Chapter 18
Vaughn hadn’t had a good night and this morning he felt it as he rode across town for his meeting with Florence. He hadn’t slept, tossing and turning. But it hadn’t been his wife and whatever they would discuss that haunted him.
No, it had been Evie. Her words about ending their plot. The way she’d looked when she walked away from his parlor and, he feared, his life. He had dreamed of the same. Of trying to catch her and having her forever out of reach instead.
So now he felt bleary-eyed and tense as he reached the home where Florence had been staying and swung down from his horse to stare up at the place.
Any time he’d ridden by in the past, it had been in the night, creeping around like some obsessed schoolboy and hoping his shame wouldn’t be observed and revealed.
In the light, the home was very pretty. Small, but fashionable. And it had once been Evelina’s. A place she’d believed she’d live out the rest of her days, protected by the duke.
Anger stirred in Vaughn’s chest and he tamped it down as he made his way to the painted blue door and knocked. A butler greeted him and he was taken down the hallway to a parlor.
He didn’t think he’d ever come here during the time Evie had lived here as Southwater’s mistress, but he was certain most of the sophisticated style of the place was hers.
The pretty, comfortable-looking furniture, the understated paintings and wallpaper, none of that felt like an addition Florence would make to a place.
No, she’d always wanted to make rooms more startling in their display of the wealth behind them.
Decorating and entertaining had been the way for her to show off.
And so now she benefitted from Evie’s style. Once again that anger rose up, not for himself, but for everything that had been stolen from her.
“Vaughn.”
He started and turned to find Florence already three steps into the room. He’d been so tangled up in his thoughts about Evie that he hadn’t heard her enter.
He hadn’t been this close to his wife in a while and took a fraction of a moment to examine her. She was lovely, with all that perfectly arranged blonde hair and the expensively designed dress. One he’d always complimented her on, he noted.
But today he felt…nothing as he looked at her. No attraction. No frustration. No anger. Oddly, no pain.
Just nothing.
He inclined his head. “My lady.”
“Are we so formal now, Vaughn?” she asked softly, moving even closer.
“Mustn’t we be?” he asked, and meant the question. “After all, in a fortnight’s time you won’t be my wife. You’ll be a stranger.”
Her eyes fluttered shut. A little dramatically, he thought, and she lifted a hand to her chest as if that statement caused her pain. “Oh, Vaughn.”
“‘Oh, Vaughn?’” he repeated on a humorless laugh. “It was your request that has brought us to this outcome.”
Her gaze came back open and there was annoyance in her expression now. Apparently she had hoped for a different reaction. She shifted and folded her arms. “Well, you cannot pretend you aren’t happy with it. After all, you haven’t hidden her, have you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He said the words and waited for some triumph to come, as it had when Evie said that Florence and Southwater had been shunned. Only it didn’t. This was the culmination of all their plans, wasn’t it? It was hard to recall in that moment.
“Evelina Comerford.” Ice clung to every syllable Florence said. “Harry’s former whore.”
He didn’t like the way she drew out Evelina’s name or looked disgusted by having to say it. He didn’t like that she had taken over Evelina’s house or life. He didn’t like that she used a word meant to disparage to describe her.
He moved toward her a step. “I’ve nothing to say to you about her. You lost your right at being pained by her existence long before you slept with my best friend.”
She recoiled at that and at least she had the decency to blush a little at the implication of her unfaithfulness. All those other men, all those other lies, all those other humiliations. “You hate me.”
He pondered those words. Not long ago, he would have had a knee-jerk reaction to them. He would have burst out yes and meant it.
“I…I did,” he admitted. “For a while I did.”
“And so you decided to be so public with a courtesan?” she asked. “To try to humiliate both of us by making a spectacle with Harry’s leavings? To turn everyone against us?”
Ah, and there it was. Just as he’d thought, this entire interaction was inspired by the shunning. She blamed him, or at least thought that she might be able to turn him to her will so he might do…what? Protect her? Change the tide? As if he had any ability to do that.
“You turned everyone against you all by yourself and through your own shocking behavior,” he said.
