Chapter Three
Milbury eyed Gwendolyn intently. “What situation?”
Gwendolyn was surprised Fiona had not spilled everything there was to tell about her when first recommending her services to him. She had never considered that her friend would respect her privacy, especially since this was no secret. “Um… I thought for sure Fiona would have mentioned…”
Well, where was the harm in his learning more about her? He needed to trust her, and that would not happen unless there was complete honesty between them.
“What should Fiona have told me about you?” he asked, frowning.
She did not think he was annoyed with her for concealing her history. In truth, there was nothing scandalous or improper to hide. “I assure you, Milbury, there is nothing sinister in my past. What has Fiona said about me?”
“That you were kind and clever, an excellent judge of people. This was why she recommended you as a matchmaker. She claimed you were very good at finding love matches for others.”
Gwendolyn laughed lightly. “And you are doing your best to prove me wrong.”
He chuckled in return. “Yes, I know I have been difficult.” He studied her a long moment. “But you are difficult, too. For someone so good at spotting love, why have you not done this for yourself?”
She squirmed under his intent gaze.
“You are charming and beautiful, Gwendolyn. Yet you are… Forgive my bluntness, but you are also of a certain age.”
“Two-and-thirty,” she said, not shy about revealing her age, since he was no youth himself and about ten years older.
“Which is why the ton has dismissed me and considers me firmly on the shelf. I would be heartlessly discarded as a sad spinster of no importance were it not for my wealth. Indeed, having a fortune is quite an attractive quality that endures despite one’s advancing age and fading good looks. ”
He shook his head. “Hard to think of you as old or unattractive. If you hadn’t just told me your age, I would not have believed you were above your mid-twenties. Surely you must realize that you are quite beautiful.”
She blushed. “No one has told me that in quite a while.”
“Well, you are,” he insisted. “I’m sure you must have had a line of suitors out your door after making your come-out, all of them heaping gifts and compliments upon you. Frankly, I am surprised they are not still lining up outside your door.”
“I’ve chased them all away,” she admitted.
“Why, Gwendolyn? Do you not wish to marry? Any man with half a brain would want to scoop you up. Truly, I am not saying this simply to flatter to you.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“I am about to ask you an utterly rude and intrusive question. You can tell me to mind my own business, but I still wish to ask it.”
“Don’t.”
He ignored her. “Have you ever received a marriage proposal? Is this what Fiona neglected to tell me?”
She frowned at him.
“No, do not put me off. How am I to trust your judgment otherwise? This is important, and you know it.”
This was about his marital prospects, not hers. But she sensed he would break off this marriage hunt if she were not honest with him.
She released her breath in a gust. “I have received several, in fact.”
He nodded. “How many?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Indulge me,” he said. “They could not all have been fortune hunters or wastrels.”
“They weren’t.”
He seemed momentarily confused. “But you rejected all of them. Why?”
“I did not refuse every marriage proposal.” She let out a soft, pained breath. “In fact, I accepted the man I had always hoped to marry.”
Her betrothal was no secret. Why had Fiona not told him?
She was also surprised he had not heard rumor of it from the notorious ton gossips. Oh, he would get the juiciest news from them.
Mostly lies. So many of them had mocked her misfortune.
“Gwen, I—”
A knock at the open door cut short his next words.
“Come in, Partinger. Leave the tea cart right there,” he said, pointing to a spot beside the settee as his butler rolled it in. “I’ll attend to the rest.”
“Very good, m’lord,” his butler said with a respectful nod to both of them, and then quietly shut the door on his way out.
“Well, Gwen, what can I give you? We have cake, buttered bread. Cold ham.”
Gwendolyn’s eyes began to tear.
She didn’t understand why she could not talk about this old wound without crying. Surely she had resigned herself to it by now.
Milbury drew in a breath. “Blast… I’m sorry. What an arse I am. My questions overset you.” He strode to her side and wrapped his arms around her.
She did not resist, for she found his actions remarkably comforting, not to mention the subtle scent of sea and spices on his skin was always quite pleasant.
Of course, he only meant to soothe her as he would his sons, and had no idea she was taking notice of more.
