for me?" Three nods, slow and sleepy. I pull the thin blanket over them and stand.
I blow out the candle and leave the door cracked, listening to their breathing slow and settle into the rhythm of sleep. Tomorrow, everything changes. Tomorrow, I walk into a noble house under a borrowed name and pretend I belong there.
The carriage arrives just after dawn, when the sky is still grey and undecided. I've dressed in the best thing I own—a grey dress Bridei gave me last month, mended twice, plain but clean. The children cling to my skirts until Bridei's housekeeper peels them away.
Fenella's face crumples. I don't look back. If I look back, I'll stay.
Bridei sits across from me, her posture perfect even on the uneven road. She's ten years older than me, a duchess, a widow, the only reason I'm not still scrubbing floors.
The carriage lurches forward.
"Tell me your name." Her voice carries that testing tone she uses for Latin declensions.
"Mairead Dunmore." The answer comes automatically.
"Wrong. Try again."
I exhale, forcing the lie through teeth that want to hold it back. "Mairead Farren." The name sits foreign in my mouth.
"Better. Who was your husband?" She's relentless, drilling me the way a commander drills soldiers before battle.
"Thomas Farren, a blacksmith from your estate. Good man. Died two years ago." The words come faster now, practiced.
"How?" Her gaze doesn't waver.
"Fever." The lie is simple.
"Children?"
"Three. Tavish, Lachlan, Fenella. Six years old."
"Education?"
"You educated me. I was companion to your eldest daughter from age nine to fifteen. I can read, write, handle accounts."
"Why are you seeking this position?"
"I need work. Three children to feed." Simple, direct, the kind of desperation any widow might have.
"Good. Don't elaborate unless pressed." She leans back, the carriage swaying beneath us. "Lady Catriona received my recommendation two days ago. A duchess vouching for a gentlewoman from her own household—she won't question it immediately, but she will investigate eventually."
Her gaze hardens, and I see the calculation behind her generosity. "If you slip, if you mention your real father or your real circumstances, the whole thing collapses. Not just for you—for me." The threat hangs between us, sharp and clear.
My hands are folded in my lap, gripping each other hard enough that my knuckles go white.
"I understand." The words come out steady, but my palms are slick with sweat.
"Then repeat it. All of it." She settles back, arms crossed, waiting for me to prove I won't be the weakness that brings this careful construction down.
I do. I repeat it until the words stop catching in my throat, until they sit in my mouth without fighting their way back out.
The Morvaine estate rises ahead through the carriage window—all stone and symmetry, larger than anything I've lived in, larger than anything I've entered without a mop in my hand. My stomach twists hard enough to hurt.
Bridei reaches across the space between us and touches my wrist. "You belong here. Believe it." Her voice has softened slightly.
I don't believe it, but I nod anyway, because sometimes pretending is the same as surviving, and I've been pretending for seven years.
A servant greets us at the door—an older woman with iron-grey hair pulled back so tightly it makes her face look severe, though her eyes are not unkind.
"The Duchess Farren and Mrs. Farren?" Her voice is neutral, professionally pleasant.
"We have an appointment with Lady Catriona." Bridei's tone shifts into the aristocratic register she uses for business, all warmth evaporating into formality.
"Lady Catriona is indisposed. Her son will conduct the interview on her behalf." Something flickers across the servant's face—pity, maybe, or warning. My pulse picks up.
Bridei's hand tightens on her reticule, the leather creaking under her grip. She doesn't like surprises, especially not the kind that change the rules after she's already committed herself. Neither do I.
We follow the servant through hallways lined with portraits—generations of Morvaines staring down at us from their gilded frames.
The sitting room is at the end of a corridor that smells faintly of beeswax and old money. The servant opens the door, her hand steady on the brass handle.
"Mrs. Farren and the Duchess Farren." She steps aside to let us enter.
The man stands from his chair by the fireplace. Tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair that falls slightly across his forehead. Blue eyes I last saw by candlelight while my dress was still on the floor of a Carvenmoor tavern. My lungs forget how to work.
Bridei is saying something beside me, introducing herself with the practiced ease of someone who's done this a thousand times. But the sound is distant, drowned by the roar in my ears.
My vision narrows to his face—the jawline I traced with my fingers, the mouth that said my name in ways no one had before or since.
Domnall Morvaine. Father of my children. The man I've been lying about for seven years, the ghost I've carried in my chest every time Tavish asks where his father is.
He looks up from whatever polite response he was forming for Bridei, his gaze lands on me. He freezes mid-motion, his hand still half-extended in greeting. His lips part as if to speak but no sound comes.
The silence stretches too long—long enough for Bridei to glance between us, her brow furrowing in confusion, long enough for the servant to shift uncomfortably in the doorway.
Then he says it, just one word, rough and disbelieving.
"You?.."
Three Little Secrets from My King
30 Chapters
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