“Tell me, Nathan.”
“I was going to ask her to marry me.”
“Miss Carlow?”
“Yes.” The look his brother threw him was filled with pain. “I loved her, Gabe. It takes time to get over something like that.”
“It is two years ago now, I believe?”
“Two and a half.”
“At the time you had no wish to discuss the matter, and then you seemed to return to the Nathan you’ve always been, so I did not question you further about it.”
“We are Devilles. We do not sit about the place weeping.” His brother’s smile was small.
“Will you tell me what happened now, Nathan?”
“I don’t know actually. One minute she told me she cared and seemed headed as I was in the direction of our future marriage.”
“You never told us at the time it was that serious.”
“I was about to when she disappeared. Our friendship had grown into so much more over the last few months, and it was time to take the next step… or so I thought.”
“Disappeared?”
“She simply stopped attending balls and events. I sent a note to her townhouse to see if all was well, and her reply was simply that she was no longer interested in me—”
“She said that?”
“The note said that she was not ready to marry and she had no wish to mislead me into believing she did.”
“But you believed otherwise?” Gabe watched his brother’s face closely.
“Yes. It was so at odds to how she’d been with me that I called on her. The Carlow townhouse was closed up. The servant who answered my knock said the family had left London and would not be returning.”
“That’s odd.” Gabe frowned, trying to remember when last he saw a member of the Carlow family. “And now I think about it, they have not been seen in London for the last two seasons.”
“I still don’t understand it, Gabe.” He saw his brother’s confusion.
“You’ve been carrying this alone for two years? Why did you not tell one of us?”
“Tell you what? That Miss Carlow fled London rather than wed me?”
“Perhaps it is not as it seems? I mean, why would they just leave like that because she’d changed her mind? Something sounds off. Carlow is not known for investing in shoddy deals, but perhaps it is something to do with that?”
“Perhaps.”
“We will do some investigating, brother. There are four of us, after all. You are not alone. Talk to me next time. I’m always here for you and the others.”
“I should just move on, but strangely I’m struggling to do so. But enough of that, let us find your Miss Brown.”
“She is not my anything.”
“Of course she isn’t. My mistake.”
While Nathan looked out one window, Gabe looked out the other as the carriage rolled slowly through the London streets.Where are you, Dimity Brown?
As they passed the edges of a park, he saw the head of a large dog above the small fence.
