The man stepped toward him. “Lord Hardwood?”
Hunt nodded. “I’m afraid I’m at something of a disadvantage. Who are you?”
“Gabriel Fellowes, the Earl of Kingsley.” And then the gentleman gestured to the open door of the carriage. “Your debts—your father’s debts—have been paid. You are free and clear. But I’d like a word, if I may?
Hunt glanced around. The road stretched empty but for the two of them. What the devil is going on? And why on earth would the Earl of Kingsley, a man he’d only ever heard of in passing, step in on his behalf?
“Why?” Hunt didn’t move. He was not totally prepared to trust this unlikely turn of events. “Not to sound ungrateful, But why would you do that?” He’d be damned if he’d be beholden again.
Although the prospect of returning to that dank cell wasn’t something he wished to entertain.
“Because my sister asked me to.”
Some detail teased the edge of his brain. “Your sister?”
“Lady Priscilla.”
Lady Priscilla
“Priscilla? As in Priscilla Fellowes?” But then it occurred to Hunt that the earl had introduced himself as Gabriel Fellowes. “Lady Priscilla?”
“My sister,” the earl confirmed.
Hunt clamped his mouth shut and then climbed into the waiting carriage, his head bursting with all sorts of questions.
Only after Kingsley was inside, seated on the opposite bench, did either of them break the silence.
“But Priscilla Fellowes is a teacher,” Hunt said.
“Yes, well. She was.” Kingsley crossed one foot over his knee and then, after twisting around, located, and then handed over a worn-looking copy of the Gazette. “Sadly, the papers have effectively ended her career at Miss Primm’s.”
The broadsheet was dated nearly a month earlier.
“Page three,” Kingsley said. “Might be of some interest to you.”
Hunt opened it up but didn’t see anything right away. Once he did, however, he took the time to read it twice.
SCHOOL TEACHER IMPERSONATES STUDENT
She was the only daughter of the late Earl of Kingsley. The scandal at Cliffhouse wasn’t her first. As he read, he surmised that the man whose death she caused had been a former fiancé.
“She wasn’t engaged to Lockley,” Kingsley said pointedly. “And she didn’t leave with him willingly. She’s made a few mistakes, as we all do. And she’s paid for them. Papers don’t make money by reporting the truth.”
Hunt met the earl’s stare.
“But the rest of this is true.” Hunt wished it wasn’t.
“Perhaps.”
That one word hit Hunt like a bullet. And at that moment, without a doubt, he realized he’d only heard part of it. That possibility had teased him since the moment Meadowbrook showed up and exposed her.
But he’d ignored it.
Priscilla had cared about him—more than that. The woman he’d come to know, not by name but by her soul, her heart, would never willingly hurt anyone.
“How is she?” The epiphany turned his blood cold.
“Shattered, really,” the earl answered. “But physically, well enough.”
