Chapter Two
Edward entered the breakfast room to find Beatrice’s chair empty. Again.
The third morning of absence, and already a pattern. If she intended to unnerve him, it was bloody well working. She could be throwing snippy words at him or casting snide looks his way but instead she’d chosen the best punishment possible.
Her absence.
The breakfast table, a generous oval of mahogany, was set for two. He glowered at the neatly folded napkin as if it was responsible for his wife’s disappearance.
Edward settled himself into his usual seat. He adjusted his cuffs, then his cravat, tightening it a fraction too sharply. He reached for the napkin, snapped it open with more vigor than was strictly necessary, and spread it across his lap.
The butler appeared, moving with his habitual noiselessness, but Edward sensed a tension in the man’s bearing—a reluctance to meet his eye, a careful arrangement of his hands as he poured the tea.
“Will Lady Newham be joining us this morning, sir?” The butler’s tone was neutral, but even so, Edward heard the faintest echo of pity.
“She will not,” Edward replied, as if the answer were obvious, and fixed his gaze on the window.
The butler retreated, replaced in short order by Mrs. Prewett, the housekeeper, who entered with her usual bustling purpose. She set a covered dish on the sideboard and cast a fleeting, sidelong glance at Edward.
He ignored her at first, applying himself to the matter of the toast and the particularly unappetizing eggs that awaited him. He couldn’t decide if the cook was doing a poor job or he simply had no appetite.
It was the housekeeper who broke the silence. “Terrible weather, my lord.”
“Indeed.”
“I was surprised my lady went out so early, sir. To Highgate of all places.”
He looked up. “Highgate?”
“To the cemetery, my lord. Her father is buried there, as I’m sure you know.”
He didn’t know.
“I see.” He returned his attention to the eggs, which had grown cold in the interval. He poked at them with his fork. “Thank you, Mrs. Prewett. That will be all.”
The woman bobbed a little curtsy and Edward sensed her disappointment that Edward didn’t press for more gossip about her mistress.
Edward chewed the toast with efficiency, not tasting a single bite. He imagined Beatrice at Highgate, black skirts trailing in the mud, umbrella tilted against the wind, standing vigil at her father’s headstone as if the old bastard might climb out and offer her the answers he, Edward, could not.
Everyone knew her father was a blackguard. His dalliances were open secrets and his treatment of his ever-suffering wife a source of gossip. No one ever thought of the effect of his comings and goings on his daughter though.
Nor on the man her daughter might marry. It seemed to Edward he was to be marred with the same brush, and he didn’t know how to persuade Beatrice otherwise, especially if she preferred the company of gravestones and mausoleums to him.
Was he really such awful company?
Edward was still contemplating quite where it had all gone wrong when all he wanted to do was kiss his wife very thoroughly and cease their squabbles when the butler entered with a letter on a tray. The paper was damp, its edges curled.
Spotting the handwriting, he let out a sound that was less a sigh and more an involuntary groan.
He read it once, twice, then once more, as if repetition might render the message less disagreeable.
“Will there be an answer, my lord?”
“No,” Edward said. Then, reconsidering, “Not yet.” He folded the letter with a series of precise, angry motions and thrust it into his pocket.
He needed to go to Beatrice. To fix this damned mess he’d made.
Even now, if he hurried, he might catch her at the cemetery, might find her staring at a stone or whatever it was she was wont to do.
He imagined the confrontation or perhaps just a standoff in the rain.
He might even apologize, if the mood so demanded.
But the letter in his pocket was not to be ignored.
“My coat please,” he said. The butler fetched it without question, along with his gloves and hat.
“Should her ladyship return, tell her I’m gone to Town. And—” He hesitated. “And tell her I would have preferred to speak with her first.” The words tasted bitter, but he let them stand.
With haste, he caught a hackney. As the carriage made its way south, London became a different creature entirely. The streets narrowed, the houses grew smaller, pressed close together. Gone were the light stone facades, replaced with red brick and dirt.
He found himself thinking of the first time he’d come to this part of London. He’d been fourteen, and everything had seemed possible—dangerous, but possible. He remembered the thrill of anonymity, the way the city could swallow a person whole and never spit them out.
The hackney lurched to a halt in front of a narrow, three-story building with a bay window and a peeling green door. A sign swung from a wrought iron post but the painted words had vanished under coal dust long ago.
The rain had intensified, heavy droplets that found their way inside his collar and down the back of his neck. Edward heard the hack roll off and silently willed it back. He’d rather be with Beatrice. Even if it was in a damned cemetery.
But he owed it to Georgina to be here.
The entryway smelled of boiled cabbage and the staircase was steep and crooked, the carpet threadbare and patched in places with scraps of cloth. At the end of the narrow corridor, a door opened and an old woman eyed him.
“You’ll be wanting Mrs. Winters, then?” she said, her tone disinterested. “She’s been wailing all bloody morning.”
Edward nodded.
“Tell her to keep her trap shut or I’ll have her out on her arse before evening,” the woman said as she gestured for him to go up.
Suppressing a shudder, Edward made his way up the stairs to the second floor and rapped his knuckles on the door. He could have funded better lodgings for Georgina but she refused to take money from him.
