Chapter 1
One Month Later
In the end, Evelina didn’t require the time Harry had granted her to move out of the home he’d gifted her.
No, that wasn’t right. He hadn’t gifted it to her because a gift couldn’t be snatched away like her home and life had been.
Every time that thought passed through her mind, Evelina tasted bitterness on her tongue and felt the same rush of pain and humiliation and anger as she had that first night when he’d ended things.
Still, by the time that last day had passed, Evelina had already been comfortably settled in the home Arabella had been truly gifted by a protector years and years ago.
Her sister and brother-in-law no longer lived there.
After their recent marriage, they’d started over in a beautiful new home just half a mile farther into the city, so Evelina had the place to herself.
She had hardly left the confines of her chamber since coming there.
She couldn’t bear to do so. The idea of wandering around London, pretending all was well?
Bumping into friends who would look at her with interest and pity?
Potentially even seeing Harry for the first time and finding not love or affection in his stare but… nothingness?
Impossible.
And even if she had been strong enough of character to endure those things, she felt physically weak at present. She only wished to sleep and cry and revisit every moment of her relationship with Harry as if she could find the one scrap of time together that had caused the unexpected break.
She had been pacing her chamber with these thoughts and flopped back on the bed at last, resting her forearm across her eyes as she let out a shuddering sigh.
“Why?” she whispered, just as she had been whispering through every moment, every dream, every nightmare.
There was a light knock on her door and she lifted her arm. “Yes?”
When it opened, Julia stepped in. Her younger sister had moved out of Arabella’s house at just about the same time that Evelina had moved in.
She’d made a match with a new protector and was settling into life as the mistress of…
God, what was he? An earl or a viscount or something?
He never came around, so it was hard to make a measure of him or even create a memory strong enough to recall any facts about him.
“Julia,” she said, and tried to force a smile so her sister wouldn’t give her the same worried and pitying look that both her siblings seemed to have permanently ready to flash across their lovely faces.
“Dearest,” Julia said, and entered. She crossed to Evelina and sat beside her on the bed, enveloping her in the kind of hug one gave someone with a terrible illness or a broken bone.
Sometimes the situation did feel so dire.
“What are you doing here? I thought you’d be flitting about with your new protector.”
“Laurence was busy with his cousin this evening,” Julia said with a slightly sour look to her expression. “Alexander Castleton doesn’t approve of me, I suppose. Gives me the most irritated looks when he deigns to look at me at all.”
“Castleton!” Evelina said. “Viscount Laurence Castleton. I couldn’t recall his name.”
Julia gave her a playful glare. “I hope you’ll have a great deal of time to learn it. At any rate, I was free and longed to see you. Not just see you, I so want to go out with you.”
Evelina let out her breath in a little huff. “Oh, good Lord. Has Arabella sent you here to perform charity work? Did you two draw straws for who would have to beg me to go out and then ferry me around while I looked ghostly and tragic?”
“Of course not, you’ve been reading too many novels,” Julia said, folding her arms. But her sweet sister had never been very good at covering her emotions and it was evident Evelina had struck close to the truth.
She rolled her eyes when Evelina arched a brow at her.
“We did discuss that one of us should approach you with this idea. Arabella thought you’d use Silas as an excuse against her, so I volunteered most enthusiastically. ”
“Silas as an excuse?” Evelina said. “What does that mean?”
She truly adored Arabella’s new husband.
He was devilishly handsome, quick to laugh, entirely wicked and also completely devoted to her sister.
Plus, he had been nothing but kind to Evelina since the end of her relationship.
He’d helped whenever he was needed and treated her with nothing but care.
He’d even made her laugh a few times when all she wanted to do was cry. How could one not adore him?
“Oh, Arabella says that anytime she tries to push you, you tell her to go spend time with Silas. You tell her she’s a newlywed and ought to still be wearing out every piece of furniture in that big new house of theirs.”
Evelina pursed her lips. “Well. I’m correct on that score. She really should be enjoying her marriage, not worrying about her silly sister who should have known better than to trust the promises of a protector.”
