Chapter 28
Only three days since Vincent left for London again, and Emma felt as if her heart was ripped from her chest.
She had not slept properly since he’d gone, only tossed and turned beneath the tangled sheets while worry worried her back like a moth in muslin.
More than once, she’d put on her bonnet, taken it off again, put it on a second time, then stood by the outside door feeling like the greatest fool in England.
What would she even say if she went to him?
She’d spent the days since in an agony of worry.
Knowing that worry wouldn’t help, she had tried to fill her mornings with needlework and her evenings by using every resource in the library to help formulate her plan for the girls’ school.
Vincent’s law books would likely have been more useful, but those were in his study, and she did not dare trespass into his private quarters while he was away.
If only I hadn’t responded to Ashton, I wouldn’t have engineered another scandal for us to wade through… Stupid, foolish, Emma.
Worse, she was stranded deep in the country. Had she Hattie’s belligerent optimism or Lottie’s chess-master wisdom—or even Grandmama’s soothing reassurances—beside her, she might at least feel something resembling peace.
Instead, she sat lonely, on a bright and clear morning, blue skies all the way to the horizon, the very opposite of the turbulent emotions roiling inside her. They did not abate when, while having her breakfast, she flicked through the pages of the Morning Post and landed on the scandal sheets.
A Duchess in Disgrace?
Society reels this week as whispers grow louder regarding the newlywed Duchess of Highminster. Barely a fortnight has passed since her union with His Grace, yet already tongues wag that her attentions may be straying elsewhere.
Some, less charitable than this column, have not forgotten the lady’s reduced circumstances before her astonishing rise. The daughter of a disgraced house, left with little more than a tarnished name and an empty purse, has now found herself beneath a ducal roof.
Whether this was romance, rescue, or calculation, society is left to wonder.
The ton is abuzz nevertheless: is this but harmless chatter, or the first stirrings of scandalous betrayal? Already, wagers are being placed in certain clubs as to whether the Duke will confront his rival—or whether the matter shall be smothered beneath the velvet drapery of discretion…
Her already meagre appetite vanished. The toast slipped from her fingers, landing butter-side down on the plate while the consequences of her foolishness stared up at her in merciless black ink.
“Vincent must be furious…” Covering her face, Emma sighed through the hot press of shame. “How can I fix this?”
She felt suddenly exhausted again, as though the little sleep she’d managed in the past three days had been scraped from her bones. She was truly considering the cowardly comfort of retreating to bed when Lilian entered and curtsied.
“Good morning, Your Grace. His Grace has returned.”
Emma’s hands dropped. “Where is he?”
“I believe he went to his study, Your Grace.” Lilian glanced at the scarcely touched plate. “Is the meal not to your liking? I can ask Cook to send something else, or—”
“No, no, the food is perfect,” Emma shook her head as she stood. “It’s not Cook’s fault. I am simply not feeling quite myself. You may take the tray back to the kitchens.”
The moment Lilian left, Emma beelined for Vincent’s study with feline courage.
At the door, that courage shrank to the size of a pinhead.
Still, she knocked.
“Come in, Emma.”
She startled. Of course he knew her knock. That bothersome man quite possibly knew the weight of every footstep in his house.
Twisting the handle gently, she stepped inside and found him at his desk in shirtsleeves, a sterling cream waistcoat fitted over his broad chest, his cravat starched beneath a freshly shaven jaw.
He looked composed enough to offend her.
Not a hair out of place, not a sign that he had clawed through his morning as she had clawed through hers.
He looked up briefly. “How are you?”
The truth rose at once.
Worried. Ashamed. Heartsick. Sorry for writing to Ashton. Sorry for making his name a plaything for gossips. Sorry that she had spent three days missing him and had no dignified way to say so—yet she simply said, “I’m well. How was your time in the city?”
“Productive.” He dipped his pen and returned to the page. “We are scheduled to return to my townhouse in two days.”
Her stomach lurched.
“I don’t want an annulment yet!” she blurted suddenly.
He glanced up. His expression remained guarded, but he did not speak for a long moment. When he did, she was ill-prepared for the quiet of it.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Feeling like an urchin begging on a doorstep, she entered the study properly and took the seat across from him. “And I’m sorry if I hurt you—”
“I was not hurt,” he murmured while flicking a folio open. “Merely… blindsided.”
