Chapter Two
Letitia’s closest friend, Clarice, finally married Samuel Radcliff.
Watching them leave their wedding breakfast, with love and smiles radiating from their faces, made Letitia’s heart feel light and airy for the couple who had gone through the fires of hell to be together.
No two finer people deserved a fairytale life than they.
Once upon a time, Letitia thought she had the perfect marriage and life with Graham.
Yes, he was nearly thirty years older, but those years melted away over their five years together.
They had known each other only a fortnight when they’d recited their vows, yet Letitia had no trepidation or regrets about Graham.
At least not at the time they said their vows.
Reflecting on what she now knew, she should have noticed certain things.
Things like not attending many social functions despite numerous daily invitations or the fact that they never hosted an event.
His excessive time spent at his clubs. Or so he said, and she never once questioned him. Why would she?
Because her mother had married outside her social class, her family had few friends and received very few invitations when she was growing up.
Their happy family of three spent most of their time together, and because Letitia had married at eighteen, she didn’t know any better.
Only after she entered London society with Clarice by her side and spent time with the Duchess of Blackstone and Lady Langford did she understand that there was a whole other world out there that Graham had kept her from experiencing.
She rubbed the pain in her chest. The knowledge that he’d preferred the company of his mistress to hers still wounded her to this day.
Letitia still struggled to come to terms with the fact that Graham and his mistress had been together for ten years—as she discovered while going through his papers after his death—before she entered the picture, or rather, the relationship.
The night he died, when he confessed to her about his mistress and their children, was the first indication that he may have kept her secluded from society for a reason.
Or at the very least, wanted to spend most of his evenings with his mistress.
Or perhaps he was afraid she would hear whispers about him and his longtime mistress.
After his passing, she was suddenly overwhelmed by the extent of his deception.
Graham was gone, and there was nothing she could change about their marriage.
She had been young and innocent, and up until the night he died, she had been happy and in love.
Those memories were what she tried to live by, not the time he spent away from her with his mistress.
Not his lies. Deep down inside, she knew Graham had loved her in his own strange way.
Compared with many ladies of society, stuck in loveless marriages, she still believed she was fortunate.
She was deeply thankful to have married into the ton, even though her grandfather and her uncle were earls.
Neither had ever acknowledged her. Her mother had given up her birthright for love.
She sighed wistfully at the love her parents had shared, then realized everyone around the long rectangular table was standing and saying their goodbyes.
Goodness, how long had she been woolgathering?
“Letitia.” At the sound of Greyson’s deep voice, her heart pitter-pattered in her chest. He pulled her chair back and held out his large, bare hand, one eyebrow raised inquisitively. “May I escort you to your room?”
Warmth spread to her cheeks as she quickly grabbed her white lacy gloves from the table and slipped her bare hand into his.
When she stood, she wondered if he felt the same warmth she did when they touched.
He continued holding her hand as they made their way from the large private dining room through several public rooms and down the corridor to the ground floor guest rooms.
“Where did your lovely twin sisters go off to?” she asked as they paused outside the door to her room. She was stalling for time, not wanting her time alone with Greyson to end. Meeting Greyson had left Letitia’s world upside down and it still hadn’t righted itself. Nor did she want it to.
“Mr. Jacob Hunter is escorting Anastasia for a walk.”
Letitia couldn’t decipher whether he thought that was a good or a bad thing. Mr. Hunter was one of his closest friends, along with Stanton.
“Do you approve?” she asked as she removed her room key from her reticule.
“Hunter is one of the best gentlemen I know. He’s known Anastasia his entire life. It’ll take time to get used to seeing them together and courting. Although I think I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps it is nothing but friendship.”
“Hmmm.” She didn’t think so, given the way Hunter looked at Anastasia when he thought no one was watching.
As for what Anastasia thought, that was a mystery.
She was a handful, vivacious and friendly to everyone, making it difficult to tell where her heart lay.
Letitia was the opposite of Anastasia, as she’d never learned to school her features from showing every emotion.
