Rooms? He had rooms? Foolishly enough, and in the midst of her hysteria at Mr. Barlowe’s revelations, all Elysande’s thoughts had been centered upon the private bachelor quarters he had apparently continued to use upon his return to London. All the time he had been away, she had been sending her letters to the Belgravia house. She had assumed he had been beneath that roof, and instead, he had been living the life of a bachelor.
Complete with aMrs. Ainsley.
A woman who was now dead.
Mr. Barlowe had told her Mrs. Ainsley was not her husband’s paramour. But Elysande was not particularly inclined to believe or trust Hudson’s friend. There were too many questions. Too many reasons not to.
They teemed within her now as the man she had married—the man who had introduced her to passion and then dashed from the countryside—strode toward her. She crossed the threshold to the salon, taking him in, furious with him and some foolish part of her longing for him at once.
His countenance all hard angles and planes. “Elysande.”
When he reached for her, she flinched away, refusing his hands and his greeting both. “You have much to explain.”
And she very much did not wish for him to touch her. Not when there had been another woman in his bed. Another woman who was dead.
And not just dead.
Murdered.
Her every interaction with Hudson had led her to believe he was gentle, a man of distinct honor. She wanted to believe his friend’s many protestations of her husband’s innocence. But she needed answers first.
“Will you sit with me?” he asked softly.
How she hated that softness, for it reminded her of the morning by the lake. The sweet words of seduction he had offered. What if she had married a scoundrel? Or worse?
She hugged her arms about her waist, chilled. The day was cool, and she had retained her wrap from traveling, but there was a bone-deep numbness which had been afflicting her from the moment Mr. Barlowe had uttered those insidious words.
There has been a murder.
“I have no wish to sit,” she bit out, pinning Hudson with her frostiest glare and wishing that his friend, who had been a tremendous support during her journey to London, had not chosen to part ways with her at the salon door.
“Of course.” He raked a hand through his hair, his face pale, his jaw on edge. “I cannot fathom how this news must have fallen upon you.”
“A terrible shock,” she agreed crisply, amazed at her own sangfroid. Perhaps it was the wine she had consumed during the trip from Buckinghamshire.
“If you prefer to stand, then that is how we shall commence.”
“It is,” she said, quite as if they were speaking of no greater concern than the weather.
Or how he preferred to take his tea.
Or the repairs which were needed in the Brinton Manor orangery.
Instead of the dead woman who had been found in his bed.
“I must apologize, Elysande.”
She could not contain the bitter laugh that bubbled up at his words. “For what, do you suppose? For the lengthy duration of your absence during the beginning of our marriage? For choosing to return to London and play the role of Scotland Yard detective instead of husband? For telling me you expected to be gone for a few days and then remaining here for weeks?”
He winced. “For all that, yes. But also, for…the rest.”
She was warming to her cause now, traveling away from him, clutching her wrap around her as if it were a shield as she paced the length of the salon. “The rest? What do you mean by that, Wycombe? The fact that you were living as a bachelor, in your bachelor rooms? Or that you had taken a mistress while leaving me alone at your country estate to restore it on my own, with only your steward for aid?” She swung about to face him, so livid her hands were trembling with the violence of her emotion now. “Or that you may have murdered her?”
He pressed his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes for a moment, his expression pained. “I was not living as a bachelor, Elysande. This home was in shambles, which Greene took the last month to rectify, and I found my old quarters, which are leased for the year and still mine, of far greater comfort than these lodgings. I can also assure you that Mrs. Ainsley was not my mistress.”
“Then who was she to you?” she demanded, scarcely recognizing the woman she had become.
Elysande was already regretting casting herself headlong into the fires of matrimonial misery.
