“But we digress.”
“Which I am more than happy to do.”
“Using my considerable brain capacity, I have come to the conclusion that Miss Higglesworth is in fact your ex-fiancée, Lady Millicent.”
“Rory, keep your voice down.”
“Lady Millicent Lawrence,” Rory said softly. “Daughter of the recently deceased Marquess.”
Joseph loved his siblings, but if he was to trust one to keep a secret, it would be the man at his side. Rory could hold his counsel when required.
“She is Millicent Lawrence,” Joseph confirmed Rory’s words.
“She seems puffier somehow, and with the glasses I was not certain, and her face seems different.”
“I think she has something stuffed in her cheeks, and other places on her person.”
“Really? Well, that’s ingenious, but I should imagine uncomfortable when taking tea.”
“Idiot.” Joseph found Milly again; she was talking to the sisters.
“How did you come to make her acquaintance again?”
He told Rory his story and felt relief at being able to do so.
Rory whistled when he finished. “Why was she walking about on the road at that hour?”
“That, I do not know.”
“This must be hard for you after your history with her. Although, I remember thinking at the time that something was off.”
“Off how? I never told anyone why she left me.”
“Off, because I have never known a woman more in love with a man than she was with you. She once told me that she feared one day she would wake from the dream you had placed her in. She laughed at the time, dismissing her words as silly, but I saw the fear that you would not wed her.”
“I loved her,” Joseph rasped.
“Yes, you likely thought you did. But to be fair, her love was much more.”
As his brother’s words had an uncomfortable ring of truth to them, he said instead, “She sent word to meet her early the last morning I saw her. I was then led to believe she was leaving me for another man. A man she loved a great deal more than she could ever love me.” He wasn’t sure why he was telling his brother this now, but felt relief to have shared what he’d held inside since finding Milly again.
“Good God, you kept that quiet.”
“It was not something I wanted to speak of, Rory. I was devastated, angry. Then Father passed, and I put her out of my head.” Far too easily, Joseph realized now.
“I miss him.”
“As do I,” Joseph said.
“It was all lies, of course. Millicent Lawrence loved you desperately. One only had to look at her when you were in the room to see that.”
Christ!he could finally see that now with painful clarity. Her declarations of love to him, the small things she’d done to make him see how she felt. She would never have left him unless she was forced to. Joseph had been a fool to believe otherwise. His anger had clouded his clarity.
“What do you plan to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“If she does not already know, then you must tell about her about her father, Joseph.”
