Chapter 9
“I’ve missed you.”
Verity smiled at her oft-overbearing brother, fondness for him taking precedence over the outrage she still felt on behalf of her husband. How she hated that Everett and King, formerly such close chums, were at daggers drawn. And she despaired even more that it was all her fault.
“I’ve missed you as well, brother,” she allowed reluctantly, for she had, despite his stubborn oafishness.
Apparently, Everett had missed her so much that he had decided to greet her in the entryway as she handed off her wrap, gloves, and hat. It was sweet, his brotherly eagerness. But she also hoped it hadn’t been spurred by unwarranted worry.
“It has been a fortnight since I last saw you,” he grumbled, offering her his arm.
She finished handing off her outerwear and accepted the offer, nestling her hand in the crook of his elbow. “If I had gone on my honeymoon, you wouldn’t have seen me until now either,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but you didn’t go on it, did you? Are the two of you still intending to do so? You certainly deserve to have a honeymoon, though I wouldn’t particularly care for the notion of the two of you alone at Wingfield Hall together.”
“What manner of trouble do you imagine we would find ourselves in?”
Everett shuddered, escorting her to the drawing room. “I shouldn’t like to even contemplate it. Is he treating you well?”
She was surprised it had taken him this long to inquire after King. “My husband is treating me wonderfully.”
And King had been. Although the early days of their marriage had begun in an unexpected manner, he had spent the last two weeks being the consummate husband in almost all ways.
He danced attendance on her, joining her for breakfast, luncheon, and dinner.
In the bedchamber, he was attentive to her pleasure in a way that never failed to make her melt.
Indeed, she was happier than she could ever recall being.
Except for one thing.
King remained distant when it came to Emma. He had also refused to further discuss what had happened to his daughter. His old wounds still required healing. But they had time—the rest of their lives.
“Wonderfully, hmm?” Everett repeated, his tone skeptical.
“Yes, wonderfully,” she repeated, her voice firm. “And if you think I have come here to beg you to save me from my marriage, you are thoroughly wrong and doomed for disappointment. I am more contented than I ever hoped to be as King’s wife.”
To her relief, they reached the drawing room, and he allowed her statement to stand. Maman and her sister-in-law, Sybil, already awaited them within, a tea tray at the ready.
“Look at what I found at our door,” Everett announced.
Maman and Sybil greeted her with the same cheer and enthusiasm her brother had shown. Pleasantries were exchanged as they sat down to afternoon tea.
“Whyever is His Grace not accompanying you, dearest?” Maman asked.
Verity paused mid-chew of the tart she had selected and gave her brother a pointed stare. Everett returned her regard, obstinate and unrepentant as ever. It seemed the task of telling their mother that her husband had not received an invitation would be left to her.
She finished chewing. “Because my brother made it more than apparent that Kingham was not welcome when I paid my call today.”
Verity had been insistent upon refusing, but King had urged her to accept.
I’ll not get in the way of your relationship with your brother, he had told her. Even if I do think he’s often possessed of worse manners than the hind end of a horse.
In the end, she had decided to accept the invitation, if only to prove to her nettlesome brother how very contented she was.
“Riverdale,” Maman chastised, sounding truly affronted. “Why would you do such a dreadful thing?”
Everett gave their mother a look of grim distaste. “You know the reason, madam.”
“Whilst I find your love for your sister admirable, I do wish it would extend to her husband,” Sybil said quietly, disappointment lacing her voice.
“My love,” Everett said softly, giving her a look of such love-sick tenderness that Verity had to glance away. “We have been over this.”
“And we have talked about the importance of Verity’s happiness,” Sybil reminded him.
Verity sent her sister-in-law an appreciative smile.
Although Everett had initially kept Sybil a secret from them all, hiding her away in the country at Riverdale Abbey, when she had come to London with her mother, Lady Eastlake, Verity and Sybil had become fast friends.
That much, Verity could thankfully recall.
She was grateful the blow she had suffered had not banished the memory of her friendship with Sybil.
“We have also talked about the likelihood that someone like Kingham can make her happy forever,” Everett gritted.
Verity cleared her throat, having had quite enough. “He can. I assure you of that. King has been the perfect husband.”
