Chapter 2
Vaughn sat in his study the next morning, staring at the state of his desk.
He’d always been a tidy person, taking care of his duties as swiftly as he could and immediately filing or discarding the papers that went along with them.
But in the last six months, that had changed, along with every other part of his life.
His desk was piled with papers now, almost all to do with his divorce.
There were so many parts to the complicated act of severing a marriage so that it no longer existed.
So many disapproving and demanding people to respond to so that he could receive permission from church and sovereign and family to pretend as though he and Florence had not spent five years as man and wife.
It was an expensive endeavor, as well. He sometimes felt he was bleeding money. He supposed that was part of how the world discouraged such a scandalous act. Make it impossible financially, socially and even physically.
There was a rumble of thunder that shook the windows and Vaughn started as he looked up.
He hadn’t even realized it had started raining.
Well, it was appropriate. The gloomy dark clouds fit the tumultuous emotions in his heart.
And a raincloud tended to ruin everyone else’s day, too, so that also seemed to match his current situation.
He thought, and not for the first time, of Evelina Comerford at the hell the night before.
Her expression when he revealed the truth about Southwater had been…
broken, even if she called Vaughn a liar and stormed out.
He’d hurt her, and it would only hurt more when she realized he was right.
It gave him no pleasure that he’d been the one to tear her last vestiges of belief about Harry down.
He’d always liked Evelina. She had only ever been kind and bright all the times he spoken to her over the years when she’d been his former best friend’s lover.
“Bollocks,” he muttered to himself. It seemed all he could do lately was destroy.
There was a light knock on the door and he looked up as his butler cracked the door. He hesitated there and Vaughn could hardly blame him. He’d been such a grumbling ogre lately that all the staff avoided him, which was even more proof of his wretchedness.
“Yes, Langley?” he said, trying to sound warmer than he had lately.
“I beg your pardon, my lord, but you have a visitor.” He extended a card as Vaughn got up and came around the desk to receive it.
Evelina Comerford
The card was a scrawl of delicate filigree and gold leafing that made up the swirls of her name. He found himself tracing those peaks and valleys with his fingernail.
“She…she’s here?” he asked in shock. Since he’d just been thinking of the woman, it almost felt as if he’d conjured her.
“Yes, my lord. I would have sent her away as you’ve requested to be done to all visitors in the last few months, but the lady was very insistent. She has put herself on one of the benches in the foyer and refuses to leave. What should I do?”
Vaughn let out a shaky breath. He’d thought Evelina wouldn’t wish to see him again after the last encounter that weighed so heavily on his mind, but it seemed he was wrong. He could only imagine why. Did she wish to share the pain of her betrayal with another person? He could hardly manage his own.
But then again, he had been at least part of the cause of her hurt, so he should do the gentlemanly thing and see her.
“Tell the lady that I’m in residence. And take her to the blue parlor.” He hesitated and wrinkled his brow. “Is the blue parlor ready for guests?”
He’d closed up so many rooms in this big house lately, but Langley inclined his head. “Indeed, it is the parlor we keep prepared for unexpected arrivals and to receive…er…”
“Solicitors and representatives of the church who come to demand penance and pennies?” Vaughn couldn’t control the bitterness in his tone now. “Yes. Good then. The blue parlor. Oh, and offer her refreshments. I’ll join her shortly. Thank you.”
“Very good.” The butler executed a small bow, then exited the room, closing Vaughn back into his solitude. He paced to the window, staring out at the rain and then back to the fire. He repeated that path a few times as he tried to calm himself without success.
Why had Evelina come here? Was it to shout at him again? Or perhaps to give him news about their erstwhile lovers? Or did she want to blame him for what had happened now that she understood it? God knew he did that often enough to himself.
“Bollocks!” he repeated, only this time louder.
He looked at himself in the mirror above the fireplace and smoothed his hair, straightened his waistcoat.
He wasn’t wearing his jacket, though he didn’t recall taking it off.
He glanced around but didn’t find it, so he left his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and forced himself to leave the relative safety of his study and head down to the blue parlor to meet his guest.