She would be a terrible card player. That is, if she ever learned to play.
“What about Lady Aurora?”
He coughed into his hand. “Viscount Haddington—excuse me, the Earl of Warren. His father recently passed, and he inherited the title. He is taking her for a stroll through the inn’s gardens.”
“I met him for the first time today,” she said with a smile, trying to put Greyson at ease. “He’s very tall. He seems quite taken with Lady Aurora, talking mostly to her throughout the wedding breakfast.”
“Yes, he did. I’m still trying to find the connection to either Clarice or Stanton that explains why he was in attendance.”
“Does it matter as long as he’s a fine gentleman with a good reputation and worthy of her?”
He shook his head. “I suppose not. When are you traveling back to London?”
“Tomorrow.” To her utter regret, she knew Greyson would be staying in Newmarket for the time being, as Stanton’s horses had more races coming up.
Letitia’s insides were torn between wanting and needing to see her son, Simon, and craving more of Greyson’s company.
Her greatest fear was that if too much time passed before they saw each other again, things would change, that the easy, comfortable way of their friendship would somehow be tainted and lost. She was afraid everything they shared was too good and wouldn’t sustain the distance of miles and time.
He held out his hand. “Allow me.”
Realizing she still held her room key, she placed it in his hand.
Once he unlocked the door and swung it open, he stepped back. He pivoted, took her hand, and brought it to his lips as he dipped his head, his intense dark-green eyes never leaving her face. “Until next time.” His warm lips brushed her bare fingers, and she shivered.
He winked as he released her hand, then turned and walked away.
She stayed in the open doorway, watching him casually stroll down the corridor while whistling.
When she could no longer see or hear him, she closed the door, leaned against it, and sighed deeply.
Closing her eyes and picturing his handsome face smiling at her, she whispered, “I believe he still holds my heart.”
Her mind wandered to the night they first met at the Westport ball.
She was standing with Clarice when her spine tingled with awareness.
Her curiosity got the better of her, and her eyes roamed the room once, then twice.
Then it happened. Intense green eyes locked with hers, and she couldn’t look away.
The floor tilted beneath her feet, and her breathing grew labored.
All from the powerful glance of a handsome stranger with deep-green eyes.
His mouth quirked into a grin that made her insides warm. The warmth didn’t last long when she noticed he had a beautiful young lady on each arm.
All night, she kept an eye out for the handsome stranger who intrigued her, hoping he would ask the Master of Ceremonies to make an introduction.
It never happened, and she chastised herself for reading too much into the glance they’d shared.
Perhaps he knew she was a widow and was only looking for a dalliance.
That was one of her greatest fears—that the gentlemen of the ton would like her only for their bed and that she would never experience love or be loved truly and solely.
Her fear was being seen as nothing but a widow—the Marquess of Rutherford’s used goods.
Why would anyone want to marry her and help her raise someone else’s heir?
For the rest of the ball, her heart hung heavy in her chest, and she pretended to enjoy herself among her friends, Clarice, Emmeline, and Lilly, even though all she really wanted to do was go home and cry herself to sleep.
Fate had other plans.
As she and Clarice were leaving, she came face-to-face with the green-eyed devil himself, and this time it wasn’t just the floor that tilted. Her entire world changed when their eyes met, making her experience things she didn’t know existed.
Clarice introduced her to Viscount Greyson, and she somehow managed to go through the proper formalities while they smiled at each other, their eyes never breaking contact. The warmth filling her veins and the fire scorching her cheeks lasted an hour if she remembered correctly.
Then Greyson introduced her to the young ladies with him, and she felt silly and embarrassed when she learned they were his twin sisters, and later she had trouble sleeping as deep-green eyes intruded on her dreams.
When she went to bed that night, at the Red Lion Inn, she rolled onto her side and hugged herself, knowing those same green eyes would interrupt her dreams that night. And sure enough, she tossed and turned many times, feeling the intensity of those eyes penetrating straight into her soul.