If one came and thought of it, his bachelor life hadn't been so bad. He'd had his routine, his clothes, his perfume business, his fencing, his club. His life had been a settled routine, nothing too exciting, nothing too dramatic. Predictable but safe.
Then she'd arrived. And from one day to the next, his life had been a jumble of change, confusion and disorder. From one day to the next, he'd had a child in the house and a wife. Gone was his routine, his settled life.
People had congratulated him on his marriage with a surprised look in their eyes, as if they'd never expected him to tie the knot. When Dorington at the fencing club had said, "In the family way, I see," with an approved nod, he'd felt an odd sense of… pride.
Edmund swallowed.
Then there was her.
He'd been surprised when she'd agreed to his business arrangement, and it was an even greater surprise that they'd settled into married life so naturally, as if it had always been meant to be.
When had he forgotten they were only pretending?
Edmund scratched his neck in confusion.
He remembered how much he'd enjoyed kissing her during those silly parlour games.
Then this fellow Mattick had appeared, a man from his wife's past that he'd known nothing about, and he'd realised how little he really knew about her, and he'd been shaken out of his complacency. Every glance Mattick had thrown her had filled him with such violent jealousy it had left him nearly breathless. How dare that man touch his wife! Beating him in that duel had been the best thing he'd ever done. Edmund gritted his teeth at the thought of how Ellen must have suffered, of how she'd been socially ostracised because of the scoundrel.
She was no Miss Robinson with a bourgeois background, but Mary-Ellen Gordon, the daughter of a Viscount. When he'd told her he didn't care about her past or her reputation, it had been true, for he truly didn't care.
Then the child had fallen ill. There had been a moment, the night he'd spent alone in the bedroom with Noni, when his world had toppled, for it was then that he'd realised how much he cared for the boy. And that his heart would be badly bruised if he ever lost him—or Ellen.
Now the child was gone.
He'd never been Noni's guardian.
Edmund wondered why there was no profound sense of relief or lightness, no lifting of the weight that had been on his shoulders. If anything, it had grown heavier.
He'd reluctantly grown to like the way the boy's little eyes had lit up every time he'd entered the room, and how he'd insisted on putting his sticky, wet little hand in his and holding on to it as if it were the only thing he'd ever had in his whole life. How his eyes had turned to him in confusion, and how they'd gradually filled with tears as the old man had led him out of his house.
There had been tears in Ellen's green eyes too.
She'd wanted to talk about it, but he'd frozen, brushed her off and ran away.
Ellen. His wife.
What would happen to her now?
He would have to give her the rest of the money, as agreed in the contract, and she would disappear from his life, and everything would be right again, and he could finally return to his old lifestyle and forget that any of this had ever happened.
He wanted to smash the vial against the wall.
"I'm such a fool." He slapped his hand against his forehead.
When he reached his house,the butler looked at him in astonishment. "Your hat and coat, my lord?"
Edmund looked down at himself.
Oh.
He'd left the laboratory without his hat and coat, and trudged through the streets in shirtsleeves, still holding the vial.
Was that why everyone had looked at him so strangely? It had started to rain, and his hair and clothes were wet.
No matter.
He handed the vial to the butler, ran up the stairs, tore off his wet clothes, and pulled on his banyan.