Julia’s expression softened and she covered Evelina’s hand. “Oh, Evie. That wasn’t your failing, but his. He never should have made those promises if he didn’t intend to keep them.”
“We don’t need to talk about it in circles all over again, everyone must be getting tired of it.” Evelina withdrew her hand and got up to pace to the window. “I truly don’t wish to go out.”
Julia frowned. “Please.” She moved to the window, as well and reached up to brush some hair away from Evelina’s forehead. “Come on, lovie, it’s just you and me, isn’t it? I miss spending time with you. I miss laughing with you. Please, won’t you come with me and go gaming at Flynn’s?”
Evelina shut her eyes with a long sigh. This was the last thing she wanted, but she’d very rarely been able to deny her sweet baby sister.
Julia knew exactly how to bat her eyelashes and get what she wanted.
And she’d picked the location of her request well, too.
Harry hadn’t ever liked Flynn’s and had only gone there when Evelina dragged him.
It was almost impossible that he would be there now.
“Oh, very well,” she said with a shake of her head as Julia clapped her hands in delight. “I suppose the longer I stay locked up in my sad little dungeon, the harder it will ever be to return to the world. Might as well face the whispers now and start anew.”
Julia squeezed her hands. “We are going to make you look so beautiful that no one will whisper about anything except how glorious you are. Come, I’ll ring the bell and we’ll pick a gown.
I’d say either the blue with the silver roping or that pink thing that makes men drool when they look at your cleavage. ”
Her sister rushed across the room to ring for Deborah and Evelina found herself laughing, though it sounded rusty, indeed. She didn’t want to go out, but perhaps her sister was correct. Perhaps it was what she actually needed.
And it was happening either way. So she might as well make the best of it.
* * *
The last six months of the Earl of Blackburn’s life had been a living nightmare.
Divorce was almost unheard of in any class, but certainly not often in the Upper Ten Thousand.
And yet that was what Vaughn was enduring, first in private and now in scandalized and gossiping public.
His wife of five years, Florence, had demanded the official divorce and the more he’d uncovered about her behavior behind his back, the more he’d realized this was truly the only way.
Those facts didn’t reduce the humiliation when he went out in public and all eyes followed him.
Even here in Flynn’s gambling hell where everyone was usually doing something worth talking about, he felt them watching him, heard his name flicker by on the wind. Wife. Divorce. Affair.
Vaughn downed his second drink in less than twenty minutes and let the burn of the whisky recenter him.
That was the idea, anyway, but it didn’t work.
His mind kept spinning, kept taking him to dark places.
Dark feelings. He hated everything and everyone, including himself.
Perhaps mostly himself. What he wanted most was to lock himself away like some beast in a fairytale and never come out again.
He was well on the way to that end, given that whenever anyone came close, he found himself growling and snapping.
He never should have come out. And he was preparing to down yet another drink and then head back to his home and its drawn curtains when he saw a woman enter the hell.
Evelina Comerford. Seeing her made the sting in his chest even worse, considering what he now knew about the end of his marriage. But he didn’t blame Evelina for that. He’d always liked the pretty courtesan, with her gentle disposition and bright laugh.
As always, she stood out. She was wearing a bright pink frock that was dangerously low cut with paste jewels in a tantalizing trail along the midline.
Her dark hair was spun up in soft curls that trailed artfully along her very bare shoulders.
But her face…he saw the pain in her face even though she tried to hide it. A pain very like his own.
She was with her younger sister, Julia Comerford, another of the infamous Comerford Courtesans, a group which included Evelina’s oldest sister, Arabella.
Though, one could hardly call her a courtesan anymore.
She’d recently married Silas Windham, who Vaughn had known vaguely in school and liked well enough.
Evelina looked around the room for a moment, her lips pursed as if she were troubled.
He understood that better than most. Then her gaze caught his and she gave a little smile and a tiny wave.
She said something to her sister and then began across the room toward him.
He was rather shocked she was doing so when it would only cause more talk, especially given the last twenty-four hours.