Moreover, to Adam’s dismay, Richard Fairclough had been engaged to another lady at the time he and Alice were discovered.The Timeswas almost gleeful to disclose the sordid details of one young woman’s heartbreak and the other’s near ruin but for Fairclough offering for her hand in marriage. Still, the papers labeled him a dishonorable rogue and Alice, a sorry jezebel. She had disappeared from London’s social scene at once, going back to Caversham until her wedding day.
At that time, Adam learned, they moved into the less desirable neighborhood of Gloucester Street. It was a place of respectable citizens, some with noblemen in their family tree, but who lived by more meager means than what he would have expected of Lord Fairclough.
Adam decided the best way to deal with anything he learned was simply to ask her. He refused to live a life of doubt.
Therefore, at dinner, over the first course of pottage, he broached the subject. He hadn’t rehearsed, so perhaps the question came out badly.
“Did you know your previous husband was already engaged when you let him spend time with you?”
He hadn’t meant to blindside her, but Alice dropped her spoon, letting it clatter upon the bowl’s rim and splash the tablecloth. He waved away the footman who left his station next to the sideboard to assist.
“You may leave until the next course is ready. Thank you.” He sent the man on his way. He ought to have done that before he began a private conversation.
Alice dabbed at her lips. “I was aware. But how did you know?”
Adam didn’t want to tell her the extent of his investigation or how many newspapers he’d read, knowing it would not go over well. After all, she was the one who had told him he shouldn’tmarry her. It wasn’t fair now to look for reasons she might be deemed unsuitable.
“It doesn’t matter how I know. And now that I think of it, I don’t care about your answer. I apologize. It’s petty to rehash the past.”
“This is because of Gerald Fairclough’s rudeness the other night, isn’t it?”
“I suppose he made me curious.”
“He will say worse about me before he stops. Thus, if you have any misgivings, you may as well tell me now or pass over them and let them go.”
That was the forthright, practical governess he’d fallen in love with.
“I agree. I have no misgivings about us. But you seem so entirely different from the person who would get involved with an engaged man and...” He trailed off.
“And hurt someone like Miss Dumfrey. That was the lady’s name. I am not the same person I was. At the time, it was all a lark, and I had no intention of sticking with Richard more than I did with any of the men I knew at the time. I was waiting for my heart to beat fast, the way it did the first time you talked to me on the street and gave me back my rosin.”
Adam loved the memory of first seeing her on Great Pulteney Street. “I thought the package contained fancy lace gloves for an assembly.”
She nearly smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I needed wax for my bow. I had no need for lace gloves in Bath until I met you, but I must have gone through hundreds of pairs when I was younger.”
Alice picked up her spoon. “Believe me, I wish Richard had remained faithful to Miss Dumfrey and left me alone.”
“He would have been someone else’s problem,” Adam agreed.
“But I probably would have got myself into trouble, in any case,” she confessed. “Of similar ilk, too, knowing my thoughts and actions at the time.”
Adam pondered that. She was all but stating she would have been caught kissing another man.
“On the one hand, I wish you hadn’t been involved with a rake. On the other, I am glad you married a man who died young because regardless of what or who came before me, I think we are right for one another. I would have hated missing out on you.”
Her smile lit up the room.
“I didn’t know a man could be like you.”
Adam had an inkling what she meant. While he’d had his own wild moments, his father had instilled in him a deep respect for the fairer sex. He could hardly escape their intelligence, virtue, and kindness when living with his mother and four sisters.
And if it had taken him a little extra time to realize he could just as easily love a woman from the middle class as the upper one, then he, like Alice, was no longer the same person he had once been. In his case, he’d traded in a distinctly prejudiced view, which he hadn’t realized he had, for a broader way of thinking.
“I won’t ask you any more questions,” he vowed.
“Thank you, but to satisfy your curiosity, Richard’s heartbroken fiancée was anything but. She was angry, as I recall, more than she was devastated. I believe Miss Dumfrey already knew he was a blackguard, and she had made a mistake in agreeing to a marriage. Shortly afterward, she married a Scottish baron and moved away.”
Adam coughed. “It seems she got the best bit of beef, leaving you the gristle.”
