Chapter 12
Lord Hampshire and Nora had walked for some time without speaking, their steps falling into the easy rhythm of two people who had once known each other’s pace by instinct and who, despite everything, still did.
The path curved away from the main promenade and into a quieter stretch where the chestnuts grew thick, their broad leaves knitting together overhead until the light that filtered through was green and soft, stippled with shadows.
He had sent word to her that morning, and she had come.
He stopped near a bench beneath the largest tree but did not sit. Neither did she. They stood facing each other on the path, the afternoon settling quietly around them — the distant murmur of the park, the creak of a branch, the dry rustle of last year’s husks beneath their feet.
Hampshire’s expression was grave, the tension showing in the set of his jaw, the way his fingers flexed at his sides.
“I must tell you what I have discovered, Nora.” His voice was hoarse with the weight of it. “I went to the solicitors, as you urged me to. I searched for the codicil — the one my uncle swore he had written.”
Her heart stilled. “And?”
“There is no codicil.”
For a few moments, Nora could only stare at him, his words making very little sense to her.
Lord Hampshire let out air between his teeth, dropping his head forward. “I did not ever tell you this, did I? My uncle informed me that there was a codicil attached to his will.”
“You…” Her thoughts crashed together. “You told me that your uncle had threatened to remove all fortune and dowry from Frederica, should you refuse to marry her.”
“Indeed, that is so. He stated that he had written a codicil to add to his will, spoke of it as if it had already been done.”
A crashing wave of dizziness washed over her, and she put out one hand to the trunk of the tree to steady herself. “You have discovered there is nothing there.”
“Indeed.” His voice cracked. “My uncle must have lied to me on that matter, Nora. I do not know why he would do such a thing. But I believed that this codicil was in place, and if I did not do as he asked, then Frederica would lose not only her fortune and her dowry but, because of that, her place in society would be gone from her also.” His hand settled on hers for a moment.
“It was never required, Nora. It was never demanded of me. I am not bound to her, as I thought. I am not required by duty and mandate to marry her.”
Nora pressed one trembling hand to her mouth. “I do not understand,” she whispered, her hand falling back to her side, only to be caught by Lord Hampshire’s again.
“Why would he do such a thing?”
“I have not yet found an answer to that.” Lord Hampshire shook his head. “He spoke to me urgently, demanding that I wed Frederica and using the codicil as a means to manipulate me into doing so. I do not understand why he would think to do such a thing.”
The surprise began to fade, relief now swamping her.
“You say he spoke urgently, yes?” she asked, hoping that her thoughts would quieten his upset and sorrow even a little.
“What if he had reason to demand that of you, but that reason came on that very same day? What if he intended to write the codicil, but his ill health prevented him from fulfilling that intention? It could be that he was afraid for his daughter in some way, desperate for her to marry well, and the only way he could think of that being achieved was to force your hand.”
Lord Hampshire smiled sorrowfully. “It is a consideration and a far gentler, kinder one than I have within my mind,” he admitted, his hand still on hers.
“Nora, I — I need you to know that none of this was what I wanted. Not one day of it.” His voice was rough, stripped of its usual care.
He did not say the word love. He did not need to.
It was in the way he held her hand — not grasping, but open, as if giving her the choice to stay or go — and in the way his thumb traced a single, slow line across her knuckles, as though he were memorizing the feel of her.
“I know.” Her eyes stung. “I thought we were lost to each other for the rest of our days.”
“There is hope, then,” she said after a moment, and her voice was very small. “A real and true hope.”
“More than hope.” He took her hand fully in his — a deliberate act this time, no accident of a bookshop shelf, no courtesy of a ballroom — and they both knew it.
His fingers closed around hers and held, his thumb pressing against the back of her hand with a steadiness that was at odds with the pulse hammering at his wrist. “There is a promise, Nora. A promise that I intend to discover the truth behind my uncle’s actions and, from that, to step away from Frederica and towards you. ”
Her heart swelled painfully, joy blooming with such haste and such strength that it was barely able to be contained. “What will you do?” Her resolve began to build with every passing second. “Might I be able to join you in your endeavours? I will do whatever I must to aid you in this.”
Lord Hampshire nodded slowly, taking in a slow breath as he looked about the grounds, making certain that no one was drawing near.
“Yes. But first, I must speak to Frederica. I must discover what it is that she knows of this.” He grimaced lightly and shrugged.
“It may be that she knows nothing at all, that this will be an even greater shock to her than it was to me. She deserves clarity as much as I do. I pray, however, that she will be glad to be given the opportunity for freedom and to make her own choice in this.”
Nora’s eyes stung at the gentleness with which he spoke.
“Of course.”
He pressed his lips together. “Might you be willing to join me for that conversation?”
Emotion surged up her throat, stealing her words from her.
“I think it would be best if you were present, so she can understand our connection from the beginning, the reason why I have found the engagement so very difficult. I have never spoken to her of it — of you — and I do not know if her father ever did. I think it would bring her comfort to have you present.” With a gentle press of her hands, he released her.
