She couldn’t see as she walked into the darkness, she could barely hear the earl calling her name behind her. It didn’t matter now. Not anymore.
She was heading toward the entrance on the opposite side of the park. Where she would go once she reached it, she had no idea. She was far from Arabella’s old home with no vehicle and no money since she’d foolishly left her reticule behind at Blackburn’s. She didn’t care, though. All she wanted was to get away.
“Please!” Blackburn’s voice was closer now. “Miss Comerford!”
She continued to ignore him, tears blurring her eyes as she exited the park and stumbled forward into the street.
“Evelina!”
The earl caught her arm and yanked her back just as a carriage rumbled by, sending water splashing up on her skirt. She stumbled against his chest and then looked up at him in the flickering lamplight. The rain continued to pour down, washing over both of them as they stared at each other in grief and pain and…andangerthat she tamped down. If she let that loose she might never stop.
Blackburn stepped back from her, steadying her gently before he tucked her hand into his elbow. “Come, I’ll take you home.”
She didn’t fight him as he started to take her back around the perimeter of the park to the vehicle they had abandoned. All she could do was let out a humorless snort and whisper, “There is no home. Not anymore.”
CHAPTER3
Vaughn rubbed a towel through his hair and stared at the parlor door, just as he had been every two minutes since he had returned Evelina Comerford to her home. Well, it was her sister Arabella’s old home, as Evelina kept correcting him, even as she looked through him with that hollow, hurting stare.
The one he had caused because he needed her to know the truth, somehow. Why? Because he wanted a partner in his pain? Because he couldn’t stand to let her be happy with her misaligned memories? What a bastard he was.
The parlor door opened and she entered the room. She had changed from her earlier gown and her hair was down in damp curls around her shoulders. She had a little more color in her cheeks than she’d had on the ride back, and for that he was grateful.
She gave him a grim look and then crossed to the sideboard and poured them each a whisky in glasses far too tall for the drink. She handed one over and motioned to the chairs before the warm fire.
“Tell me everything,” she said after she’d taken a long sip.
He gripped his own glass in his hand without taking a drink. “Miss Comerford?—”
“Please!” she interrupted, her voice sharp. “Please tell me.”
He nodded. “Very well. You deserve that after what I’ve just shown you. I suppose I must start with my marriage.”
He blinked after he said that last sentence. Talk about his marriage? He didn’t do that with anyone. And yet here they were.
“It was arranged, of course,” he said, practically forcing the words from his mouth because it was so difficult to make them fall naturally. “I was twenty-five when I realized my father was dying and twenty-six when he brought me to his side and told me that he would see me married before his death. They had even chosen the lady for me, should I approve.”
“And you did,” Evelina said softly.
“I did. Florence was the eldest daughter of the Marquess of Estridge. It was a good political and social match. She was four years my junior, so not so young that we had nothing in common. And she was…is…lovely to look at.”
Evelina turned her head, but before she took another drink she conceded, “Yes. There is no denying that as much as I might like to do so in this moment. It seems you were drawn to her.”
He hesitated. “Nothing repelled me. And as it was the great wish of my family, I agreed to the match and we were married before that summer was out.”
He stopped talking then, trying not to let his mind spiral to what had come after those first heady months of marriage when he and Florence had tried to forge a bond beyond duty. He thought they had sometimes when she slept in his arms or laughed at some silly quip, but now nothing in any happier day felt real. Not when her smiles had so swiftly turned sour and her pleasure had gone in other directions.
“What changed?” Evelina pressed. “Divorce is almost unheard of in any set, but certainly not in the Upper Ten Thousand. How did you move from all the hopes of an arranged union to now?”
“Florence was…restless,” he said. “Even from the beginning. She wanted more, always more. When my father died and I became earl, I thought she would be sated, for we had access to all the funds and she had a great deal more to do as countess than she had as mere viscountess. She embraced it all. She redecorated every home I own, she bought gowns until the wardrobes burst with them, she hosted parties and more parties.”
“Did you like all that?” Evelina asked.
“I didn’tdislikeit.” He said the words and felt how false they were even as he forged ahead in the explanation. “I thought we had a reasonable marriage, truly. It was difficult not to like her, with all her spark and laughter and drive. Sometimes I thought I might even…” He drew off with a shake of his head. “Well, she never returned any feelings toward me, but she wasn’t unkind. And she never turned me away when I asked for her company.”
He hesitated because this raw confession felt so odd. He’d never said any of these things to any other person in his life, not a friend, not a family member. And yet now that he’d begun to speak, the intimacies of five years of marriage came spilling out. He hated himself for not being able to keep them in.
“There were no children,” he continued, now more slowly, for the pain was coming and he wanted to hold it off a little longer. “I wanted children, not just because it was my duty to provide them, but because I thought I might like being a father.”