“Gwen, talk to me. Why the tears?”
How was she to respond?
She eased out of Milbury’s embrace and settled back onto the settee, deciding to tell him all about her betrothed, Andrew Clement.
It was better to learn the truth from her than hear distorted information from malicious gossips. The ton was rife with those.
Even her dear friends on Duchess Square disagreed with her about his ultimate fate. Most believed Andrew was dead.
But she was not ready to give up hope of his return.
Milbury sank into a chair beside her, ready to listen with patience as she told him about herself and her missing betrothed.
“The plain truth is that I do not know what happened to Andrew.” She then told Milbury a little bit of his history. “He is the second son of the Earl of Hornsby.”
“Is? Then you do not believe he has passed on?”
“I don’t know.” Gwendolyn’s heart began to twist painfully. But having given that detail, she knew Milbury needed to hear the rest of it. “Andrew went off to war, as expected of most second sons of peers. Our betrothal was announced shortly before his regiment departed for the Iberian Peninsula.”
Milbury nodded. “I see.”
“Do you? That was a little over decade ago. We were in love and full of dreams for our future. He promised to return to me.”
“And you promised to wait for him?”
Gwendolyn nodded. “We corresponded frequently until his letters suddenly stopped arriving about two years into his military service. I just assumed several had got lost amid the turbulence of war and did not think much about it. Not at first, that is. But then I started to have my doubts.”
“Yes, this abrupt silence must have been concerning as it continued,” Milbury replied. “What did you do?”
“As the months stretched on without a word, I knew I had to look into the matter. My heart was in my throat as I approached the War Office building. I was directed to one of their many offices and expressed my concern to a kindly clerk who manned the front desk. He was very sympathetic to my situation and assured me that he would make immediate inquiry.”
Milbury arched an eyebrow. “And?”
“I returned to the War Office several weeks later and this same clerk delivered the news that Andrew was alive and well. I was elated, as you can imagine. My beloved was not dead. Not injured. Not captured. This news sustained me throughout the war years, for I called upon this same kindly clerk several times afterward for updates on Andrew. Oh, I knew the reports were probably several weeks and perhaps months in arrears. Still, they gave me hope he would get through the war, especially as it neared its end.”
She took a deep breath. “There were such celebrations when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.”
He nodded. “Yes, my wife and I were among those who celebrated. For I was among the first to be shipped home.”
Her eyes widened. “You were on the Continent? But you were a marquess by then.”
“So what? I could not sit like a coward on my estate and let others fight on my behalf.”
Gwendolyn shook her head. “You had a wife…and children.”
“That I made certain would always be provided for should I fail to return. Lots of men were in a similar situation, leaving their families behind with much direr consequences. I had all in place for my family. Good counselors, good trustees for Jordan who would guide him until he came of age. But we are off the point. What about you, Gwen? What happened once you learned the war was over?”
“I was elated. Hopeful. Every time I heard a knock at the door, I would run downstairs expecting to see Andrew. But he never returned when the war ended.”
Milbury furrowed his brow. “Oh my… I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She shook her head. “No, he wasn’t dead.”
He now regarded her with confusion. “Was he kept back? Assigned to the Continent?”
“I have no idea. As the months went by without word from him, I began to make inquiries again. This time, the War Office’s response was different.
The clerk was not the same one I had called upon several times over the years, but I had been there often enough that most employed in that office would have recognized me. ”
“What did this new clerk tell you?”
“He claimed there was no one by the name of Andrew Clement in the officer lists, nor had there even been. Can you believe it? I knew there had to be a mistake, and called upon that clerk’s supervisor, an officious, condescending corporal who proved to be no better than his insolent underling.
He assured me I was in the wrong, and then gave me such a cold stare when I demanded to see his superior. ”
“And?”
“They made me wait an hour before a captain came forward, looked me straight in the eye, and said I was mistaken. He insisted there had never been a Colonel Andrew Clement or any officer of any rank by that name. How could all record of his service in the army have vanished from the War Office files?”
“More to the point, how does one lose the son of an earl? Wouldn’t his family have something to say about this?”