Butwhy?
“I should have known.” Rage simmered below the surface of Clare’s words. “Father hadn’t the slightest care for what sort of marquess I would be, for he hadn’t the slightest care for the marquesshewas.” His gaze cut to hers. “But the truth was I didn’t mind the diversion. Scotland was a welcome relief from Town, so I stayed for nigh on half a year. I wrote Mollie the occasional letter, but her reading and writing weren’t strong enough for her to write back. Anyway, I felt useful in Scotland, unlike my half existence in London where I waited to inherit a title with not much to do. There, I was able to see something take shape and flourish under my guidance. There, I mattered.”
“Couldn’t you have stayed?” she asked. “Why return to London?”
“I am an Englishman. As much as I was accepted on the estate, I would never be a Scotsman. But I did return with the intention to make a better life in London, one more useful than that of a wastrel heir. And if not here, then maybe at our family estate in Hertfordshire.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“When I returned, Mollie was gone. I could find no trace of her. Not in the Cheapside flat. Not at Pett’s.” He appeared to be weighing how to proceed, perhaps whether or not to do so. “I was on the verge of hiring a runner,” he continued, “when Father and Mother paid me a visit. I saw them together once a year, during the Christmas holiday, so it was notable.”
“They paid her off while you were in Scotland,” Hortense said, certain.
“She accepted the money and ran away.”
Just as she thought.
“Except it was a lie,” he said. A beat passed. “One I believed until a few days ago.”
“It does seem to be the truth. She did leave, after all.”
He shook his head. “But not with coin.”
Of course.“Or why would she have needed to enter the workhouse?”
His jaw tensed. He was reining in emotions that wanted their head. “I believe after Father and Mother found out about Mollie, they had us investigated and discovered my attachment to her. So, they devised a reason for me to leave Town. Then they must have paid her a visit and found her with child. Perhaps they feared I would do something rash like—”
“Marry her?”
“Aye.”
“Would you have?”
“Perhaps.” A beat of silence, leaden with regret, passed. “They intimidated her into leaving.”
“How was that possible?”
“The Honey Lane apartment is a property of the Asquiths.”
Hortense nodded.
“And, Pett’s wasn’t likely to take Mollie back, not in her condition.”
Mild shock traced through Hortense. “This is something you believe your parents would have done?”
He didn’t prevaricate. “Yes.”
A question came to her, one she must ask. “Then why did you believe the lie?”
“I grew up watching them betray each other year after year, scandal after scandal.”
“Why would you expect anything else?”
As the question hung in the air, she understood something fundamental about this man, something she wasn’t sure she had the right to know. He’d revealed the elemental value that formed his impressions of the world. He’d revealed his vulnerability. In her work as a spy, this was the element about a person she always sought, for it gave her the weapon she needed to exploit their weakness.
But, here, now, with this man, it was too much.
He’d been hurt by those who should have loved him all his life. As a result, he’d come to expect it. Why wouldn’t the woman he cared for accept money and leave him? It had been inevitable, no? His parents made it easy to believe love would turn to betrayal.