Except for that awful night when she had gone into the nursery. But his lost daughter was a secret that belonged to King and was his for the telling, not hers.
“Your marriage is yet new,” Everett cautioned. “No doubt you have the disillusioned glow of many a bride who is destined to be disappointed by her husband.”
“Do you mean like you and I?” Sybil asked tartly.
Her brother gave his wife another affectionate look. “You and I are different, darling.”
“To be perfectly fair, Riverdale, you did disappoint poor Sybil quite a bit for the first several months of your marriage,” Maman offered ruthlessly.
It was most unlike her to take Everett to task, but perhaps it was her irritation at being left out of the plotting of his wedding that had settled like a burr under a horse’s saddle. Maman loved nothing so much as she loved planning a fête, whether it was a wedding or a ball.
“I saw the error of my ways,” Everett said, frowning ferociously at their mother.
“Perhaps Kingham has as well,” Maman countered.
“I must admit that I don’t recall having seen a groom look more besotted than Kingham did,” Sybil added. “He had eyes only for you, Verity.”
“I can see where this is leading,” Everett grumbled. “Three against one is a decidedly unfair advantage. Where the devil is Henry when one needs him?”
“He is taking Mother shopping,” Sybil reminded him.
Henry was Sybil’s illegitimate half brother, and he had recently come to London at Everett’s behest to live with them after being relegated to servitude for all his life.
Henry and Sybil’s father, Lord Eastlake, was a vicious and terrible man who had beaten his wife.
Henry was a kindhearted young fellow with an agreeable nature, much like Sybil was.
Verity had enjoyed getting to know him during the two months she had spent waiting to marry King.
“I’m persuaded to believe I ought to have accompanied them,” Everett said.
“Behave yourself, and all shall be well,” Verity parried, trying to keep her voice light.
In truth, she fervently hoped her brother’s ire would soon begin to wane. She had been a married woman for weeks already. Could he not see how desperately in love she was with her husband? How desperately in love she had always been with King?
She had always been in love with him, had she not? There it was again, the faltering of her memory. She had done everything she could to remember, and still, so much of her past remained a mystery. There seemed to be no reason for what she could recall and what she couldn’t.
“It is my most fervent wish that all shall be well, dearest sister,” Everett said, pressing a hand to his heart. “I want nothing for you other than your complete and well-deserved happiness. I want you to have everything you once hoped for with Lord Leopold.”
She frowned at her brother, struggling yet again for any hints of remembrance of the Lord Leopold he continued to mention. But she found none.
“I don’t see why you persist in the wrongheaded belief that I cannot be happy with King because of a beau in my past,” she told him firmly. “My love for my husband far surpasses anything I’ve ever known for anyone else.”
She didn’t miss the long glance Everett exchanged with Sybil. It was as if the two of them were silently communicating with each other.
“What is it?” she questioned them both, not liking that they seemed to have a dialogue between each other concerning her. “I can see there is something more. Why hold your tongue?”
“I find it astonishing,” Everett said, shaking his head.
“What is astonishing? That my husband and I should be in love?”
“That King is in love, yes,” he elaborated grimly. “I have known him for longer than you have, Verity, and I daresay I know him far better than you. No one has espoused a hatred of matrimony more loudly. He vowed to never wed.”
“So did you,” she told him. “Or have you forgotten? My memory may not be what it once was, but I do remember that much. And yet, look at how much you have changed. How much love has changed you.”
There was no denying her brother was wildly in love with his wife.
Or that falling in love with Sybil had made him a better man.
He had been a dedicated bachelor for years, swearing he would never marry.
Maman had harangued him at every opportunity, heaping guilt upon him over his lack of adherence to familial duty whenever she could.
Everett sighed. “That is different, Verity. What I have with Sybil is nothing like your marriage to Kingham.”
“You are not the only person capable of finding true love and happiness.” Try as she might, Verity couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.
She was beginning to wonder why she had accepted the invitation after all. She hadn’t come here to defend her husband. She had visited because she had not seen her brother, sister-in-law, and Maman in two weeks. As she had told Everett upon her arrival, she had missed them.