He’d thought he could win her back.
Staring out the window, the feelings in his heart alternated between numb despair and excruciating pain. He’d not realized before that heartbreak could, in fact, cause physical pain.
He barely realized darkness had fallen when a knock sounded at his door.
“Your Grace, Cook has prepared supper and—“
“I’m not hungry.” Chance couldn’t even think about eating. “Thank you.”
“Very well sir. But there is another matter, Your Grace.”
“What is it?” Damn, but he wasn’t up to dealing with any of the minor details that would require his attention before he departed.
“A young woman has presented herself and wishes to meet with you. Most unusual for a proper lady to present herself alone. And in the evening hours, no less. She says her name is Mrs. Bloomington.”
Chance wondered if he had heard correctly. All the air whooshed out of his lungs.
“She is here?”
“Yes, Your Grace, I put her in the Gold Drawing room. I wasn’t sure…”
But Chance was already heading out the door. “Thank you. She was here! His mind raced at all the possibilities. Was she here to berate him for showing up at her ‘at home’? Had she come to make sure he was truly going to leave her alone?
Or was she here because she didn’t want him to leave? The flames in the wall sconces flickered when he threw open the door where she waited.
His butler had not been mistaken. She had come.His Princesse.
Sitting stiffly, ankles crossed, she lifted her chin to meet his eyes. She wore the same gown she’d had on earlier. How had she become even more beautiful than she was in his memories?
“I thought it was my fault. I thought you’d left because of somethingI haddone. Because I’d thrown myself at you.” She blurted the words out without bothering with niceties.
She’d come to him. And she was ready to talk.
Chance took slow steps into the room.
“I want to tell you everything.”
She nodded, her eyes looking large and almost fearful.
He lowered himself onto the chair facing her and stared down at his hands.
“My sister. I believe I told you back then that she could be… difficult at times.” Without waiting for her to respond, he forged onward. “About a year before I met you, she became involved with—a viscount—Lord Groby. I had told her to stay away from him. Lord Groby had a reputation for… depravity.” Chance swallowed hard. The memory of that night never failed to summon bile to his gut.
“On more than one occasion I’d dragged her out of Opium dens, and she’d fought me for doing so. Sometimes I felt as though she hated me. She’d insisted they were her friends. I didn’t suspect the extent of it, though. I never could have guessed. When I learned where she’d gone on that particular evening, I went to bring her home, hoping that her luck would hold out and no one would discover her indiscretions. But what I found there…” He would not tell Aubrey everything. “It was something I wish I could forget.” His sweet sister, drugged and tied to a bed, Lord Groby and a number of others having already… She’d knowingly gone to the gathering, but never could have known what they’d had in mind for her. Those villains had defiled his innocent sister and it had been unforgivable. Chance had chased them away from her, beating a few of them to a pulp in the process.
Groby had deserved to die.
“I brought her home with me and then returned later that day. I could not allow Lord Groby to go unpunished and so I demanded that he meet me at dawn.”
“For a duel?”
Chance nodded. Hollis had been his second but otherwise the only other person he’d brought with him was a physician. Lord Groby’s second had been a distant cousin on his mother’s side and only a few of his fellow lowlifes had watched from the sidelines. Not one had made an attempt to prevent the spectacle. Groby’s treatment of Chance’s sister had been too vile, too diabolical.
Aubrey sat staring at him. By the shining tears in her eyes, he knew she realized he’d glossed over much of it for her sake.
“I killed him,Princesse,” Chance admitted with a shrug. He didnotregret it.
She did not get up and run from the room but even in the dim lighting, he could tell she’d gone somewhat pale. And she’d raised one hand to her mouth in shock.
