What did the letter mean? Did Nora want to resume a relationship with him? The very thought made him ill. More than likely, she did not know he was married. News traveled slowly to the country, and Lord knew he was not a subject of proper gossip.
“I have just recalled an urgent meeting this morning with Mr. Levi Storm concerning his electric company,” he lied to his wife. “Do finish your breakfast, my dear. I will be home at half past four, as always.”
Without awaiting her response, he turned on his heel and strode from the dining room, leaving Jo and his half-eaten breakfast behind. It was not until he was stalking down the hall that he realized he was still clutching the letter.
He made his way to the nearest room with a fireplace—the library, as it happened. Last night had been unusually cool for summer, and he and Jo had settled together before a fire after dinner. The coals were still glowing red. He tossed the letter atop the embers, watching the edges catch flame and slowly curl together, Nora’s words disappearing one letter at a time.
He should have cut the ties binding him to his past long ago. He owed as much to Jo, to himself. He wanted to be the sort of man who could be worthy of her love. Forgetting Nora was the first step in what would surely prove an arduous and painful journey.
But for the woman he had married, he would do, he realized, absolutely anything.
Jo told herselfnot to fret over her husband’s strange behavior at the breakfast table.
She told herself that as she finished dining alone, with no companion save the footman hovering about lest she need anything. But as she poked at the eggs on her plate, which had long since gone cold in her inability to summon the enthusiasm it would take to consume them, she could not keep her mind from wandering.
And wondering.
Surely his cool, almost angry mien at breakfast was not the result of her humiliating confession the evening before? He had said nothing of her words after she had corrected herself. And afterward, they had not only made love but enjoyed dinner together and then read in the library before a cheerful, crackling fire. They had bathed and then made love again.
In his bed this morning, he had been the same attentive lover she had come to know so well.
What, then, had happened this morning?
His correspondence—that was the only answer. He had been systematically going through a pile at his side rather than his customary newspaper ironed and laid out. And then there had been the letter he had crumpled before recalling he had a prior engagement.
The letter had been long. She would be lying if she said she had not been curious about its contents. His reaction had been quite unlike anything she had ever witnessed in him, now that she thought upon it. And he had left his correspondence by his plate, most of it untouched.
Misgiving unfurled within her. There would be no more breakfast; her hunger had been effectively banished. She rose and circled the table, taking up the neat stack of his untouched correspondence. And that was when she noticed the envelope he had discarded.
The handwriting was undeniably feminine.
Viscountess Tinley.
Her heart sank to the soles of her shoes. The name was unfamiliar to Jo, but that was to be expected. She had only just come out this year, and she had only studied herDebrett’sas well as had been possible without falling asleep from sheer boredom. It stood to reason she was not familiar with every lord and lady in the realm.
It was not her lack of familiarity with the name that disturbed Jo, however. It was the fact that a woman had written Decker the letter he had run off with. Who was Lady Tinley to him, and why had he been so disturbed by whatever that missive contained?
So many questions.
And no solid answers because Decker was nowhere to be found.
She was sick as she fled from the dining room. Part of her felt as if it had been wrong of her to pry in his affairs. Part of her told her he had left her with no choice after the manner in which he had suddenly taken his leave. The husband who had retreated from breakfast was decidedly not the Decker she had come to know.
Jo tried to calm her madly racing mind as she took his correspondence to his study and laid it upon his desk, along with the envelope. The familiar scents of his study ought to have calmed her. But without her husband in the room, it somehow lost its vibrancy. Not even the naughty engravings on the walls interested her.
Indeed, the absence of her husband only served to haunt.
To mock her.
She had told him she loved him, and he had not returned the words. He was a notorious rake. What was wrong with her, losing her heart to such a man? Why, he had never promised her fidelity. Nor had he told her about the woman he had loved—she had learned that unpalatable truth secondhand. His past, aside from his estranged relationship with his father and his mother, was a mystery.
Was Viscountess Tinley his lover? More importantly—and terrifyingly—was she the lady who had broken his heart?
Jo supposed she had only one place to turn for answers: Decker himself.
Why had she allowed him to simply run off in such haste earlier? She should have been firmer, should have pressed the matter. Being a wife was not as easy a situation as she had imagined it would be.
Jo sighed, thinking it fortunate indeed that she had more business with the Lady’s Suffrage Society to attend to today. The distraction would be necessary and much-appreciated.
