Drawing a breath, she peered around him, needing to verify that the man she’d seen was not, in fact, the husband she’d buried. To reassure herself that it was just an uncanny resemblance. Once she got a better look at the stranger, she would see the differences between him and Sebastian.
She didn’t get a chance, however.
The stranger had vanished.
Two
“Did you find Gilbert?” Amara Quinton’s voice held a betraying quiver.
It was eight o’clock the next morning. Despite the ungodly hour, Charlie had made the journey to her friend’s celebrated Bond Street dress shop. She had another client to see later that morning and didn’t want to keep Amara in suspense. They were in one of the back rooms, seated at a worktable. Dressmaker’s dummies stood guard along one wall, a massive wardrobe occupying another.
Known by the chic moniker “Mrs. Q,” the African modiste was wearing her trademark black, the superb cut of her frock showcasing her lush figure. Her neat chignon gleamed like a raven’s wing. Her snowy lace collar contrasted with the smooth brown perfection of her skin, and the only jewelry she wore was her wedding ring. Seeing that gold band and the anxiety in Amara’s eyes, Charlie felt her chest knot.
Get it over with. Sugarcoating helps nothing.
She took a breath. “Yes, I saw him at the Rigbys’.”
Conveying bad news was the worst part of Charlie’s job. Yet the truth, no matter how painful, was better than not knowing. Hating the pain in her friend’s eyes, she proceeded to convey the events of the bacchanal as matter-of-factly as she could.
“This woman. With the red feathers.” The quiver traveled from Amara’s voice to her bottom lip. “Did she and my husband…”
“Not that I saw,” Charlie said. “Devlin and I searched the house top to bottom and could not find them again. That doesn’t mean, however, that nothing happened.”
It was her policy to be as truthful as possible. Personal experience had taught her that there was nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by the withholding of facts. Her papa hadn’t told her that he’d used the small inheritance her mama had left her to fund his expeditions, thereby leaving her penniless. Her so-called guardian, Sir Patrick Swainey, had hidden his lustful intentions. And Sebastian…well, her husband had been a master of hiding the truth. He’d been so good at it that even now, a dozen years after his death, she still didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.
The questions that had stolen her sleep now threatened her sanity.
Did that stranger just bear an uncanny resemblance to Sebastian? He was masked, after all, and I only saw him for an instant. But those eyes…
“Doyouthink something happened?” Amara pressed.
The desperation in her friend’s tone focused Charlie.
Your husband is dead. Amara’s is not. Concentrate on the case.
“Quinton was at an orgy.” She counted off the incriminating facts on her gloved fingertips. “He had a woman on his arm. Moreover, he lied to you about where he was going.”
“He said he was going to a friend’s home for a game of cards. How stupid does he think I am?”
Amara’s voice had a different sort of quiver now, and it matched the spark in her eyes. Charlie knew what her friend was feeling—knew the powerful rush of rage. She also knew the feeling afterward: when that inner fire burned out and only ashes remained. That acrid aftermath of emptiness.
Nevertheless, a broken heart did survive, even if it bore scars; Charlie was living proof of that. And of the fact that those damaged walls could be rebuilt stronger, hardier than before. Once upon a time, she had believed that love was the key to happiness. Now she knew the opposite to be true. Contentment stemmed from independence. What a woman truly needed was the ability to determine her own destiny. Once she discovered her own strength, she could do anything, be anything.
The first step toward freedom was the truth.
“You could talk to him,” Charlie said bluntly. “You could present him with the evidence you have and demand an explanation.”
“No.” Amara clenched her jaw. “I have given him that option too many times. A month ago, he began acting strangely—and by strangely, I mean he was testy and secretive. I asked him what the matter was. Repeatedly. We do not quarrel, except occasionally over the parasites on his side of the family, yet we did over this. Every time, he insisted that he was fine, that I was imagining things. But a wifeknows.”
Charlie nodded with bleak understanding. In the weeks leading up to her discovery of Sebastian’s infidelity, he had been acting more distant. She’d secretly fretted that he was losing interest in her; when she’d worked up the courage to address the topic, he’d told her to stop being silly, thenprovedhis interest with such vigor that she couldn’t sit comfortably in a saddle for days.
The perfidious scoundrel.
“I let it go because I trusted him. Because I...I love him. Fool that I am.”
Hearing the hitch in Amara’s voice, Charlie held out a handkerchief. “Having a trusting heart does not make you a fool, my dear.”
“Being delusional does.” Amara waved away the scrap of lace-trimmed linen and drew back her shoulders. “Even now, I cannot believe that he would throw away seven years of marriage for…for what? Somedoxy?”
