It took a moment for Rachel to register who he was talking about, and then she went terribly still.
“No.” She looked up at him in absolute horror. “But she is a lady of the ton. Are you certain about this?”
Simon let out a dry laugh. “It came as a surprise to me as well. I was too focused on my search to pay her any mind.”
Rachel felt her mind spinning. She recalled meeting the woman at a ball, and her father speaking to her. She had been perfectly polite.
“But why would Grace Langston even do such a thing?” she found herself questioning, and Simon squeezed her hand softly.
“My father had been carrying some secrets, it seemed,” he explained in a rough voice. “She admitted to me that she had been having an affair with him.”
”Are you certain that she was not misleading you?” Rachel questioned.
“I do not know. He did not strike me as that kind of man.” He sounded unsure himself. “He loved my mother.”
Rachel studied him, watching the way his jaw clenched. “Then there is the possibility that she is lying to you.”
“In any case,” Simon exhaled, “it is the fact that she has a connection to the case that is most baffling to me. I spent years trying to trace the person who I thought was a man in the ton, but it was her, all this time.”
Simon paused then, looking up at her with an expression in which she could only see guilt.
“There is something else that I must tell you.”
Rachel felt her heart rate quicken. “Go on, then.” There was no use building up suspense. Everything was splayed out in the open amongst them now.
“Our marriage…” he trailed. “It was carried out to help me get to the murderer. I married you to protect my secrets.”
Rachel could hear the strain in Simon’s voice, and she knew immediately that it was difficult for him to admit this.
“What do you mean by that?” Her heart pounded against her chest.
“I married you not because I wanted a wife but because I needed a way to conceal what I was truly doing,” Simon said earnestly. “It made sense to me at the time. A marriage to a proper lady, one that could help distract me from my other activities.”
Rachel did not dare interrupt him, even though the confession hit her like a blow to the chest. She wanted to give him a chance to explain himself.
“I knew the man who murdered my parents was part of the ton,” he said. “I knew that if I was going to find him, I could not stand on the outside looking in. I had to be one of them—to appear as though I had accepted my place and my title, as though I had moved on.”
“And a wife would make you appear… settled,” Rachel exhaled slowly.
Simon nodded, his fingers flexing before curling back into tight fists.
“No one suspects a man who is building a home,” he confirmed. “A husband does not have the luxury of investigating matters that should have long been buried. He is harmless if anything.”
“So, you married me to play the part.”
“I suppose you could phrase it like that.” Guilt tinged his tone.
Rachel should have felt angry. If he had told her this before, she would have pressed him for more answers, but something had shifted inside her now.
“I fully expect you to be angry at me,” Simon continued, “and you have every right to be after all that I have put you through. It would not surprise me if your opinion of me has changed.”
“You should not put words into my mouth like that,” Rachel corrected him. “You do not know if anger is what I feel.”
“Is it not?” Simon searched her eyes for an answer.
Rachel took a measured breath, her fingers tightening in the blanket.
“I am unsure myself,” she admitted finally. “If you had told me this before, I would have been angry. But now… I think I understand why you did it.”
