Yes.
No.
God in heaven, she didn’t know. If there was a correct answer to offer, it eluded her. Because part of her wanted to give him the opportunity to explain himself, and yet another part of her couldn’t bear to allow herself to be so vulnerable to Torrie ever again. Everything was too raw, too new. Her hands were trembling. Her stomach was on the verge of casting up what remained of the little she had eaten the day before. She was weary and broken.
Elizabeth shook her head. “I’m not certain just yet.”
Hattie nodded, giving her shoulders another firm pat. “I’ll see that some breakfast is sent up to you. Torrie has brought a valise containing some of your gowns. I’ll send my lady’s maid to you with that as well, so that you may dress. Take all the time you need to find your answer.”
“Thank you,” she said with feeling, taking her sister-in-law’s hand in hers. “But if you please, Hattie, I don’t wish to wear one of his gowns just now. I’d prefer something else. Anything else will do.”
Even a sack.
Or her night rail.
The bedclothes.
She didn’t care. All that seemed to matter was that whatever she wore must not be anything from that cursed wardrobe he had provided for her. Every gown signaled the futility of her dreams. A reminder that regardless of how fashionable the gown was, beneath it she was still the same unwanted wallflower she had always been.
“Of course,” the duchess said without hesitation. “I’ll send you one of my gowns instead.”
Elizabeth strongly doubted one of Hattie’s gowns would fit her, but she thanked her anyway, fearing she had already caused far too much trouble for her hostess as it was. When Hattie had taken her leave of the chamber, she slid back beneath the coverlets and curled up with Angel, soaking the cat’s thick fur with her tears.
* * *
“You’ve spoken with her, then?”Torrie asked Hattie as she arrived in the drawing room where he had been cooling his heels with an alarmingly somber Monty.
His sister’s expression was laced with pity. “I have.”
“Thank you.” He began striding across the chamber, intent on finding his wife and explaining at last. Allowing her to leave him last night had been the most difficult decision he’d ever faced. In the end, he had done so out of deference to her, and because he had feared that anything he would say or do in that moment would only make the troubling circumstances facing them even worse. He had required his own time to comprehend what Eugenia had told him as well. Time in which to ponder what he would do, what he must do.
“Torrie, wait.” Hattie stopped him, snagging his sleeve. “She doesn’t wish to see you just now, I’m afraid.”
Fuck.
He turned to his sister, not too proud to allow her to see his desperation. “I need to see her.”
“She’s distraught,” Hattie said quietly, “and understandably so. She hasn’t told me what she saw in your study last night at the ball, but given her reaction, it cannot have been good.”
Christ.
“It wasn’t,” Monty confirmed from somewhere behind him.
He glanced back at his friend, who had remained with him at Torrington House when Hattie had rushed Bess from the ball. He had told Monty everything. Every despicable detail of what he had learned and what had happened in his study.
What Bess had seen.
Dear God, what she had seen. But he wouldn’t think of that now.
“You haven’t told her?” he asked Monty, surprised.
For he knew the strength of the bond Hattie and Monty shared. He had supposed his friend would tell his sister everything so that he wouldn’t have to do so.
“She said she didn’t wish to know,” Monty said with a shrug. “Christ knows I would have told her had she asked. But then, I didn’t truly find the notion of telling my wife about her brother’s mistress undoing the buttons on his trousers.”
Hattie gasped. “Torrie!”
His attention snapped back to his outraged sister. “Formermistress, Hattie, and she damned well wasn’t doing anything with my permission.”
