Because no one else in the world could understand his grief except for the woman he was riding away from. And the two of them hardly knew each other at all.
CHAPTER4
Evelina hadn’t been able to find a way out of supper with Silas, her sisters and their beloved aunt Caroline two nights after her strange encounter with Blackburn. If she could have, she would have, because her mind spun with thoughts of the man and his suggestion that if the two of them pretended to be lovers, it would hurt their former partners.
Why did that keep her up at night? She’d never been a vengeful person and yet the idea gave her a lightness that had been lacking since Harry ended things. What kind of monster was she?
“Evie.”
She started as she realized her aunt was speaking to her. She glanced up to find her reaching across the table, covering Evelina’s hand. Her expression was lined with pity, just as everyone else’s at the table was. God, but she hated that. It made her want to jump out of the closest window and run into the night, never to be seen again, even if she knew they all only had her best interest at heart.
“Dearest,” Aunt Caroline said. “I cannot bear to see you like this. I’ve remained silent on the topic in the hopes you would recover on your own, but I think wemustaddress what is happening.”
Evelina blinked. When she and her sisters had been forced to run from their abusive father and eventually had each become courtesans, they had embarked on a world very different from the one their aunt inhabited. Caroline was a lady, a widow with means enough to be independent, but one still bound by the strict rules of Society. Caroline embraced those same rules, so the sisters only rarely discussed the reality of their experiences with her.
But now her aunt held her gaze as if she truly understood and Evelina glared at first Arabella and then Julia. “You told her?”
Before either could answer, her aunt squeezed her hand again. “No. Neither of them said a word. The scandal with the divorce of Lord and Lady Blackburn is part of my world as much as it is yours. And this new development involving the Duke of Southwater’s part is spreading like wildfire now that they’ve made theiramourpublic. Though how they think they can survive such abominably wretched behavior is beyond me.”
Arabella wrinkled her brow. “Abominably wretched behavior.That’s the same turn of phrase Simone used when she verified to me that Harry and Lady Blackburn were together.”
Caroline shrugged, though her cheeks grew a little pinker, perhaps out of embarrassment that she would speak like a celebrated courtesan even in a small way.
“Well, your friend is very wise. What those two have done is social suicide from every direction, I think. I hope.” Caroline pressed her lips together. “But the more important matter to me is how much it’s clearly hurt you, Evie.”
Evelina sighed. Now that she’d talked to Blackburn, she felt strong enough to broach the subject here. How that was possible, she didn’t want to explore too much. “I wouldn’t sport with the intelligence of anyone at this table and deny it. I was fool enough to believe everything Harry…Southwaterever said to me. To take each promise as gospel and never prepare for any other life than the one where I was his true, if hidden, love who would be protected financially and physically. Foolish, foolish girl.”
“You aren’t truly saying that you consider this your fault,” Silas, Arabella’s husband, said as he tossed his napkin beside his empty plate.
“Whose else could it be?”
He arched a brow and the sudden intensity of his stare made Evelina catch her breath. He was often so silly and fun, but when he speared a person this way she was very clear on why Arabella was obsessed with the man.
“It’s that poxy prick Southwater’s fault,” he said, and then glanced toward Caroline. “Apologies, Caroline.”
Caroline was blushing like a plum at the words, but still nodded vigorously. “Silas is right, as colorful as his language is. If you believed in a man who told you he loved you, that is on him, not you. And he deserves every fragment of pain or suffering he will endure over the rest of his awful life.”
Evelina worried her lip. There it was again, that intrusive thought about Blackburn’s suggestion of a way to get revenge. To cause a little of the pain and suffering her aunt was describing.
“What is that look?” It was Julia who asked and she arched a brow at Evelina.
“What—what look?”
“Oh, yes,thatlook!” Arabella leaned closer. “It’s very wicked and I rarely see it on your pretty face anymore. What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing at all,” she lied, and pushed her half-full plate away. “You two are seeing things.”
“Liar, liar!” Julia said in a sing-song tone. “It’s evident you’re thinking of something specific. Tell us.”
Evelina looked around the table. She trusted her sisters without hesitation and she had very little doubt that Silas would do anything in his power to protect her. And he seemed the kind of man who would enjoy a revenge plot.
But then there was Caroline. Once again she was concerned about exposing her to a life she never would have chosen.
“Er, Aunt Caroline, I don’t want to offend?—”
Her aunt folded her arms. “Please. I may not have taken the same path you and your sisters took, but I’m not some complete innocent.”
“No, indeed not,” Julia said with a little look at their aunt that Evelina didn’t understand.
