“I…” Bo faltered, uncertain of how to explain. Uncertain if she wanted to explain. “I shall stay, if you will still have me.”
“Of course!” Clara tugged at her arm. “Osgood will see to your trunks. Ravenscroft and I were just having breakfast with his sisters. Have you eaten?”
“I do not wish to interrupt,” Bo protested, feeling awkward to have interrupted their family breakfast. “I shall go have a lie down while you finish, and then we can visit. I want to hear all about your honeymoon.”
Her friend paused in the act of all but dragging her down the hall, giving her an assessing look. “But that is just it, isn’t it? You are married, Bo. To the Duke of Bainbridge, no less! What happened, and why isn’t he accompanying you? Darling, are you upset? You look as if you’ve been weeping.”
“He…we…it is complicated,” she managed, not saying more when Clara’s husband, the handsome and rakish Earl of Ravenscroft appeared before them.
With his dark hair, blue eyes, and arresting looks, he was the ideal foil for Clara’s light, spritely beauty. The frown marring his expression vanished when he saw the two of them, a smile replacing it.
“Ah,” he drawled. “The troublesome friend returns.”
Bo flushed. It was true that she had earned his opinion of her the hard way, namely through encouraging Clara to offer herself to him in marriage in return for a share of her dowry and her return to Virginia. At the time, it had been what Clara wanted most, and her protective father had been thwarting her at every turn. Ravenscroft had been notoriously pockets to let and in need of funds—it had seemed the perfect plan. But once Clara had married the earl, everything had changed.
She had fallen in love.
And Bo knew now how powerful and all-consuming that emotion was. How much it altered the landscape of one’s life. Fortunately for her friend, the man she’d married returned her love. Bo was not so lucky.
“She is not troublesome,” Clara chastised her husband, breaking through Bo’s saturnine thoughts.
Ravenscroft raised a brow, but humor danced in his eyes. “Need I remind you of the first night we met, my love?”
Clara flushed, her eyes glued to her husband. “How can I forget it?”
Bo cleared her throat, the open adoration bouncing back and forth between husband and wife making her uncomfortable. Not to mention envious. “I am troublesome,” she admitted.
“And I am grateful.” Ravenscroft shared another private glance with Clara before turning back to Bo with a wink. “Your advice, while abominable, turned out quite wonderfully in the end, Duchess.”
Duchess.
Bo almost looked behind her to see who he addressed. Of course, it was she. She was the Duchess of Bainbridge, Spencer’s wife. But their marriage almost seemed as if it had been a dream, and that she had awoken, alone and cold and empty for knowing all she now missed.
“Thank you,” she forced herself to say, painfully aware of both Clara’s and her husband’s searching gazes upon her.
“Bainbridge did not accompany you?” Ravenscroft asked.
“No.” She feigned a smile. “He is busy readying his Arabians for a sale, but he sends his regards.”
It was a lie, and Bo knew that Clara and the earl were aware of her subterfuge in the name of pride. Oh, perhaps there was a sale, but Spencer had never deigned to mention it to her until it became his excuse for acting as if she had ceased to exist the moment they returned to Boswell Manor.
“Breakfast,” Clara suggested brightly. “Join us. No lie down for you, not when you’ve just arrived, Bo. Come along and be entertained by the whirlwinds that are Julian’s sisters.”
“Patience-trying minxes,” the earl muttered good-naturedly, “the lot of them.”
Bo allowed Clara to drag her into the breakfast room.
She was gone.
Spencer should feel the sweet breath of relief wafting through him, refreshing his mind and body both. He should certainly not feel as if someone had punched him in the gut. As if the best part of himself had been unceremoniously amputated.
Six days had passed since the morning she had crept into his chamber at dawn, run her fingers through his hair, and bade him farewell.
Spencer knew because he could account for each bloody day like a black mark on his soul. Oh, he carried on. He discussed the upcoming sale with his head groomsman. But as the auctioneer, Tattersall’s was well-prepared. The day of the sale would arrive, and a small selection of the impeccable horseflesh he had curated would be sold. Lords and American business tycoons alike were clamoring for the chance to own one of his Arabians. He had no doubt that the prices they fetched would be good.
And he didn’t give a bloody goddamn about any of it.
He was not a man often given to blasphemy, but if there was anything that made him feel like committing such a sin, it was the glaring absence of the fiery, bold, fiercely wonderful woman he had married. His duchess. Boadicea. The gentle-hearted hellion with a love of wicked books who had matched wits with him, who had presented herself to him without shame, who had brought him to his knees with the force of her passion.
