He looked over his shoulder.
“May you rot in the darkness you have chosen.”
With that, his once-vibrant mistress crumbled into a heap on the floor, her lace cuffs stained with blood. Ash continued through the door. At leastshewas alive. Not so, the woman he married.
Rachel had, in fact, preferred death to a lifetime with him.
His mind filled with a haze of smoke and the hideous sound of ancient rafters breaking free. The bodies of his wife and his father had been discovered in the wreckage of Wisterley’s north wing. His father’s—locked in the rooms where he had to be confined. And his wife, just a few feet away from escaping the blaze she’d purposely set.
Ash had tried to forcibly remove her, and he doubted she wrested free of his grasp to save the duke. She’d barred others from reaching his father’s door with the declaration he deserved to die.
Which left only one explanation—she could not endure one more day as his wife.
A cold shiver passed through his veins. Then, the townhouse door clicked closed—bringing him back, and marking the end of another life chapter.
He continued onward, but night’s soothing darkness did little to mellow his mood. The path to his home journeyed through streets far from London’s worst, yet there was still some chance he’d meet a cutthroat. Honestly, he’d welcome physical pain.
He strove to shield others from his gloom, but, tonight, the curses of those he’d unintentionally damned had become incessant crickets, chirping in the twisted thicket of his soul. The most recent curse, however, had been wrong on one, important point. He’d neverchosenthe darkness.
The darkness had chosen him.
“Impossible!” Aunt Hester spoke in a tone that brokered no objection.
The little man from the Admiralty—the one with the sheets of vellum and the satchel—bounced his knee. A subtle bounce, but a bounce nonetheless. Alicia noticed, because no one else in the room moved.
Not Aunt Hester—Alicia’s recently deceased husband’s aunt. Aunt Hester’s face had frozen in mutinous disbelief.
Not the captain—his guilt-stricken eyes and absent limb remained still.
And certainly not Alicia herself—sitting stiff-backed and without visible expression. She was annoyed, however. The little man’s twitch was disturbing their tableau.
Gentlemen Deliver Distressing News.
They had not created a perfect tableau. A more visual depiction of woe would have beende rigueur. But since she had been forced to conceal her response to the thousand daily humiliations inflicted on a publicly spurned wife, Alicia’s reaction was bound to lack potency.
Perhaps she could improve the scene if she bent her body with grief, lifting tear-stricken eyes to the heavens...
The celebrated painter Romney had captured the countess in just such a pose. But surely, the countess would not quibble if Alicia stole the posture, not when the countess had stolen Alicia’s husband, keeping him enthralled until his death. And now, according to these men, there was a good chance the countess could take full possession of the Stone estate and its income.
“We are pursuing the validity of the death-bed codicil to the admiral’s will,” the little man assured.
“Tell them.” Aunt Hester’s chest pulsed with shallow breath. “Tell them the admiral would never have made such an outrageous arrangement. Astonbury has been in the family for decades.”
Untrue. Octavius had purchased Astonbury as war spoils less than ten years past. It onlyseemedlonger. She and Aunt Hester and Octavius’s brother Simon hadn’t lived there for an age. Not since Octavius moved the countess and their child into the home.
“Lady Stone,” Aunt Hester snapped.
Lady. She’d never grown used to being addressed as such. Then again, by the time Octavius became a viscount, she’d been effectively sliced from his life.
“Alicia.” Hester’s sigh was wracked with aggravation. “I asked you to speak.”
Speak. Yes, of course. But what should she say? Alicia’s eyes settled on the captain.
His sun-soaked skin had the leathery texture that made most sailors look hard, but there was something compelling about him. She searched his strange, haunted gaze. His features were tempered with forbearance present only in those whom great hardship had touched.
“You seem very familiar, Captain,” Alicia said. “Have we met?”
The little man’s head snapped toward the captain, but the captain’s features softened. “I was a young officer onThe Maitland.”
