Valaria nodded. “Sometimes I think of how hard I fought to keep him away and shudder to think what I would have lost.”
“I’m so happy for you both,” Bernadette said, and the words drew their attention to her. They both faced her and she shifted beneath their regard. She could feel the edges of their pity and she feared it. It was part of the reason she hadn’t addressed her desire to take a lover with them.
“How long until your place here on Kent’s Row is empty?” she asked Valaria as a way to avoid any questions she didn’t want to answer.
Now Valaria’s expression grew sad and she and Flora exchanged a glance once more. Flora had been gone for months from her place on the Row where the women had all been neighbors. Bernadette had other friends on the street, of course, which was populated with widows, mostly. But they were older ladies, not interested in some of the lively things she and these two discussed.
“Only a few days more,” Valaria said in answer to the question. Tears flooded her eyes. “It was a refuge for me when I came here. You two were and are a refuge. And as happy as I am to finally be able to live under the same roof as my love, I will miss our times together here.”
Bernadette caught her hand and squeezed gently. “And will you sell it, as Flora did with her place?”
“Yes,” Valaria said slowly.
Bernadette got up and crossed to the sideboard, where she poured herself more tea without looking at them. “Well, it all makes sense, of course,” she choked out. She felt them move toward her even before both of them wrapped their arms around her from behind.
“We hate leaving you!” Flora sobbed.
Bernadette turned into her friends, and for a moment they were a blubbering mess together. But at last she wiped at her tears and tried to put on a good face. “You aren’t leaving me, of course. We’ll see each other often. I am capable of going across Town to your neighborhoods and you will come here.” She smoothed her skirt. “And new ladies will come to the Row. Though I do have to say that the dowager who took Flora’s old place moved in last week, and I swear all she wanted to talk about when we met was fox hunting. More specifically, fox hunts she went on twenty-five years ago.” She pulled a face and Flora and Valaria smiled.
“You know,” Valaria said as she motioned them all back to the sitting area in the middle of Bernadette’s parlor. “You could let a place farther into Town. Nearer to both of us.”
Bernadette bent her head. “No, I’ve settled here. The idea of moving all over again seems…” She trailed off. She didn’t want to saypatheticfor fear it would rouse a whole conversation she wasn’t prepared to have. Instead she lifted her chin and smiled. “But Valaria, have you managed to wheedle out of Callum where he intends to take you for your honeymoon in a few days?”
“Yes,” Flora encouraged. “I wondered that too. The weather looks to cooperate despite the season.”
They began to talk about that, with Valaria giving her guesses. Despite her own maudlin thoughts, Bernadette lost herself in their laughter and joy. She didn’t begrudge them their happiness. In fact, she welcomed it. But she still couldn’t help but feel like they were two wives…and she was the one left behind. The unwanted one.
She thought again of Theo’s expression of horror when she’d said she wanted a lover and blushed despite her attempts not to react.
“Are youcertainyou’re well?” Valaria asked, covering her hand.
“I’m fine,” she lied, and hoped that would make it true.
Flora didn’t look convinced, but she sipped her tea. “Are you still going through those boxes in the attic?”
“Yes,” Bernadette said, relieved to discuss something that didn’t feel laced with emotion. “I realized that some of Tunbridge’s things were packed along with mine. Letters, it seems, so I’ll need to go through them and see what can be destroyed and if anything needs to be returned for the family.”
Flora flinched. “Oh, I’m sorry. That must be a difficult task.”
Now it was Bernadette who exchanged a look with Valaria. Flora’s first marriage had been a happy one, so she sometimes didn’t understand the indifference one could feel toward a late spouse. She shrugged. “I don’t think it will be. He wasn’t a particularly interesting man. I’m certain it’s all entirely boring.”
Like her life, actually. And she hated that it was so true. That it might always be true.
* * *
Theo paced his study, wishing he could pretend away the subject that troubled his mind. Only he couldn’t. He hadn’t for nearly twenty-four hours.
Etta. He could only think of Etta and her shocking statement that she wished to take a lover. He’d thought about it the entire remainder of the ball last night, watching her even as he avoided her so he couldthink.
Then his betrayer of a mind had conjured dreams of her, head thrown back, dark hair down around her shoulders, face contorted in pleasure as she rode…a lover. Him. Rode him. And he’d woken up hard as steel and aching for her.
He’d tried to push the thoughts aside the rest of the day, but they would not go. She haunted every corner of his existence now, her words echoing in his mind. Her expression rising up before him when he was trying to do literally anything else but ponder her and her desires.
“Shit,” he grunted as he pivoted to pace once more. He stared at his door as he came to a stop. Perhaps the best thing he could do now was actually talk to her. Unlike last night, she would be fully sober now, certainly she would tell him what she’d said was a mistake. He would reassure her, they would go back to the friendship they had rekindled when Valaria and Callum’s affair and subsequent marriage had thrown them back together after years apart.
Everything could go back to normal. He knew it was true.
He exited the room and called out to his butler that he would not be home for supper. Kimball didn’t seem surprised—after all, Theo often didn’t remain home for meals. He went out into the world. Sought pleasure.