When he entered the chamber, he found her at the fire, staring into the flames with a deep frown on her face. As he closed the door, she started and turned fully toward him.
She was lovely, even with distress on every line of her face.
Not as flashy as she had been last night at the hell when she wore her full regalia as a courtesan, but still alluring.
Although, as he stepped toward her, he could see that she’d been crying.
Her brown eyes were red-rimmed and a little puffy.
He flinched at the evidence of her heartbreak.
“Miss Comerford,” he said.
This time she didn’t correct him and ask that he continue to call her Evelina. She only inclined her head. “My lord.”
“I-I wasn’t expecting you,” he said, and motioned to the chairs before the fire. He glanced over and saw the sideboard was empty. “Didn’t they bring you tea?”
“Your butler offered, but I refused.”
That she would refuse his hospitality didn’t bode well. “I see. Please, won’t you sit?”
He motioned again to the chairs and this time she moved to take one. He sat in the other and for a moment they just stared at each other. Her expression was unreadable, he hoped his was the same.
She folded and unfolded her hands in her lap for what felt like forever before she finally drew in a shaky breath and then said, “I-I know you weren’t expecting me. Probably you didn’t want to see me after my outburst last night.”
“I felt no such thing,” he said, and found that the politeness wasn’t entirely false.
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken, as if she feared to stop talking or else she might lose her nerve. “Either way, it was very rude of me to not send word ahead.”
She stopped and her fingers continued to clench and unclench in her lap as she inched to the front of her chair. She seemed to struggle with what to do or say next, with how to approach this untenable situation.
The thunder rumbled again, even louder than it had been in his study and she jumped.
He met her stare, hoping to soothe her a little. “Please, I can see your struggle. What can I do for you, Miss Comerford?”
“Oh.” She sighed. “I was so shocked last night when you told me what you think Harry has done.”
“I don’t think it, I know it,” he said.
She stiffened. “Yes, I believe you think you do. But it seems so outrageous. You two were so close. He would never—”
Vaughn refused to listen to such a defense of his former friend and interrupted. “And yet he did.”
She shifted, her cheeks pinkening, and he could see she was getting upset again. The flush to her cheeks and flash to her eyes revealed both hurt and anger. She was truly lovely in both, though he never would have wished to see her so broken.
“I can see how you would be upset because of the divorce,” she said carefully. “Such a thing must be so shocking and horrible. But to accuse your friend…”
He folded his arms. “And what would it take for you to believe it, Evelina?”
She stopped short and opened and shut her mouth a few times. “I-I don’t know.”
He thought for a moment, his mind going over and over things that he often drank away, tried to forget. Things that had seared the truth into his mind so he could no longer deny the truth as she was trying to do.
He pursed his lips. “Would seeing them together help? At your old home?”
Her mouth dropped open. “My old home? The one Harry let for me? No, he let that go after I moved out. He…he…”
“He kept it,” Vaughn said softly. “And moved my wife into it last week, apparently. It is where he will keep her until he can make her duchess.”
Her lower lip trembled slightly as she swallowed. “My—my little house?”
He nodded, though the smallness of her voice was so broken that he wanted to turn away from it. “Yes, I’m afraid so. I can take you there now if you’d like. I’d wager they’re together. They’ve hardly been anywhere else if my sources are to be believed.”
She didn’t respond for a moment. He could see her fighting with herself, fighting the desire to know the truth versus the protective instinct to keep it away as long as possible. But at last she nodded. “Yes.”
He stood. “Then I’ll arrange for my carriage to be readied. I’ll return shortly.”
He left her, forcing himself not to look back at her.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t. He knew she was shrinking into herself.
He knew even more that what he was doing was wrong.
That it was certainly not his finest hour, to drag this poor woman to the proof of her betrayal so that… what? That he’d have a partner in pain?
And yet he didn’t stop himself as he called for Langley to ready his carriage for the journey ahead.
* * *
Evelina had to focus on the act of breathing for it no longer seemed automatic. In and out, slow and steady so she didn’t lose consciousness as she sat across from Blackburn in his fine carriage rushing across the city toward…