Her lower lip trembled slightly as she swallowed. “My—my little house?”
He nodded, though the smallness of her voice was so broken that he wanted to turn away from it. “Yes, I’m afraid so. I can take you there now if you’d like. I’d wager they’re together. They’ve hardly been anywhere else if my sources are to be believed.”
She didn’t respond for a moment. He could see her fighting with herself, fighting the desire to know the truth versus the protective instinct to keep it away as long as possible. But at last she nodded. “Yes.”
He stood. “Then I’ll arrange for my carriage to be readied. I’ll return shortly.”
He left her, forcing himself not to look back at her. It didn’t matter that he didn’t. He knew she was shrinking into herself. He knew even more that what he was doing was wrong. That it was certainly not his finest hour, to drag this poor woman to the proof of her betrayal so that…what? That he’d have a partner in pain?
And yet he didn’t stop himself as he called for Langley to ready his carriage for the journey ahead.
* * *
Evelina had to focus on the act of breathing for it no longer seemed automatic. In and out, slow and steady so she didn’t lose consciousness as she sat across from Blackburn in his fine carriage rushing across the city toward…
She didn’t want to think about what the two of them were rushing toward. Blackburn was so quiet and grim, his green gaze locked on her though his expression was unreadable. To focus herself, she examined him. She knew the man very little, just in passing as Harry’s friend. But she’d always seen him as light, an entertaining and bright gentleman who had always treated her with respect, which was not a given in the men of theton.
But now he was shadow of what he’d been before. He was made up only of frowns and pain that bubbled so close to the surface that he couldn’t hide it. It was sad to see and also terrifying. He wasn’t pretending this grief and betrayal, of that she was almost entirely certain.
And that meant she was very likely about to uncover exactly what she was praying was a lie. A misunderstanding. A nightmare she would wake from.
The carriage slowed and she realized Blackburn’s driver had brought them not just in front of her old house but into the little park across the street from it. She looked out the window and flinched at the sight of the pretty gables and bright blue door. She had loved this house. Harry had promised her it would be hers forever,theirhome even if propriety dictated he marry a woman of his station and produce his heirs and spares.
She had expected it to be dark, perhaps not yet inhabited since she had vacated it less than a month before and these things usually took time. But the lights were bright in the windows, the curtains pulled back to allow her glimpses into the life that had once been hers.
“I think I ought not do this,” Blackburn said softly, perhaps more to himself than to her.
She started at the low resonance of his voice. She’d been a little distracted in her own world and now she was dragged back into his plan to prove Harry’s betrayal.
“Why?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s cruel to you. I don’t want to be cruel.”
“No. It’s not cruel. If this is true, I want to see it for myself so there will be no question. And if it’s not, perhaps we’ll see something here that will give us both ease.”
He didn’t look convinced but sighed. “We’ll have a better view if we leave the vehicle. It isn’t raining anymore,” he said, and pushed the carriage door open. He stepped down and reached back up for her. “May I?”
She stared at the outstretched hand, gloved, but that didn’t hide the lean strength of the man. Nor the slight shake of his fingers as they hung there between them.
“Thank you,” she managed to gasp out, and took his help to get down. She followed him to a line of waist-high bushes just beyond the park entrance and he stopped there and reached into the inside pocket of his great coat to retrieve a spyglass.
She arched a brow as he extended it and handed it to her. “You come prepared.”
“I wish I could say I hadn’t come here since I heard the news about the affair. That I wasn’t trying to make sense of it by watching the life that is no longer my own, but I’m too exhausted to pretend otherwise. You’ll be able to see into the main parlor from here.”
She caught her breath and lifted the spyglass. He was correct, she could see into the main parlor just off her foyer, almost as clearly as if she could open the window and step inside. The room was empty, though, there was no ringing proof that Harry had broken the bonds of friendship and the promises he’d made of a future. She was about to lower the glass and tell Blackburn so when the parlor door opened and the world stopped.
Harry stepped inside, talking over his shoulder to someone who had not yet entered the room. Evelina was shocked by his expression in the bright light of the parlor. He looked so…happy. Almost excited. When was the last time she’d seen that look on his normally serious face?
She didn’t have a chance to think further on that question when Harry’s companion followed him into the room. The person was, indeed, Lady Blackburn, who Evelina had seen a few times at the opera and in Hyde Park. She was a very pretty woman, with curly blonde hair and a slight figure.
She reached back to close the door as she entered the room and moved to the sideboard, which was slightly out of view of the spyglasses reach for it was beyond the window. Evelina leaned forward, trying to see, but was further blocked when Harry stepped in her way and showed her only a view of his broad back. She huffed out a breath but then stopped breathing entirely when the couple moved together back into the view of the window.
They were locked in an embrace, a passionate kiss that answered all the swirling, horrifying questions she’d been trying not to answer for the last twenty-four hours. That ones that broke every last vestige of what she’d believed to be true.
This woman was inherhouse withherHarry. When they parted from their embrace, Lady Blackburn reached up to touch his cheek and there was an intimacy that couldn’t have been born in a few days or even weeks. It went far deeper.
The spyglass slipped from Evelina’s hands and made a broken crunch on the path at her feet. The rain began again, as if on cue in some cruel play, but she could hardly feel the cold sting of it as she spun on her heel and staggered into the deserted park.
