Chapter 19
My darling angel wife,
I know that you asked for time and distance from me, and I cannot blame you.
I am writing you a letter that I have no intention of sending.
Rather, I shall save it instead. Perhaps one day, if you can forgive me, it may fall beneath your eye.
Perhaps you shall never see it. But there are words and emotions that I must somehow convey in the hope that it shall render it easier to exist in your absence.
For the moment you left, it was as if all life fled with you.
Regardless of what is to come, what I would have you know, above all else, is that I love you.
I know now that I have loved you from the moment I saw you weeping in that alcove at Riverdale’s ball.
You were—and remain—the most beautiful woman I have ever known, in every possible way.
But it wasn’t your beauty that drew me to you that evening.
Rather, it was your heart. Your heart is true, loyal, and all that is good, whilst mine was ravaged, desiccated, and dead until you brought it back to life.
I do not deserve you. Nor shall I ever. However, I continue to hope that you may return to me.
Until then, I am ever yours,
King
“His Grace, the Duke of Riverdale, to see you, Your Grace,” Pierpont announced.
Again? Damn his hide. The man was nothing if not determined.
King looked up from the most recent letter he had been composing to his wife, a letter which, like the others that had come before it, he would never send to her.
“Tell him I’m not at home.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” With a bow, Pierpont disappeared.
King waited for the door to close before he turned back to his letter.
Dearest Verity,
Three days have passed since I last heard your voice. Here is another letter I shall never send.
Most nights, I cannot sleep. But when I do, I wake in the night, swearing I heard your voice. I reach for you, and there is nothing but the same emptiness that resides within my heart.
Although I suffer in much-deserved misery, know that I would endure all just to hold you in my arms again, to know what it felt like to be loved by you, even for a small time.
I am, as always, ever yours,
King
He signed it with a flourish, then reread what he had written. He had taken to writing her these fruitless epistles because he had no one to whom he could unburden himself. She was the one person in whom he confided. And now, she was gone.
Ironic, that.
He was at fault, he knew. He was the one who had chased her away with his—
King’s thoughts stilled as the door to his study flew open with such force that it slammed against the plaster wall and rattled the nearest picture, newly hung at Mrs. Sendall’s insistence, in lieu of the ones he had recently destroyed.
At the threshold stood a livid Duke of Riverdale, fists clenched at his sides and eyes blazing with fury.
“Riverdale,” he drawled. “I do believe you’ve just put a hole in my wall.”
“What the devil have you done to my sister, damn your hide?” his former friend snarled.
“Cease yelling, if you please. I’ve a headache.”
And it wasn’t even from over-imbibing. He hadn’t touched a drop of spirits since Verity had left him. Rather, the thumping in his head was all from lack of sleep and misery.
“I’ll yell if I want,” Riverdale growled, storming into the room and slamming the door a second time at his back. “As for holes, it looks as if the one I made shall match the others.”
It was true that the walls had received some damage, thanks to King’s handiwork on the morning Verity had left him.
He didn’t regret a moment of his rampage.
It had done little to assuage the agony within him, but there had been an undeniable satisfaction to be found in breaking things so that they resembled the ruin inside him.
“I shall send you the bill for the one you made,” he countered, wondering what Verity had told her brother.
Had she revealed that her memory had returned?
“And I will promptly throw it into the fire and watch it burn,” Riverdale countered, slamming his fists on King’s desk.
The force of his blows made the desk wobble. It had not emerged from King’s wrath unscathed and was only loosely pieced together.
He frowned and swept his letters to the side, turning them upside down so that Riverdale couldn’t read them. “Take care. The desk is in need of repair.”
“Your face will be in need of repair before I am through,” Riverdale sneered.
With a sigh, King stood. “To what do I owe your uninvited presence in my study this morning?”
“Your own actions,” his friend bit out. “Verity sent word to me that she has gone to Riverdale Abbey. She refused to say why or how long she intended to stay, which means you have done something to make her unhappy. And when my sister is unhappy, I am as well.”
So, she hadn’t told him, then.
“I expect she went there because she regained her memory,” he said calmly.
Riverdale’s brows snapped together. “When?”
“The night of the ball.”
“Why did you not tell me? Why did she not tell me?”
“What concern is it of yours?”
“She is my sister, damn you. Everything about her is my concern.”
“And she is my wife,” he snapped. “My wife, whom I love quite desperately and who has left me. Do you know why she left me, Riverdale? I shall tell you. It is because when she took that blow to the head, it somehow confused her memories so that I had taken the place of the sainted Lord Leopold. She believed herself in love with me instead, and she thought we were engaged. But when she remembered, she realized she wasn’t in love with me at all.
And worse, that I had gone along with her confusion instead of correcting it.
She realized that I am a selfish bastard who doesn’t deserve her or her love, and she deserted me.
