He had wanted her to become his duchess so much, it had been a physical ache he had felt to the marrow of his bones.
“Which lies have I spoken?” he asked her now, commending himself for his calm.
Inside, he felt as if a ravaging band of armies had waged furious war against each other. He felt hollow, everything within turned to ash and destroyed.
“I have no wish to have a row over old sins,” she said, “though I dare say you have committed an innumerable list of them in the time since I knew you.”
He could not quell the smile on his lips, more feral than civilized, he knew. “Darling, you never knew me.”
Her lush mouth compressed. “How right you are, Your Grace.”
Indeed, and more than she was capable of comprehending. Not because she was unintelligent. Quite the opposite; Pippa possessed a depth of astuteness he had admired from the moment they had met. And in addition to that, a worthy, quick wit. She knew her Latin better than he did. They had once held lengthy discussions on paintings, philosophy, history. Everything from constellations in the sky to Catallus.
Until she had no longer spoken to him at all, and she had become Mrs. George Shaw while he had been out of the country.
“Will you not agree to read the letters?” he pressed.
For there was a far more important matter than their past. A far more important matter than the yearning for her which he had never been able to banish. If what Chief Inspector Hudson Stone had told him about George Shaw’s shadowy spider’s web of criminal connections was true, Pippa had far more to worry about than his unwanted presence in her carriage.
There would be other men coming for her.
And those men would not offer her a handkerchief when she wept. Quite the opposite. They would be the cause of her tears.
Or worse.
“There is nothing in the letters which concerns me,” she said coolly, denying him just as he had suspected she would.
Why had he followed her into her carriage, risking breaking his foolish neck just to clamber aboard and attempt to reason with a woman who plainly refused to accept the truth concerning the man she had wed? She had not believed it years ago. Why would she believe it now?
She had made her choice. Shaw over him. And even from the grave, the lying, manipulative pile of fetid cow shite continued to be her choice.
“On the contrary, Lady Philippa, you should be quite concerned by the evidence within those letters,” he countered, tamping down the combination of irritation and pain, which was never far from the periphery of his emotions when he was in her presence.
The last time he had seen her, he had spent the night indulging in brandy in his library, smashed a mantel clock, and burned half the poetry volumes in his collection, along with the damned curtains.
“I will speak of it with Tilly if I must.” Her fist was still clenched on his handkerchief, immobile on her lap. She was as stiff as a tree.
Tilly, formerly the Duchess of Longleigh and now Mrs. Adrian Hastings, was a mutual friend. Perhaps it was fickle Fate’s way of making a humorless sally at Roland’s expense, the notion that one of his closest friends should have married one of hers. Nevertheless, they had. And it had been Adrian and his new wife who had brought the damning correspondence between George Shaw and the former Duke of Longleigh to Roland’s attention. The three of them had chosen to confront Pippa concerning her husband’s complicity in the conspiracy which had seen Hastings imprisoned at Dunsworth Prison.
The carriage slowed. A glance out the window confirmed they were approaching the Mayfair townhome no humbled third son of an earl—and from an impoverished family at that—could have ever hoped to afford when he appeared to have no industry. Roland’s time with Pippa was limited, and they had spent the bulk of the carriage ride trapped in a frustrating battle of stony silence and icy fury. She was a stubborn woman.
But he had his mother’s determination. And his mother had been a formidable lady. The one person he admired more than any in his life. He missed her every damned day.
“Do you not think Tilly and Hastings have been through enough without bringing them into the midst of your husband’s crimes?” he asked Pippa, unable to keep the bite from his words.
He knew he should try to suppress his anger, but it was deuced difficult. Most of it was directed at a dead man. A despicable dead man, it was true. Precious little of it, however, belonged to Pippa. He had long ago moved on from his anger after she had thrown him over for Shaw. It was Shaw’s dealings which were the source of his fury.
Mostly.
Pippa remained quiet as the carriage rocked to a halt, not deigning to answer his question. And why had he supposed she would?
“We are arrived,” he announced unnecessarily into the silence.
Beyond the carriage, the familiar cacophony of the street permeated the walls. Jangling tack, clopping hooves, drivers calling out.
Still, she said nothing, sitting on the Morocco leather squabs, as unmoving as a statue.
“Have you nothing to say, Mrs. Shaw?”
