“Did you know she was with child?” She was watching him closely.
“No.” The truth needed no embellishment.
She gave a slow nod, but he detected belief in her eyes. Relief shot through him.
“If I had known,” he said, “she wouldn’t have ended up here.”
“How did you not know?”
“Where do I start?”
“At the beginning.”
He could tell this woman; that he understood. This thing that had sat heavy on his chest for fourteen years, he could speak aloud to her.
And no one else in the world.
Chapter Seven
Abreeze signalinga coming storm began to whirl about them, freeing tendrils of hair from the tight chignon at the nape of Hortense’s neck. She resisted the sudden urge to take Clare’s hand in hers. This aristocrat who she’d viewed as magnificent and untouchable looked in need of comfort and friendship, two kindnesses she sensed he hadn’t experienced in a great long time. The solitary nature of his life struck her as strangely similar to her own.
A thought, like her hands, which she would keep to herself.
“I was bored,” he said.
The offhand way he spoke those words brought a dry laugh and a rejoinder to her lips. “A bored aristocrat is nothing new under the sun.”
The shadow of humor that flickered in his eyes was gone in an instant. “One day, I was in Covent Garden and stopped in Pett’s Coffeehouse. The young woman serving me struck up a conversation. She had a smile entirely lacking in artifice. A winsome smile. When she asked a question, she was genuinely interested in the answer and treated everyone that way, from pauper to duke. I’d never met anyone like her.” He ran a hand through his hair, attempting to tame the errant lock that insisted on flopping over his forehead. “I went back every day after. Soon, I was taking her out for strolls and buying her new bonnets or whatever struck her fancy.”
“She was special.”
He nodded. “She was. She had a big laugh, and a personality larger than her.”
This memory of Mollie brought a light to his eyes. It was clear he’d been besotted with the woman. A fact that reflected well on him, she couldn’t help thinking.
Bitterness twisted about his mouth. “I couldn’t marry her,” he continued. “I knew it. She knew it. So, I established her in a flat of rooms in Cheapside.”
“And that didn’t sit well with you,” she finished for him.
He flashed her an annoyed glance. “Do you always have to be so deuced intuitive?”
She shrugged. “Occupational hazard.”
“I had a kept mistress, just like—”
“Just like?” Hortense prompted. He needed to keep talking. Not for her—she’d already deduced much of this story. It wasn’t a new one—but for himself.
“Just like my father.”
As they walked through the burial yard, which was as wretchedly sad a place as one was ever likely to encounter—so many hopes, dreams, and souls lost and forgotten by time—the only sound was the muffled crunch of boot heels on dirt.Just like my father.Those four words, the way he spoke them, only confirmed the nature of the relationship between father and son. A son who didn’t admire or want to emulate his father, but rather the opposite. Over the years, she’d had the same idea about Nick.
“I didn’t see much harm in it, either,” he said. “I wasn’t wed, and I had a genuine liking for Mollie.”
“Then one day she was simply gone?” That math didn’t add up to her.
“Not precisely. Our family has a far-flung Scottish estate that my father wanted to make grander with a new manor house. He asked that I go north to oversee the final stages of construction and meet his retainers and tenants. Collect annual rents, that sort of thing. He claimed it was the business the heir to a marquessate needed to learn.” He scoffed, a bitter sound. “Not that I ever witnessed my father conducting any such business, mind you. His estate agents managed all that was loathsome to Father about the title, like rents and repairs and the tenants themselves.”
She nodded, understanding at once what he wasn’t saying. “It was a ruse to get you out of London.”
