Thatwas hardly a surprise. They’d never been anything approximating close. Gabriel hadn’t even bothered to inform his father of his engagement to Lady Elaine, andshewas eminently suitable. He hadn’t cared what his father had thought of it. In truth, he rarely thought of his father at all.
“But Ididmention her,” he said.
“You mentioneda girlwhile you were out of your head on laudanum,” his father blustered. “There was never a name, or a mention of a marriage. It could have meant nothing!”
But he didn’t believe that. Gabriel could see it in his face, as if the weight of this burden had been etched into the lines of his face for years now. The duke had made a spur of the moment judgment of the veracity of the girl’s claim and dismissed it—andher—and for years now he’d wondered if perhaps he hadn’t acted in haste. If, perhaps, he’d truly turned out his daughter-in-law. If his decision to do so would eventually come back to haunt him.
The accident of years past had put Gabriel in a sickbed for months and stolen years of his memory away from him. He’d recovered physically from it, but the complications had been extreme. Whole swaths of his life had just been…gone. Like leaves scattered in the wind. Bits and pieces had come back, of course—like comfits shaken loose from a jar, tumbling into his head with a phrase, a scent, a sound. But he still lacked so many, and as the years had passed he’d despaired of recovering everything he’d lost. Most days he felt like a jigsaw puzzle, missing more pieces than he’d retained. It had changed him, fundamentally altered him, as if all of those missing pieces had been the core of him and without them he was simply hollow, a shell of the man he might have been.
“Her name,” he ground out, feeling his hands curling into fists. “What was her name, the girl who came to the manor?”
His father swiped away a fine sheen of perspiration from his forehead and adjusted his spectacles. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “She introduced herself asLady Leighton, as bold as you please. I told her she was mistaken, and I paid her off.”
“Youwhat?”
“A bank draft,” his father said. “One hundred pounds.Pay to the bearer. There was no need for her name.” He swallowed heavily. “I did try to find her,” he admitted. “A year or so later, when I began to suspect that—that perhaps there might be the possibility that she had been in earnest. I had offered her the use of the carriage, you see, to conduct her back to her home. But the coachman couldn’t recall where, precisely, he had taken her. Too much time had passed for him to recall something so inconsequential.”
Gabriel shook his head, torn between fury and exasperation. “So this woman—who may or may not bemy wife—is out there somewhere. And you haven’t the faintest idea where she is, orwhoshe is, or whether or not there’s proof of her claim.” His fingernails had carved divots into his skin, just shy of drawing blood. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
The duke gave an awkward flutter of his hands. “I would have, had you shown any interest in marriage,” he said. “But you did not. Had you never wondered why I had not pressed you toward it? You’re thirty-one, son. It’s well past the time you ought to have taken a bride, and yet—”
And yet. If truth be told, he’d never had an interest in marriage—at least, not in the years he could recall. He’d chosen Elaine on a lark. He had never been in love with her, nor she with him. And sometimes—just occasionally, in the night, he awoke with the sense of something lacking to him. No, not something—someone. The girl he’d seen in his fever dreams, in his laudanum-induced haze. The girl he’d convinced himself, that he’d let hisfatherconvince him, had been a figment of his imagination.
But perhaps she wasn’t. Perhaps she was real, and he’d married her, and even now she was somewhere out there in the world. On her own, because his father had sent her away in a carriage with a bank draft. Because his father had told her she wasmistakenabout their marriage.
“It might yet come to naught,” his father repeated weakly. “She might have been lying.”
But Gabriel could not say that either of them truly believed it.
And he couldn’t marry Elaine while in possession of a wife. Well, perhapspossessionwas a strong word, given that neither of them had any idea where the womanwas.
But she would have to be found. If only to investigate the truth of the matter, she would have to be found. She alone could shed light on the darkness that was his past.
Somewhere out there was the woman who might very well be his marchioness, cast into the winds of fate. And she might be the literal woman of his dreams.
If only he could remember her face. If only he could recall her name.
Chapter Two
“I’m afraid we have to let you go, Mrs. Hotchkiss.”
It had been no more than she had expected, but Claire resented the silky purr her newly-former employer utilized to issue the dismissal. It hadn’t beenClaire’sfault that the woman’s husband couldn’t keep his pudgy hands to himself. She’d stuck him with hat pins, with sewing needles, and once with a pair of kitchen shears, and eventually, of course, he’d complained to his wife of her. It had beenexpected, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t grate upon her already frazzled nerves.
Mrs. Acton continued, “Of course, I have provided you a letter of reference. Your skills as a housekeeper cannot be understated.” Still, her gaze drifted over Claire in that faintly disapproving way endemic to the upper class—she didn’t care what became of Claire, not really. She only wanted her gone, and out of reach of her husband, who spent far too much time pawing at the female employees.
“That’s very kind of you, ma’am,” Claire forced herself to say. “Thank you.” Behind her back, her hands curled into fists.
“I’ll have Cartwright deliver your wages to you. And I will instruct the coachman to ready the carriage for you. The least I can do is to offer you the use of the carriage to convey you to your new lodgings.” A subtle insinuation that Mrs. Acton wanted her gonenow. Claire was to be ejected from the residence as soon as she could scrape together her meager belongings and climb in the carriage.
“I understand,” she said. It was a blow, but one she could weather. She’d found positions before, and in more desperate circumstances. A letter of reference would go a long way toward securing a new position.
Cartwright appeared in the foyer, a pouch held in his hand. His face was grave, lines of worry carved into his cheeks, etched upon his forehead. He’d been with the household ages longer than Claire had, but he’d been a dear friend to her since she had taken up the position nearly a year ago, and she was terribly sorry to lose him. He was perhaps thirty years her senior, but he was a comfortable sort of man, with a generally fatherly air about him.
Mrs. Acton turned, a signal that the conversation was over, and she retreated down the hallway without ever once looking back. It was the way of her set, to cast out consequences for the people they viewed as lesser, running roughshod over anyone they could and not bothering to see what their careless actions had wrought. Claire was familiar enough with the pattern by now that it almost didn’t hurt. Almost.
“Mrs. Hotchkiss,” Cartwright murmured. “Annabel is packing your trunk.” His tone was too kind, too understanding.Thathurt worse than anything else. It was the sympathy she couldn’t bear, really.
“Thank you, Mr. Cartwright,” she said, clearing her throat to exorcise the lump from it.
