Arabella’s expression softened. “Very well. We’ll leave it. But an argument doesn’t mean an ending, you know. And we’ll face whatever comes together, just as we always do.”
Julia linked an arm through Evelina’s. “Yes. Always.”
Evelina sighed and this time there was comfort she hadn’t been able to find until that moment. “Please, won’t you just show me your house and tell me all about how good your new protector is in bed…oh, what is his name?”
“Laurence,” Julia said with a shake of her head. “Lord Castleton, if you want to be formal about it.”
“Castleton,” Evelina said, and hoped it would stick this time. “Let me just be Evelina again, not the jilted former mistress of the Duke of Southwater or the unwanted co-conspirator of the Earl of Blackburn.”
“We can easily do that,” Arabella said, and brought her back to the settee. “First, Julia, you must tell Evie what you were saying to be before she got here. About the jewels!”
Her sister giggled, and as they put their heads together as they so often had over their years as courtesans, Evie felt a calm come over her. But it wasn’t quite enough to make her forget that she had no idea where she stood with Vaughn.
And a sneaking suspicion that love was the word that fit the ache in her heart when she thought of him.
CHAPTER18
Vaughn hadn’t had a good night and this morning he felt it as he rode across town for his meeting with Florence. He hadn’t slept, tossing and turning. But it hadn’t been his wife and whatever they would discuss that haunted him.
No, it had been Evie. Her words about ending their plot. The way she’d looked when she walked away from his parlor and, he feared, his life. He had dreamed of the same. Of trying to catch her and having her forever out of reach instead.
So now he felt bleary-eyed and tense as he reached the home where Florence had been staying and swung down from his horse to stare up at the place. Any time he’d ridden by in the past, it had been in the night, creeping around like some obsessed schoolboy and hoping his shame wouldn’t be observed and revealed.
In the light, the home was very pretty. Small, but fashionable. And it had once been Evelina’s. A place she’d believed she’d live out the rest of her days, protected by the duke.
Anger stirred in Vaughn’s chest and he tamped it down as he made his way to the painted blue door and knocked. A butler greeted him and he was taken down the hallway to a parlor.
He didn’t think he’d ever come here during the time Evie had lived here as Southwater’s mistress, but he was certain most of the sophisticated style of the place was hers. The pretty, comfortable-looking furniture, the understated paintings and wallpaper, none of that felt like an addition Florence would make to a place. No, she’d always wanted to make rooms more startling in their display of the wealth behind them. Decorating and entertaining had been the way for her to show off.
And so now she benefitted from Evie’s style. Once again that anger rose up, not for himself, but for everything that had been stolen fromher.
“Vaughn.”
He started and turned to find Florence already three steps into the room. He’d been so tangled up in his thoughts about Evie that he hadn’t heard her enter.
He hadn’t been this close to his wife in a while and took a fraction of a moment to examine her. She was lovely, with all that perfectly arranged blonde hair and the expensively designed dress. One he’d always complimented her on, he noted.
But today he felt…nothing as he looked at her. No attraction. No frustration. No anger. Oddly, no pain.
Justnothing.
He inclined his head. “My lady.”
“Are we so formal now, Vaughn?” she asked softly, moving even closer.
“Mustn’t we be?” he asked, and meant the question. “After all, in a fortnight’s time you won’t be my wife. You’ll be a stranger.”
Her eyes fluttered shut. A little dramatically, he thought, and she lifted a hand to her chest as if that statement caused her pain. “Oh, Vaughn.”
“‘Oh, Vaughn?’” he repeated on a humorless laugh. “It wasyourrequest that has brought us to this outcome.”
Her gaze came back open and there was annoyance in her expression now. Apparently she had hoped for a different reaction. She shifted and folded her arms. “Well, you cannot pretend you aren’t happy with it. After all, you haven’t hiddenher, have you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He said the words and waited for some triumph to come, as it had when Evie said that Florence and Southwater had been shunned. Only it didn’t. This was the culmination of all their plans, wasn’t it? It was hard to recall in that moment.
“Evelina Comerford.” Ice clung to every syllable Florence said. “Harry’s former whore.”