“Everything must be for Annabel,” she said.
Well, Annabel had everything—an education, money, health. Much good it had done. The girl had still run off.
Georgina opened the door and silently let him in. Though only a decade older than Edward, the strain of Annabel’s disappearance had taken its toll, making her look even older. The beauty that had no doubt once entranced Edward’s father was long gone.
“Your letter seemed urgent.”
Georgina inhaled a shuddery breath. “She was spotted in St. Giles of all places.”
“Who said as much?” Edward demanded more sharply than intended.
“A boy down at the Royal Oak.” Georgina wrung her bony hands together. “I’ve been spending nights at various inns,” she admitted. “I thought I might be able to help.”
Edward pinched the bridge of his nose and removed his hat, setting it upon the small writing desk near the door. “Did you pay the boy?”
“Yes,” she said meekly.
“I’m doing everything in my power to find her, Georgina,” he reminded her. “I have men on the streets. I’ve been out myself—”
“I know, I know, but you cannot expect me to simply sit by and wait and—”
“I expect you to stay safe.” Edward hissed out a breath, knowing full well that anyone would say anything to a desperate woman in return for coin. “My father would be furious to know I let you—”
“Your father is dead.”
Thank heaven for small mercies. His father would not be happy his illegitimate daughter had run off with God knows who to God knows where.
Actually, his father would be deeply ashamed by the whole situation.
Edward had promised to look after Annabel upon his father’s deathbed, sworn to utter secrecy.
The whole situation was far from ideal but had been made worse by Annabel’s errant behavior.
It seemed five years of playing the doting half-brother had spoiled the girl.
“Hold your nerve.” Edward snatched up his hat again. “I have this in hand.”
“She could be dead.”
The words were said coldly. And they were true. It was too easy for a girl to simply vanish in London, never to be seen again. But the boy she’d run off with wanted her for one reason and one reason only. It was obvious that Annabel Winters had money.
Annabel Winters, for her part, had not grown up in abject poverty.
Georgina’s latest arrangement was only meant to be a stopgap while Annabel “sorted herself out,” though Edward had long suspected Annabel had no intention of being sorted out by anyone, least of all him.
She possessed, in spades, the kind of stubbornness that one could admire in an older woman like his wife but within a young girl, could only lead to disaster.
Edward blamed himself. He had, in a flurry of misguided and expensive decisions, attempted to compensate for Annabel’s fatherlessness by providing for her as best he could.
He’d found her tutors and then a finishing school.
She’d spent one term at the finishing school before being expelled for unladylike behavior.
Though the headmistress had been discreet, Edward heard tell of an incident with a groom, then another with the son of a local vicar.
His half-sister was, by all accounts, entirely unfinished and ill-prepared for the world. Still, Edward had believed she would be safe, as long as she remained under Georgina’s roof. He’d trusted that her mother’s constant vigilance would keep Annabel from straying too far.
They had both been foolish to believe Annabel’s behavior could change. Her running off to London in the arms of a criminally-minded boy was, quite naturally, the next step in Annabel’s rebellion.
Unfortunately for them.
“She won’t be dead,” Edward said firmly. “That boy will be keeping her safe.”
Georgina wrapped her arms about herself and Edward regretted his tones.
He didn’t know how to comfort her. He wished he could ask his mother to step in or even Beatrice.
They would know better how to comfort a distraught mother.
But Edward had been sworn to secrecy by his father and he wouldn’t hurt his mother nor expose Beatrice to such scandal—especially knowing what her own father had put her through.
“I’ll find her,” was all Edward could say before putting his hat back on. “Do not doubt me on that.”
She smiled slightly. “You remind me of your father.”
He rather hoped not. His father was a kind man but weak. The thought of lying to Beatrice and fathering a child with another woman left Edward feeling ill.
Yet, he was lying to her, almost every day at present. Lying about his whereabouts, pretending her doubts about him didn’t matter when they cut him to the core.
Two women. Both causing him grief. Both on the run from him.
Edward walked out of the dingy building, the scent of boiled cabbage clinging to his coat like a persistent ghost. The rain pressed down on his shoulders as if to remind him of the burdens he bore.
He couldn’t find Annabel. Not right this second.
Nor could he fix his slowly crumbling marriage.
At least, not without being honest with her.
Edward couldn’t shake the feeling that he was losing her, that with each passing day they were going past the point of no return and there would be no coming together as he had hoped the first day he’d met her.
He recalled her bright eyes and easy laugh and thinking that, if he was to be part of an arranged marriage, he most certainly wanted to be joined with her.
A pang of guilt speared through him as he waved at a nearby hack. He needed to take action. Do something other than sit in empty rooms waiting for one another. They needed to remember why they had both been so keen on this match. A sumptuous dinner perhaps. A night of glamor and music.
That was it. He’d leave her a note if she wasn’t home upon his return.
She’d wear her best dress and he his tailcoat and they’d brave the grim weather to spend time much like they had upon their introduction, under glittering chandeliers and with champagne in their hands, and they’d laugh together once more and recall why they thought this marriage would be a success after all.