Chapter 11
Hannah strode back and forth across the parlor floor as her troubled mind raced. She had spent the day taking care of various calls and errands, trying to pretend that her life was normal when it was anything but. She had a husband back at home. A husband she loved but had been too cowardly to confess to when the opportunity arose the night before.
Halfway through her day, she had surrendered to the fact that she was never going to be able to concentrate and came home to talk to him, only to find he had gone out not ten minutes before her arrival. The staff didn’t know where he had gone, nor when he would return. Now her entire being was on edge and she wanted to scream as she paced the chamber.
“You’ll drive yourself mad with waiting, or perhaps talk yourself out of confessing your heart,” she muttered out loud, “unless you determine where to find him or at least when he will be back.”
There was only one way to find that out if the staff didn’t know. She left the parlor and walked to his study. With a deep breath, she entered the room. Since her marriage, she hadn’t spent much time here. Neither had he, truth be told. Their bedchamber was their shared domain. This was his and only his.
Her heart rate slowed a bit as she entered, looking around with a smile for the room was so like him. It was masculine, with dark mahogany paneling and a matching desk. The chairs before the fire were leather, there was a sideboard with liquor lined up in carefully arranged bottles.
And yet there was something more here than that casual display of male power. There were two pictures hanging on the wall, and her breath caught as she stepped up to examine them more closely. Both were by the artist Marguerite Gerard, the famous female painter from France. One of a fluffy cat drinking a saucer of milk made her smile.
There were miniatures on Duncan’s mantel, scattered haphazardly. Pictures of his brother, of an older man who had to be his late father, of a frowning lady who shared his eyes, probably his mother. She wondered at the boyhood of this man she’d married had experienced. How it had shaped him into the man he was today. Once she told him that she loved him, she hoped that perhaps their relationship would grow. That they would be able to share their deepest pains and happinesses of the past.
She walked to his desk and looked at the surface. It was very tidy. Only a quill sat in the corner, and a bottle of ink. Otherwise the gleaming surface was empty—save for a missive that lay half open there.
She frowned as she stared at it. It appeared it had been tossed there in a rush. Like he’d been reading it before he took off for some important meeting. If she read it, it might reveal where he had gone. When he would return.
That felt like a violation. After all, she had not been invited into his chamber. The letter was not for her eyes. And yet she felt a drive of curiosity toward it, just as she did toward everything that revealed more of the man she called husband.
“I’ll just peek,” she muttered, trying to find permission from herself as she tilted her head and tried to see what was scrawled on the fine paper.
Your Vanessa
Those were the only words she could read, but her heart nearly stopped in her chest at the feminine handwriting and the sentiment that hand had written.YourVanessa. Vanessa, a woman. Who felt she belonged to Duncan. Whose letter had inspired him to drop everything he was doing and rush to her side.
Her hands shook as she picked up the paper, almost expecting it to burn her flesh as she did so. It didn’t. It only seared her heart as she sank down into the chair across from Duncan’s desk and read the entire note thathisVanessa had written to him. The words she found there didn’t ease her mind. If anything, they broke her heart even more. This person, this woman, had clearly meant something to Duncan in the past. Enough that she would turn to him in what looked to be a time of need. She’d written of what they meant to each other. That he was the only one she could turn to.
Hannah’s heart sank as she set the letter away and put her head in her hands. She’d been so focused in the last few days on the feelings she now knew she felt. On finding the courage to reveal those feelings to Duncan.
Hannah loved him. But that was onlyherheart. Only her feelings. And they violated every agreement she and Duncan had made with each other at the beginning. If he was truly attached to this Vanessa woman, that wasn’t even a violation of their vows, for she had said he was free to pursue an outside lover if he kept from humiliating her.
That promise, that agreement, felt like it had been made so long ago. And yet it hadn’t. Duncan had been distant from her for days. Pulling away even as he made love to her so sweetly. She’d tried to fight that detachment, but perhaps this note, this woman, was why he was pulling away. Perhaps he was in a rush to leave because he wanted to save a woman named Vanessa. Loveher.
She pushed from the desk and left the room in a few long strides. Her stomach hurt, her heart twisted. Yet she wasn’t owed this reaction and she knew it. She hadn’t told Duncan her heart. She certainly had no intention of doing so now when she knew he’d gone to call on some old lover. Current lover? Either way, it didn’t really matter.
What did matter was that Hannah didn’t make a cake out of herself when he returned. She needed to harden herself now, find a way to accept this and return to the parameters they had set forth at the outset of their marriage. That was the best way to protect herself, after all. To keep herself from breaking into a thousand pieces.
She stumbled as she walked up the hallway and crashed against the wall, where she leaned and blinked against tears that burned her eyes and made her breath short and heavy. Duncan had gone to another woman. Duncan didn’t love her. Duncan wouldn’t love her, and if she confessed her heart to him now, knowing where he’d gone…it would end in heartbreak.
The tears slid down her cheeks, hot and heartbreaking. She couldn’t face him today. Not and remain strong. She had to go away. She had to go until she could find calm.
So she went upstairs to call a maid to change. Because she would not be here when he returned. She couldn’t.
* * *
Duncan handed over his handkerchief to Vanessa and watched as she wiped the tears from her dark green eyes with an apologetic smile.
“So that is my tale of woe,” she said with a shake of her head. “I feel like a fool calling on you for help.”
He wrinkled his brow. Since his arrival at his former mistress’s home an hour before, she had been telling him a terrible story about her beloved younger sister and the trouble she’d gotten in with a cad of the highest order.
“She’s your family,” he said gently. “I understand that. Of course I’ll help you. How much do you need? Will five hundred be enough?”
Her lips parted. “Duncan, that is a huge sum. I could never pay it back.”
He waved his hand. “Consider it part of your settlement. I assure you, I am happy to give it to help you sister. Go to my solicitor’s office in a few days. He’ll have instructions to deliver the funds to you.”
