Winnie appreciated this moral outrage on her behalf. Shewas,in fact, a common criminal, but she certainly hadn’t stolen Turner Green’s lamb. She would rather have died. He had no idea how to prevent hoof-ail.
“And you!” Mrs. Upholland went on, turning to Lord Warren, who still clung to Winnie’s arm. “Some lord. Asking for a room for yourself and Mrs. Halifax like she’s a loose woman!”
Lord Warren interrupted this startling defense of Winnie’s honor with the simple expedient of raising her dirty hand to his chest. “I apologize for not introducing myself more properly,” he said. “I am Lord Warren, yes. But my given name is Spencer Halifax. I am Winnie’s husband.”
Mrs. Upholland’s tirade cut off abruptly.
In fact, the entire dining room seemed to go silent at this declaration.
Oh bloody hell.
Winnie knew almost everyone inside the inn’s doors. Over the last decade, she had spun dozens of yarns about her supposed philandering husband in London. She had occasionally produced a letter from him; once he had supposedly sent her ribbons, which she had cast dramatically into a pile of manure (in full view of as many of Llanreithan’s residents as possible). She had not known if they’d believed her story of a husband, so she’d tried to make it as detailed as possible.
The details had not been in Spencer Halifax’s favor.
Archibald Davies stood up slowly. The rector was a Black man in his middle fifties, balding and bespectacled. He’d never had an unkind word to say to Winnie, even when she’d fallen asleep during Sunday service and let the lamb she’d been carrying in her voluminous overcoat escape up the aisle.
He looked up at Lord Warren. He had to tilt his head to meet the man’s eyes, and yet he seemed entirely undaunted. “How dare you?” he demanded. “How dare you show your face here after what you’ve done to your wife these past ten years?”
Oh bollocks.
Winnie tugged their linked hands from Lord Warren’s breast to her own. He, apparently gobsmacked by the unexpected verbal assault, did not resist. “We’ve, er, reunited,” she squeaked. “A terrible misunderstanding. There were never any”—curseher imagination—“naked ladies cast in bronze in the drawing room. My mistake.”
Lord Warren goggled at her.
“We’ll take that room, Mrs. Upholland,” she said, “and perhaps a bath as well.”
And then she dragged Lord Warren up the stairs before anyone in the dining room recalled the rest of the stories she’d told them.
There was an empty room at the end of the hall upstairs, the door standing open, and she practically shoved the earl through before closing it behind them.
And then they were alone. Together.
She stared up at the man—at Spencer Halifax. His red-gold hair gleamed in the late afternoon light. The sun through the window sparkled off the buttons of his coat, which was faintly besmeared with grime transferred from her person.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “How are you—whoare—andwhy—”
She could not seem to complete a sentence. Her fingers had made their way to a lock of her own muddy hair—a soothing gesture she tried not to use in front of other people.
“I am Spencer Halifax,” he said again. “Spencer George Halifax. Of Mayfair.”
Her mouth opened and then shut again. She leaned back against the door, needing the firm solid weight of it to hold her up.
“You cannot be,” she said. “I made you up.”
His jaw flexed once before he spoke. “What do you mean?”
“I—I invented you. Ten years ago. When I came to Llanreithan, I wanted to rent a plot of land from the Viscount Loxley, only his steward would not permit the place to be held by an unmarried woman. So I—I told them I was married.”
His expression stated his disbelief more plainly than words could have. “To me? To the Earl of Warren?”
“No!” She pressed her fingers into the rough wood grain behind her, desperate for something to anchor her. “Of course not. I chose the name Spencer because my mother—my mother—”
Oh God, she could not tell him about her mother.
Her mother had been a well-known seductress of aristocratic men. Eliza Wallace’s false identities, her deceptions, her unfortunate habit of pilfering jewelry—all of those things had led to her disgraced flight from London a decade ago.
But if this man connected Winnie with her mother, he would never believe this to be an innocent mistake. He would think she had done it on purpose—to entrap him somehow—to take his money as her mother would have done.
