“I did not try to find her immediately. Indeed, I did not know for better than a week that she had fled. I was operating this establishment by then, a situation that I believe I’ve mentioned she found most disagreeable, and she was at Wright Hall. Word came from her own mother that she was gone. My mother-in-law made it clear in her missive where she believed the blame should be placed. The hell was an abomination to them, and the choice I made to take it in hand myself was viewed as a very public snub of the ton and a complete disregard for my role and responsibilities as viscount and head of my family. As this view was shared by my own mother and to a lesser extent by my sisters, there was some sympathy for Elaine.”
Olivia imagined that was in no small part due to Griffin keeping his own counsel. “Were you ever tempted to tell them all of it?”
“Not my own family, no. It was—is—a private matter.”
“Yet you are telling me.”
“Yes.”
She thought he would explain his reasons for it, then it occurred to her that he might have no explanation, that what he was finally giving into was a need to tellsomeone.Who better than a woman with so many dark secrets of her own? She would not judge, merely listen, and that was what he wanted from her. Still, it bound them in some way, and perhaps it was this that he wanted as well.
She watched Griffin slide into the wing chair and sprawl casually, wearily, across it. “How is it that your wife avoided whispers among the gentlemen and wags of the ton? Pray, do not say her discretion alone accounts for it. That is not possible. If she was as compelled to act in certain ways as you say, it would have become known.”
Closing his eyes, Griffin pressed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. His words, when they finally came, held all the heaviness of a man who knew defeat. “Like a bitch that does not soil her own den, my wife did not choose her lovers from the society in which she mingled. She took servants to her bed. The grooms. Gardeners. Footmen. We once attended a week-long entertainment hosted by one of her dearest friends, and she slipped away to raise her skirts for the coachman, then the second butler, and finally the steward. I made excuses for her absences. No one among the servants complained.”
Olivia watched his hand fall to the arm of the chair and lie there limply. She caught his dark gaze and was struck by the weight of his grief. Absent from his recitation, from his tone, indeed, from his expression, was bitterness. There may have been a time he’d known that emotion, wrestled with it, but it was no longer his constant companion.
She lifted her arm and made to reach for him, caught herself, and returned her hand to her lap. He was so focused on her face that it did not seem to her that he was aware of the gesture, then his hand turned a few degrees and partially exposed his palm. His fingers spread, curled, beckoned her.
Olivia came to her feet slowly. She took one step toward him, paused, then took another. It required but two more to close the distance. Her fingers brushed the back of his, were caught, then entwined. She would have dropped to her knees in front of his chair, but he tugged her toward him at an angle that brought her onto his lap. She twisted slightly to spare him her weight, and she caught his uneven, mildly mocking grin as he took it upon himself anyway.
She sat very still, her hand linked in his, uncertain of what she should do. She had an urge to touch his face, so she did that, palming his cheek, tracing his scar, brushing his lower lip with her thumb and lingering at the corner of his beautifully sculpted mouth.
“You still grieve,” she said quietly. “How you must have loved her.”
“Once.” He kissed the pad of her thumb before she drew it back. “Once, Olivia, she was my world. It was a long time ago, and only briefly. What I imagined she felt for me was just that, my imagination. I know now that she is incapable of any finer feeling. Sometimes she amused herself playing at being in love—or what she thought it must be—but her affairs never lasted long. She knew a great deal about lust, and nothing at all about love.”
“It is all rather difficult to comprehend. You pity her, don’t you?”
“I do now. I despised her for much longer than I ever loved her.”
Olivia considered that. She was in no hurry to pose her question. The circle of his arm around her waist and the niche he made for her against his shoulder was a comfortable fit. “Then why have you made searching for her so important? It cannot be only for purposes of divorce. As distasteful as that end might be to you, it could be accomplished without her presence, couldn’t it? It is she who broke her vows and abandoned the marriage.”
Even as she was putting the question to him, she was aware that he was regarding her rather oddly. “What?” she asked. “Have I taken too great a liberty? Said something I ought not have?”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
Olivia was perfectly at sea and did not take pains to conceal it. She simply stared at him, waiting.
“I was so certain that someone would have told you by now. Truss. Mason. The lads. Even the patrons could have whispered it in your presence. Most of them have heard the gossip.”
“Then it is much, much older than a nine days’ wonder, for I have never learned of it.”
“So I see.” His fingers gently tightened on hers. “After Elaine’s disappearance became known, I was questioned quite thoroughly by the authorities. There are many people, Olivia, even after so much time has passed, who suspect me of murdering my wife.”
She said nothing for a long moment, trying to take it in. How surpassingly singular that their lives should be touched by so much in the way of injury. The difference, though, was that he carried the burden of suspicion while she carried the burden of guilt. She could not say if one weighed more heavily than the other. She knew only there were days when she was crushed by it and could not fathom it would be so different for him.
“But you were here in London when Lady Breckenridge left,” said Olivia. “Didn’t you tell me that?”
“I did, and I was. And, yes, there were many who could support my presence here. Apparently, when one is a person of property and some influence, it is not enough to be firmly situated in one location while a murder is taking place in another. I could not very well deny that I had the means to engage in murder for hire.”
“But where was the evidence that her ladyship was killed…or even dead? There can have been no body.”
Griffin’s smile was wry. “Now you are allowing logic to influence your argument. My mother-in-law was not so particular as that when she leveled her accusations and made her concerns public.”
“But her daughter…Was she so unaware of her daughter’s behavior that she would risk bringing it to light?”
“I will never believe she was unaware, but what she used to support her charge was the divorce, except in her version it was Elaine who desired it. I was named the adulterer.”
