Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
The study inside Violet House was the room Audrey was going to miss the most. It was the one room in the Curzon Street residence where she’d always felt at home. As she stood at her desk, the top cleared, the drawers emptied, she took a deep breath and said goodbye.
It was a strange thing, for a heart to ache with loss and yet at the same time, feel near to bursting with happiness.
Over the last week, whenever she thought of Philip, the odd sensation had coursed through her.
She’d waited for his promised letter all year, and its arrival, and its contents, had allowed Audrey to finally close a door she’d been holding open.
It had also allowed her to see that she had, in some ways, been standing still all year in anticipation, while everyone around her—Michael, Genie, Cassie, Tobias—had all been moving forward, grieving and healing and living.
It was time for Audrey to catch up.
She’d committed the letter to memory, put the paper to her lips for a long moment, and then let it fall into the grate in her bedchamber.
She’d wept as the flames quickly consumed it.
That someone would one day find it wasn’t her primary concern.
She’d burned the letter because it was her last link to Philip. And she needed to let go.
On the afternoon following the debacle at Burdick Close, Audrey had been seated at her desk, dipping a quill into her pot of ink to complete a letter to her sister Millie, when the door had flung open. Genie and Cassie had whirled inside.
“Is it true?” Genie had asked just as Cassie demanded, “When did you plan to tell us?”
For the briefest moment, Audrey wondered if they’d learned about Philip’s letter.
But then, Cassie had stormed to the desk, picked up Audrey’s left hand, and stared agog at the sapphire Hugh had presented to her the night before.
He’d explained the ring had belonged to his mother, Catherine Marsden.
He’d learned the previous year that his birth mother was April Barlow, but Catherine would always be his only mother.
Miss Barlow had remained distant, even after their meeting last year.
It was something Audrey couldn’t fathom.
How could anyone not want to know Hugh? How could anyone not want to love him?
“It is true!” Cassie had exclaimed.
The incurable gossipmonger Lady Dutton had just called on Violet House for tea and related that a friend had been taking Gunter’s ices in the park the other week when she’d seen Lord Neatham on one knee in what appeared to be a proposal to the dowager duchess.
“I had to pretend that I already knew, and that a formal announcement was to be made soon,” Genie said, “all while trying to keep my oolong from spilling into my lap!”
“How could you keep this from us?” Cassie demanded. “Why haven’t you said anything?”
It was true that she and Hugh had agreed that they’d wanted to solve Bethany’s case and the mystery of the Vauxhall bodies before they married. But that didn’t explain why Audrey had not told them at breakfast that morning. Or why she’d kept her hand in her lap to conceal the ring.
“I didn’t say anything because I knew the two of you would make a fuss. Hugh and I will marry soon. It doesn’t have to be a big affair.”
“All right, fine. A small ceremony. But why keep the proposal a secret?” Cassie had asked.
It was with those words that Audrey realized the truth.
Why she’d been tiptoeing around the subject.
Everything involving Hugh had always been a secret.
She’d secretly investigated crimes and cases with Hugh; she’d secretly spent time with him; she’d secretly fallen in love with him, and he with her; together, they had kept the secret of Philip’s ruse from the rest of the world.
When it came to Hugh, she was accustomed to simply being secretive.
But like dawn driving out the night, a revelation had suddenly struck her.
Secrets were no longer necessary. Even their largest one, the one involving Philip, had evaporated like morning mist after receiving his letter.
There was no threat that someone, somewhere, at some point would cross paths with him and bring news of it back to London.
He was no longer an axe hanging over their heads.
The overwhelming freedom Audrey had felt in that moment had been apparent to even Cassie and Genie. At seeing her overcome, they’d apologized, assuring her that they weren’t angry and would leave her to do as she wished.
“Don’t go,” Audrey said as they were backing toward the door. In that moment, she promised herself no more secrets. “Genie, can you send for Madame Gascoigne? We should discuss a wedding gown.”
The modiste had come that day, and Audrey had selected a cream silk taffeta and a simple blue embroidered design. She’d finished her letter to Millie and added a postscript, telling her to come to London as soon as possible.
There was going to be a wedding.
“Oh, there you are!”
Audrey turned from her empty desk and found a frazzled but excited Cassie in the doorway.