The words pricked worse than they ought to have.
Emma curled her fingers against her skirts, struggling to keep all the roiling, terrifying things in her breast from spilling out in some wretched display. He looked so distant behind that desk, head bowed, shoulders set, every inch the duke again.
Not the man who had held her in the bath. Or in his bed. Or kissed her and would keep kissing her until she forgot her own name, under the guise of some silly, benign ‘seduction lessons’.
“I have stopped writing to Windham,” she said, laying down the only card she had left and praying it might make a difference. “I… I thought you should know.”
His pen paused. “Why?”
“Because I do not—” love him at all. I… The words nearly rose so naturally they frightened her. “—wish to give him a reason to perpetuate my egregious mistake.”
Finally, Vincent looked up.
“Do you think he believes it was a mistake?”
Emma squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. “If he doesn’t yet, I will make sure he does. Please, excuse me.”
“What did she mean by that…” he asked himself fruitlessly once he was alone.
Dropping the pen onto the blotter, Vincent sat back and rubbed at his eyes. Women were bloody impossible—wives apparently more so—and his in particular had a talent for leaving him with more questions than when she’d entered.
Sitting up, he reached for the stack of letters on his desk and began sorting through them.
Most were from his steward about tenants or his man of business about investments, and those he set aside for later.
He was looking for anything that required his immediate attention, anything that might give his mind somewhere safer to go than Emma’s face when she’d proposed postponing their annulment.
Three from the bottom, he found a letter written in a wobbly hand.
“From James Haverleigh…”
Vincent broke the seal at once, frowning. Why would Emma’s brother write to him and not to Emma?
The answer became plain by the first few lines. The lad did not write often. His hand wavered across the page, several words were misspelled, and a few had been struck through hard enough to nearly tear the paper. Still, Vincent could just about make it out.
To His Grace, the Duke of Highminster
My Lord Duke,
I beg pardon for troubling you.
I do not know who else to ask. I am no good at speaking of these matters, and I am worse at writing them, but I will try to be plain.
I am not like other gentlemen. I know this. I do not learn as they learn, nor speak as they speak, and I am often told I make a poor figer of myself. My father was a good man. He was clever, and useful, and people trusted him. I wish to be as he was, but I do not know how.
There is the estate, and Parlement, and all the duties expected of a man in my place. I do not understand enough of any of it. I want to. I want very much to be of use, and not a burdan or a shame to my family. To Grandmama or to Emma.
Would Your Grace help me find a tutor? Not only for books, though I need that too, but for how a lord is meant to live and act. I have no one else I may ask. There is Cillian, but he has begun snooping around Grandmama’s house of late, so I do not trust him.
Please do not tell my sister if you cannot help me. I do not want her to be sorry for me or risk her happyness for mine.
But I hope you will.
James.
Aside from himself, Vincent smiled—the first of the week, he was sure. Now, this was something he could happily do, and it was a welcome distraction from dealing with Emma and the damned Marquess.
Worse, he ought to have done it already. Somewhere in the haze of the wedding, and Emma, and the honeymoon that had upended every sensible thought in his head, the matter had slipped him entirely. Bloody careless of him.
A knock on the door, Weston’s stern rap, had him peeking up from the list of names he’d begun compiling for James. “Enter.”
“Your Grace, word has just come from Kensington,” Weston intoned in that grave voice of his, and immediately, Vincent’s back snapped straight.
“Has he… has he been found?”
“It seems so, sir. Ernest Weaver, Custor’s former steward, was set up in a decent lodgings South of Essex after the Boreas affair. He has returned there now, though the scouts cannot speak as to for how long.”
Vincent went very still.
Weaver.
Not the serpent, no, but the hand that fed it.
Custor had buried himself behind wealth and Carlton House friendships, and enough paid loyalty to make him almost mythical in even the upper echelons of High Society.
Vincent had never even laid eyes on the bastard.
Weaver, however, had carried his letters, balanced his accounts, bribed his clerks, and slithered close enough to know where the great man hid when he did not wish to be found.
If Weaver had come out of whatever comfortable hole Custor had bought for him, Vincent would not let him slip back into it.
“Ready my horse for twelve tonight,” Vincent ordered, distracted.