He needed to speak with Bess at once.
CHAPTER7
Elizabeth was investigating the library at Torrington House, searching for a volume of poetry or anything with which to distract herself, when her husband’s deep voice interrupted her solitude.
“Bess.”
The name of her youth made a pleasant glow suffuse her.
She turned to find him striding toward her, dressed informally, and curtsied. “My lord.” He looked troubled, she thought, his expression pinched, his jaw hard. “Is something wrong? Have I overstepped? I hoped you wouldn’t mind if I searched for a book with which to distract myself.”
Navigating the course of her new life was treacherous indeed. Particularly given the ugliness of her interaction with the dowager at breakfast. She didn’t know what was expected of her, where she was meant to be, what she was meant to do. She felt like an unwanted guest.
He drew to a halt as he reached her, near enough to touch, his green eyes searching hers. “You’re more than welcome to be in the library whenever you wish it. This is your home now.”
Her home.
The word and the sentiment settled over her. She hadn’t had a true home in years. How impossible it seemed that she would finally belong somewhere, instead of being passed between distant relatives, sometimes treated worse than a servant, and later taking a position to secure the roof over her head.
“Thank you,” she said, biting her lip against a stinging rush of emotion.
Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked furiously, intent on keeping them from falling. She had already humiliated herself before Viscount Torrington on enough occasions. No need to do so now, she told herself sternly.
“Tears?” He surprised her by cupping her face in his hands and gently using his thumbs to sweep over her lower lashes. “Why, Bess?”
Dear heavens, she had no wish to unburden herself, and she had long since believed she had banished such inconvenient emotion, burying it so deeply inside herself that it would never again be unleashed. How wrong she had been, and about a great many things, too.
“I haven’t had a true home for a long time,” she admitted, her voice cracking on the last word. “To have one now is a source of amazement.”
She expected him to withdraw, but he did not. Instead, he remained as he was, the warmth and strength of his hands seeping into her.
His brilliant gaze locked on hers. “Tell me, Bess. Did we know each other before that night in the library?”
His question took her by surprise. He had never spoken of his accident or amnesia before, and she couldn’t help but to wonder at the reason for doing so now. Had the dowager spoken with him about their uncomfortable interaction at the breakfast table? Her shoulders tensed at the possibility, for what if he believed his mother’s suspicions?
“We were never introduced,” she said.
He released her, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “Explain, if you please.”
She huffed out a small breath, filled with trepidation, the same old shame that had sent her from the Althorp ballroom years ago revisiting her. “Might I ask what the meaning of this is?”
“I don’t have any memory of knowing you.” He raked his fingers through his dark hair, looking weary. “I should have told you before now, but it is a subject which is painful for me and I don’t like to speak of it. I was badly injured in a phaeton accident, and I don’t remember much of my past. All I know is that there was a man who existed before the accident, and I am the man who woke up. That other man is a stranger to me. His thoughts, his memories, his family and friends…they’ve never felt like mine.”
His raw honesty made her long to take him in her arms, but she didn’t dare. Instead, she kept her hands carefully clasped at her waist. And oh, how her heart ached for him, at the pain he must have experienced. What must it be like to recall nothing of one’s past? Neither family nor friends?
“I am so very sorry,” she said softly. “It must be incredibly difficult for you.”
A wry, half smile curved his lips. “It’s far more difficult for others than it is for me. I cannot mourn what I don’t miss.”
His calm acceptance was humbling, and she knew she owed him the truth, even at the risk that it would force old emotions long buried to the surface.
“We weren’t formally introduced,” she elaborated, “but I knew of you. We attended several of the same society balls together. We traveled in different sets, however. You were handsome and sought after, and I was a dowdy country girl come to London to find a husband.”
His brow furrowed. “What happened between us?”
“Nothing,” Elizabeth admitted, her cheeks going hot as her mind returned to that brutally humiliating evening at the Althorp ball. “The extent of our interaction was when I was hidden in a potted plant and I overheard you telling some of your friends that I was a plump, plain partridge. I was so embarrassed that I attempted to rush from the ballroom and instead tripped over my hems and fell at your feet. You offered to help me, but I was too humiliated to accept, and I spent the remainder of the night hiding in the lady’s withdrawing room until my cousin Lady Andromeda found me and took me home.”
There it was, the brutal, hideous, mortifying truth. A truth she’d hoped never to have to relive.