I cannot even blame her. I earned it for keeping the truth from her instead of telling her when I had the chance. ”
Riverdale stared at him, bemused. “Christ, Kingham. I had suspected as much, but I never thought to hear you admit it.”
“Both are true,” he acknowledged. “I am a selfish bastard, and I also love her more than life itself. I would do anything for her, including giving her the distance from me and the time she needs to decide what she wants.”
Even if each day without her killed him a little bit more.
“So,” he concluded, “that is what I have done to your sister, Riverdale. I took advantage of her weakness to marry her because I wanted her for myself. Because I couldn’t bear for her to waste her life mourning for a dead man when I could love her instead.
But I’ve gone about it all wrong, and now she may never forgive me. There. Are you happy?”
Riverdale stared at him, unspeaking.
King stood as he was on the opposite side of the desk, unflinching. The truth was best told, and he was finished hiding from his own actions. He had done that enough, and now he was paying the price.
“I’m not happy,” Riverdale said at length. “Not at all. What you’ve done is not just selfish but unconscionable. I cannot blame Verity for leaving you.”
“On that, we are in agreement, because neither can I.”
“Verity deserves better.”
“Again, I concur.”
“Damn you, you were my friend. I considered you a brother. Why?” Riverdale shook his head. “Why would you do this?”
“I am persuaded that the annals of history are filled with men who have done foolish and regrettable things for love.”
“At least you are suffering,” his friend said uncharitably. “You look like hell, you have dark circles under your eyes, your hair isn’t combed, and you’ve ink stains on your shirt.”
King glanced down, bemused to find that Riverdale was right.
He shrugged, not caring. “Then I look as I feel.”
“You should know that I will fully support my sister in whatever she decides. If she doesn’t want to return to you, she will always have a home with me.”
“I thank you for that, although I hope it won’t be necessary.”
Riverdale’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not certain what I hope, other than that Verity does whatever feels right to her and makes her happy.”
“Why do you think I let her go?”
Riverdale studied him silently for a few moments before he finally nodded. “I don’t know what to make of you, Kingham.”
He smiled. “That makes two of us, old chum. Because I don’t know what to make of myself either.”
All he knew was that he was miserable without Verity.
“I should take my leave,” Riverdale said, some of his ire having apparently been quelled by the pathetic sight King no doubt presented.
“Thank you for paying me a call,” he said. “I do so appreciate your brotherly concern.”
Riverdale’s eyes narrowed again, but he said nothing else. Without a word, he turned and quit the room.
King waited until the door had closed once more to release the sigh he’d been holding, and then he returned to his letters.
Verity finished reading the last letter Leo had ever written her.
It had been from his sickbed. In typical Leo fashion, it had been filled with hope.
Hope for the future they would share together, which had never come to be.
Love for her that she could still feel in her heart, unvanquished by death and time.
But fate had designs for them beyond their comprehension. Their love had not been meant to be.
She smiled, though her eyes welled with tears. She had been so emotional lately. A veritable watering pot. But then, she reckoned there was a good reason for that.
It had been three days since she left King in London, and she had finally gone through the stack of letters once kept faithfully by her bedside. She missed Leo. Missed the lively talks they’d had, missed his boyish charm, his silliness. And yes, she still loved him.
But it was becoming difficult for her to reconcile her feelings for Leo with what she had grown to feel for King.
She had departed in a mad rush, desperate to be beyond his magnetic orbit.
King was a force unto himself. It wasn’t just his handsome face, his easy elegance, his formidable style, or his sensual ways.
There was something about him that was indefinably unique, some quality that drew her to him in a way she had never experienced in her youthful courtship with Leo.
When her memory initially returned to her, it had been such an onslaught, and she had been overwhelmed by a deep sense of betrayal and guilt. How could she have forgotten Leo and given another man his place in her heart, her bed?
However, several days later, her wild emotions were beginning to settle, though a certain trepidation was added to them.
She hadn’t received her courses in as long as she could recall.
Not, if she thought back correctly, since before her wedding to King.
What if there was a specific reason for her lack of monthly flow?
Her hand crept over her stomach, and Verity allowed herself to wonder, for the first time, if she was carrying a child. King’s child.
And as she lay alone in the bed that had been hers when Leo had courted her, she couldn’t deny the ache inside her. She didn’t only miss the boy she had loved. She missed the man she had fallen in love with.
She missed King.
She wasn’t certain what that meant for her yet. Could she trust him? Were her feelings true, or was she still confused?
Either way, the hour was late, and tomorrow was another day in which Emma and her unlimited energy would demand attention. The distraction would be welcome.
Verity folded the letter and returned it to the stack in the wooden box, then closed the lid. She knew instinctively that this would be the last time she read the letters.
She just didn’t know what came next.