“Solicitors and representatives of the church who come to demand penance and pennies?” Vaughn couldn’t control the bitterness in his tone now. “Yes. Good then. The blue parlor. Oh, and offer her refreshments. I’ll join her shortly. Thank you.”
“Very good.” The butler executed a small bow, then exited the room, closing Vaughn back into his solitude. He paced to the window, staring out at the rain and then back to the fire. He repeated that path a few times as he tried to calm himself without success.
Why had Evelina come here? Was it to shout at him again? Or perhaps to give him news about their erstwhile lovers? Or did she want to blame him for what had happened now that she understood it? God knew he did that often enough to himself.
“Bollocks!” he repeated, only this time louder. He looked at himself in the mirror above the fireplace and smoothed his hair, straightened his waistcoat. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, though he didn’t recall taking it off. He glanced around but didn’t find it, so he left his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and forced himself to leave the relative safety of his study and head down to the blue parlor to meet his guest.
When he entered the chamber, he found her at the fire, staring into the flames with a deep frown on her face. As he closed the door, she started and turned fully toward him.
She was lovely, even with distress on every line of her face. Not as flashy as she had been last night at the hell when she wore her full regalia as a courtesan, but still alluring. Although, as he stepped toward her, he could see that she’d been crying. Her brown eyes were red-rimmed and a little puffy. He flinched at the evidence of her heartbreak.
“Miss Comerford,” he said.
This time she didn’t correct him and ask that he continue to call her Evelina. She only inclined her head. “My lord.”
“I-I wasn’t expecting you,” he said, and motioned to the chairs before the fire. He glanced over and saw the sideboard was empty. “Didn’t they bring you tea?”
“Your butler offered, but I refused.”
That she would refuse his hospitality didn’t bode well. “I see. Please, won’t you sit?”
He motioned again to the chairs and this time she moved to take one. He sat in the other and for a moment they just stared at each other. Her expression was unreadable, he hoped his was the same.
She folded and unfolded her hands in her lap for what felt like forever before she finally drew in a shaky breath and then said, “I-I know you weren’t expecting me. Probably you didn’t want to see me after my outburst last night.”
“I felt no such thing,” he said, and found that the politeness wasn’t entirely false.
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken, as if she feared to stop talking or else she might lose her nerve. “Either way, it was very rude of me to not send word ahead.”
She stopped and her fingers continued to clench and unclench in her lap as she inched to the front of her chair. She seemed to struggle with what to do or say next, with how to approach this untenable situation.
The thunder rumbled again, even louder than it had been in his study and she jumped.
He met her stare, hoping to soothe her a little. “Please, I can see your struggle. What can I do for you, Miss Comerford?”
“Oh.” She sighed. “I was so shocked last night when you told me what you think Harry has done.”
“I don’t think it, I know it,” he said.
She stiffened. “Yes, I believe you think you do. But it seems so outrageous. You two were so close. He would never?—”
Vaughn refused to listen to such a defense of his former friend and interrupted. “And yet he did.”
She shifted, her cheeks pinkening, and he could see she was getting upset again. The flush to her cheeks and flash to her eyes revealed both hurt and anger. She was truly lovely in both, though he never would have wished to see her so broken.
“I can see how you would be upset because of the divorce,” she said carefully. “Such a thing must be so shocking and horrible. But to accuse your friend…”
He folded his arms. “And what would it take for you to believe it, Evelina?”
She stopped short and opened and shut her mouth a few times. “I-I don’t know.”
He thought for a moment, his mind going over and over things that he often drank away, tried to forget. Things that had seared the truth into his mind so he could no longer deny the truth as she was trying to do.
He pursed his lips. “Would seeing them together help? At your old home?”
Her mouth dropped open. “My old home? The one Harry let for me? No, he let that go after I moved out. He…he…”
“He kept it,” Vaughn said softly. “And moved my wife into it last week, apparently. It is where he will keep her until he can make her duchess.”
