Chapter Five #2
‘Naturally I would be willing to listen to any suggestions Your Ladyship might have,’ Mrs Fitch went on, her voice resuming its usual monotone.
‘Would you?’ Florence answered tightly. Suggestions. ‘Or would you need to get His Lordship’s approval first?’
There was a moment of silence before the housekeeper simply folded her long fingers over her waist. ‘Well, now that’s settled, if you’d care to follow me to the blue morning room, my lady, I’ll ring for some tea.’
Florence didn’t move, her mind spinning at the utter injustice of what she’d just learned. It was bad enough that her husband blamed her for their marriage, but now it seemed he intended to humiliate her as well, treating her as a marchioness in name only.
If only she could remember what had happened in London!
Then she could defend herself properly. Or, failing that, if only she could speak to Jane again.
If she’d told anyone about the events leading up to her marriage, surely it would have been her lady’s maid, but her nurse was like a limpet stuck to the side of a ship.
She absolutely refused to leave her alone, making private conversation impossible.
Although…it occurred to her suddenly that Jane had already told her something. Look in the bag, she’d said, as if that would explain everything. Look in the bag.
‘On second thoughts…’ she called out, just as Mrs Fitch reached the door, ‘I think I’ll go and lie down.’
‘Of course, my lady. I’ll have some tea sent up to your room.’
‘That’s not necessary.’ She turned to the nurse, putting on her most ingratiating expression. ‘Perhaps you’d be so kind as to make one of your special remedies? The last one was so invigorating.’
‘Why, I’d be happy to, my lady.’ The nurse positively beamed at the compliment. ‘I’ll just help you upstairs first.’
‘Don’t worry, I can manage by myself.’ She was already heading out of the room, seized with a new sense of purpose.
‘I’m perfectly steady now. And thank you so much for the tour, Mrs Fitch!
It was very…educational.’ She bit her lip and then couldn’t resist adding.
‘And don’t forget to close the curtains! ’
She hurried upstairs, possibly faster than was advisable, though thankfully without collapsing again, and closed her bedroom door firmly behind her.
Based on previous trips to the kitchens, she estimated that she had approximately five minutes before the nurse appeared with a pot of some noxious brew, but hopefully that was long enough.
Quickly, she flung the wardrobe open, heaved out the brown leather saddlebag and tipped the contents all over the floor, revealing two tightly folded cotton dresses, a petticoat, a woollen shawl, a hairbrush, some toiletries, a purse of money and a bundle of letters wrapped in pale blue ribbon.
Then she crouched down on her haunches, examining the haul.
The clothes and toiletries suggested that she’d been going on a journey, but where?
And if that was the case, why had nobody else known about it?
And why had she been alone? It didn’t make any sense…
Unless she’d been running away.
Her breath stalled as she remembered the sudden fervour that had gripped her in the hall the other night, the powerful impulse she’d felt to run out of the front door and escape.
Had her unconscious mind been spurring her on?
Had some part of her been remembering? More importantly, that spoke of her innocence, didn’t it?
Because why, if she’d gone to such extreme lengths to compromise a marquess, would she have been running away within a month of her wedding?
The rest of the items reinforced the theory because they were all hers, from Cumberland, not ones she’d obtained after her marriage, as if she hadn’t wanted to take anything from her new life… And as for the letters…
The letters… She frowned. She had no idea about the letters.
She threw a swift look at the door before tearing the ribbon away and unfolding the first piece of paper. It opened with a crackle to reveal unfamiliar handwriting addressed to… Dearest?
She gave a squeak of alarm as she carried on reading: Every moment without you is an eternity… I yearn for the day when I can hold you in my arms… Seeing you with him when I ache for you… Signed, your devoted servant.
Yearn, ache and devoted? She stared at the words for a few seconds, the back of her neck prickling with unease, then dropped the letter into her lap and opened another, only to find more of the same.
They were all love letters, all unsigned and undated, all declaring their deep and abiding love for…
her? But they couldn’t be to her, could they?
No one had written her a love letter in her whole life.
She didn’t have any suitors and they certainly wouldn’t be from her husband.
Yet they were in her possession, which left only one possibility…
No! She clamped a hand to her mouth at the idea.
It was bad enough to find herself accused of deceiving a marquess into marriage, but to discover an illicit correspondence with another man as well, a man who called her darling and dearest, was even worse!
What was going on? And how was it possible that absolutely nothing of any great import had happened for the first twenty-one years of her life and now two huge things were happening at once? And she’d somehow forgotten them both!
She racked her brains, trying to come up with some other plausible explanation for the letters.
Perhaps they were unwanted? Perhaps she was being bothered by messages from some secret admirer?
Although, in that case, why had she been carrying them in her saddlebag like some kind of precious cargo? Why hadn’t she simply destroyed them?
No, whichever way she looked at it, they were incriminating.
Just as everything she’d discovered since she’d woken up from her accident was incriminating.
And now, as much as she didn’t want to believe any of it, all of the evidence seemed to lead to the same horrible and inescapable conclusion: that not only was she the kind of person who would poach her best friend’s future husband, but she was also the kind of person who would conduct a secret, adulterous liaison with another man within weeks of her marriage!
It seemed incredible that her personality could have altered so much within one short month, but it must have.
She definitely hadn’t been corresponding with anyone before the Wadlows’ ball, which meant the letters must have arrived after she was married, which further meant that the other items in her saddlebag were no defence at all.
She might not have been escaping so much as running away with somebody else!
Her stomach lurched violently as she packed the items away again, then hastily tucked the bag back into the wardrobe before throwing herself into the armchair by the window.
Suddenly she no longer wanted to speak to Jane.
She didn’t want to talk to anyone, except possibly her mother, but she was three hundred miles away, probably still recovering from the shock of learning that her only daughter had somehow married a marquess…
‘Here you go, my lady.’ The nurse entered a few seconds later, placing a cup filled with some foul-smelling brown liquid on the table beside her. ‘This will help to rebuild your strength. It’s an old family recipe.’
‘Thank you.’ Florence wrinkled her nose before taking a mouthful.
It tasted even worse than she remembered, but she was too guilt-ridden to care.
Now that a seed of doubt had been planted, her mind was a swirling maelstrom of questions.
What if her husband was right about her?
Could she have deliberately trapped him on the night of the Wadlows’ ball?
Because if she was completely honest with herself, hadn’t some deep-down part of her been intrigued by those thunderstorm eyes and scowling brows, despite his cold demeanour?
Hadn’t she felt a strange fluttering sensation in her chest every time he’d so much as glanced in her direction, and wondered, on occasion, how it would feel to be the recipient of his attention?
Hadn’t she even, to her own secret mortification, dreamed about it?
And if all those things were true, then could she have been so powerfully jealous of Amabel that she’d seized an opportunity to take her place as the marchioness, destroying all of her friend’s hopes and dreams in the process?
Was that why she’d lost her memory? Because she’d done something so heinous that she didn’t want to remember?
She squeezed her eyes shut, every fibre of her being screaming a denial.
Amabel was her closest friend. They’d been enjoying the Season together, without even the tiniest hint of bad feeling!
She’d never so much as thought about finding a husband for herself in London.
That was the truth, she knew it! And yet something had happened, something that she couldn’t remember, and the infinitely more frightening truth was that she had no idea who she was any more.
And if she didn’t know that, then what else might she be capable of?