“It is nearly noon! We need to leave if we’re to get there on time and dress you, and—oh! I’ve forgotten my gloves!” Cassie rushed back into the hall, calling, “I’ll meet you in the carriage!”
Audrey laughed as she made her way to the front hall, where Carrigan waited in the open doorway. He was wearing his finest livery.
“Are you ready, Your Grace?” he asked.
Greer had already gone ahead to Berkeley Square to prepare for her arrival. Audrey nodded, then thought of something.
“Carrigan, you may very well be the last person to ever call me that.”
“Your Grace?” he asked, sounding confused. She laughed.
“Yes. Exactly.”
A persistent thrumming had come alive just under Hugh’s skin.
He rolled his shoulders, for once at ease with his tall stock and cravat.
If there was ever a day to appear starched and formal, it was this day.
He hadn’t complained once as Basil had meticulously dressed him in the downstairs study at 37 Berkeley Square, where the valet had lain out his suit, complete with tailcoat and boutonniere, the flowers of which Basil had matched to the ones filling the drawing room.
The valet had been curiously silent while dressing Hugh, and while standing close to knot the neckcloth, he’d noticed Basil’s eyes glistening.
“Do not tell me you are becoming sentimental,” he’d said.
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m merely coming down with a cold.”
Hugh had clapped him on the shoulder. “I love you too, Baz.”
The valet had admonished him to stand still, but Hugh still caught the slight tug at the corner of his mouth.
The morning after Philip’s letter burned in the grate inside Audrey’s bedchamber, Hugh told Basil to purchase whatever he thought necessary for a wedding at the new residence.
The valet had taken charge of the planning, rapturous with the task, and entirely disapproving when Hugh had rejected his suggestion that the wedding take place in the more fashionable St. George’s Cathedral.
Audrey had agreed that fashion and convention did not matter.
There could be no better way to christen their new home than with their own wedding.
Now, Hugh stood beside Thornton at the front of the drawing room.
As the furniture at 19 Bedford Street had yet to be moved, the new house was still mostly unfurnished, but it wasn’t empty.
Floral arrangements dressed the corners of the room, and a crowd of about a dozen people milled about.
Everyone from Genie and Fournier and Tobias to Audrey’s sister and her husband Reggie to Sir Gabriel Poston and his wife, Lady Rebecca, and Hugh’s cook, Mrs. Peets.
Basil waited patiently at the door to the receiving room, while Sir, who had reluctantly permitted Basil to tie a cravat, looked sharp but bored as he rocked on his heels beside Thornton. A vicar stood on Hugh’s other side.
It was a small crowd, and excepting Millie, none of them were blood relations. But everyone here was someone he and Audrey cared for, and who cared for them in return. These were the people who would be in their lives from that day forward.
Hugh wanted to rock onto his heels, as Sir was, but instead, he twitched his nose at the scent of the lily and honeysuckle nosegay pinned to his lapel.
“Patience,” Thornton murmured. “It isn’t as though she is going to flee. Unless, of course, she comes to her senses.”
The bruises on Thornton’s face had not had much time to heal, and his arm was still in a sling to keep his broken fingers stationary.
But despite his battered appearance, his friend claimed he’d never been so popular.
“I can’t tell you how many women seem to think I’m a hero for enduring torture just to save your skin,” he’d said with a waggle of his brow—which had thankfully pained him.
“The moment this wedding concludes, I’m booting you all out of this house. Beginning with you,” Hugh told Thornton, his voice muted by the murmuring in the drawing room.
Their guests had been mingling while waiting for the bride to arrive, but now, an hour after Audrey had been whisked upstairs to dress, they had taken their seats—the chairs arranged by Basil to create a center aisle for Audrey to come down.
“I know you are eager to be alone with your bride, but I’m afraid no one here cares. I hear Mrs. Peets has made a lovely cake for afterward, and I intend to sit and eat several slices,” his friend said.
“These chairs are the only furniture in the house. I kept the rooms bare for a reason. No furniture means no sitting, which means no lingering.”
Thornton whispered, “I hope you at least had a bed installed into the bedchamber.”
Hugh glared at him. Sir leaned forward to look past Thornton. “Does that mean Baz and I have to go back to the old digs?”
“It does,” Hugh replied, his patience wearing thin. Where was she? How long did it take to dress?