“But perhaps that was the only way. I realize now that you were very much forced into our life together.” He blinked as he thought of Evelina and her quiet acceptance and strength in the face of a far more painful lack of choices.
“But this new path is the one you want, so perhaps you’ll be happy now.
Settled. But I don’t know what else I could say or do about it now to satisfy you if I couldn’t do so as your husband.
Whatever happens in your future will have nothing to do with me. ”
She seemed utterly shocked at how he detached himself from her choices.
That he didn’t take the bait of offering to help her or take some blame for what had happened.
He realized she’d always done that. She would blow up and pout and demand and he had always tried to give her what she wanted.
What she said would make her happy at last.
Now that he no longer cared enough to do that, she was beginning to realize she had no power over him. And so was he, truth be told.
“So you don’t care if I’m harmed,” she said. “But do you not think I could harm you? Harm her?”
He arched a brow. “I think if you try to harm her, you’ll only come out looking the fool. And you’ll have to acknowledge her publicly somehow. Something you would see as a reduction. As for me…” He sighed. “What else could there possibly be to do, Florence?”
She glared at him. “We’re going to have children,” she snapped. “The ones I never wanted with you!”
He swallowed as those words hit him like a punch that was perfectly thrown.
For a moment his ears rang and his chest hurt.
Just as he’d told Evie, he had wanted children very much.
The fact that they’d never come in the course of his marriage had been an undeniable heartbreak.
Now, though, he was just as happy, for it would have further complicated an already difficult situation.
It might have even kept him from allowing Florence the break in the marriage that she demanded.
It would have kept him from Evelina.
“Are you saying you are pregnant?” he asked.
She shifted and her gaze flitted down. “N-no. We thought I might be, but then it wasn’t right.”
He caught his breath as further understanding dawned.
“And that was why you and Southwater went public with your affair and his intention to marry you. Why he rushed this divorce forward suddenly. So that you could claim this child as his legitimate heir rather than some remnant of me, even though we hadn’t touched in months, almost a year. ”
She didn’t answer that charge verbally, though her flaming cheeks told him everything he needed to know.
Perhaps that was part of the argument between them now, too.
Southwater realized there was no child. He had exposed himself to scandal for nothing.
He might even have believed Florence had manipulated the situation.
God knew, she might have.
“He will have his heir,” she said, voice trembling.
“Good.” He nodded. “Perhaps it will settle you both. Bond you in a way we never were. Perhaps you will finally stop trying to find happiness everywhere but where you actually stand. I would want that for you, just as I want it for myself.”
“If you truly wish to make me happy, then stop flaunting that woman all over London.”
She moved closer and batted her lashes up at him. His head was spinning from these ever-changing attempts she was making to bend him to her will. As if she realized all her games were fruitless now but she still wanted to find some new way to win.
But there wasn’t one.
“I won’t,” he said. “I will never again try to live my life in a way that will please you, my lady. Nor will I live it to harm you. You no longer matter enough to me to count you as any part of my future. I leave you to your own choices at last. And wish you as well as I can manage.”
Her breath came short and harsh. “I despise you!” she screeched.
“Then it’s good you won’t be linked to me for much longer.” He inclined his head. “If that is all—”
“Vaughn, I demand you listen!”
He backed away. “Goodbye, Florence. At last, it is goodbye.”
He turned and made his way to the parlor door.
Just as he reached it, a glass figurine that had been perched on the fireplace mantel flew past him and smashed against the doorjamb.
He held up a hand to prevent the scattering glass from hitting his face and drew in a breath as he faced the mess in the open doorway.
Somehow this last burst of violent frustration erased what was left of his own. He said nothing, gave nothing, and left her without looking back.
In the foyer, the butler offered to have his horse brought, but he waved the man off and walked down to the stable to retrieve the animal himself. He needed to get out of this place, to leave the past behind at last. To let everything change in this moment.
And as it did, he realized the only person he wished to see was Evie. And so he rode toward her house and what he hoped might be a new start, even if he had no idea what kind of future that change might bring.
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