“You are always so very considerate, Nora. You will be able to encourage her also in this, I am sure.”
“If you wish me to be with you, then I will be glad to attend,” she answered, her happiness pushing against her own concern as to what Frederica might say to all of this. “Might I ask you something, Hampshire?”
He nodded, his hazel eyes no longer as dark with anguish as they had been before. “Of course.”
“If she begs you to keep your engagement, if she asks you to honour your duty and your agreement with her father, then what will you say?”
Lord Hampshire said nothing for a long moment, gazing into her eyes with a steadiness that gave her the answer long before he spoke.
Then, he took her hand in his again and settled his free hand over their joined ones, clasping hers between his own.
“My darling Nora,” he said, making her heart lift with the tenderness with which he spoke her name, “I will tell her with the greatest gentleness and compassion that my heart belongs solely to you and that I must honour the love we share over any sense of duty. I will not abandon her, I will assure her that my duty to find her a suitable husband still remains, but I will not linger on as her betrothed.”
A gentle curve of his lips sent warmth into his eyes.
She looked up at him, the open, unguarded want that she had held behind walls for a year undoing something in his chest that he had not known was fastened.
Her lips were slightly parted, her breathing uneven, and the green light through the leaves threw soft shadows across her face that moved and shifted like living things.
He lifted his free hand. His fingers found her chin, tilting her face upward — gently, slowly, as if she were made of something that might break. She did not pull away. Her eyes held his, and in them he saw permission — tentative, uncertain, but real.
He leaned toward her. The distance between them narrowed to inches. He could feel the warmth of her breath against his mouth, could see the slight flutter of her lashes as her eyes began to close —
“Hampshire! I say, Hampshire!”
The voice shattered the silence like a stone through glass.
They sprang apart — her hand falling from his, his arm dropping to his side — with the speed and guilt of two people who had been caught at something they could not yet claim as their right.
David turned, his pulse hammering, to see a round-faced gentleman approaching along the path with the oblivious enthusiasm of someone entirely unaware that he had just destroyed something fragile and irreplaceable.
“Petersham,” David said, and the name came out on a hard exhale.
He forced a smile that cost him more than it should have.
Lord Petersham beamed at them both, evidently delighted by the coincidence.
“Wonderful to see you out! Did you hear about Chelmsford’s new horse?
The most magnificent creature I have ever seen, sixteen hands if she’s an inch —”
David listened. Or rather, he stood in the approximate posture of a man listening while every nerve in his body strained toward the woman standing three paces to his left, who had turned her face away to compose herself, one hand pressed to her cheek.
When Petersham finally took his leave — his monologue on horseback riding completed to his satisfaction — David turned to Nora. She was looking at the chestnut tree, her hand still at her face, and when she felt his gaze, she lowered it.
“A kiss most certainly worth waiting for,” she murmured, and despite everything — despite the frustration and the ache — he laughed. The sound surprised them both.
The coffee house on Threadneedle Street was the kind of establishment that had once been respectable and was now merely surviving — its windows fogged with grease, its benches scarred by a decade of elbows and spilled porter.
David had not intended to stop there. He had been walking from Bolton’s offices, his thoughts still churning over the missing codicil, when a voice from within had arrested him mid-stride.
He knew that voice.
Through the clouded glass, he could just make out the stocky figure of Rathbone seated at a corner table, a sheaf of papers spread before him and a tankard at his elbow.
Opposite him sat a thin man David did not recognize — a clerk or associate of some kind, perched at the edge of his seat as if he would have preferred to be sitting elsewhere entirely.
David stepped into the doorway of the neighbouring shop and listened. The fog of conversation and clinking crockery made it difficult, but Rathbone’s voice carried — it had the quality of a man who had spent a lifetime making certain he would be heard.
“...twelve years I gave him. Twelve years of work no solicitor with half a conscience would have touched, and he knew that. He knew what he was asking, and he promised — he promised —” Rathbone’s fist came down on the table, making the tankard jump.
The thin man flinched. “Land. Coin. A fair settlement. Nothing extravagant, nothing more than what any man would expect for services rendered.”
The thin man murmured something David could not hear.
“He changed his mind.” Rathbone’s voice went quiet — not calm, but compressed, as if the anger had been forced into a smaller and more dangerous shape.
“The moment the coughing started, the moment he saw his own death coming for him, he decided I was an inconvenience. Dismissed me through Bolton without even the courtesy of a conversation. Twelve years, Marsh. A man does not give twelve years of his life and walk away with nothing.”
He picked up his tankard and drank, and when he set it down, his hand was trembling. Not with weakness — with fury.
“I will have what I am owed,” he said, and the certainty in his voice was absolute. “Every last penny of it. If the nephew will not honour his uncle’s word, then I will find other means. I have always found other means.”
David pressed his back against the shopfront, his pulse thick in his ears.
There had been something in Rathbone’s voice that unsettled him more than the threats, more than the barely contained violence of his fist on the table.
It was conviction. The man believed — truly, unshakeably believed — that he had been wronged.
That what he was doing was not villainy but justice.
It made him more dangerous than David had imagined.