“Yes.”
“Do you know why she left?”
“No.”
Chase was lying. Kevin let it pass, since he already had that information.
“Where did she go then? Not to that milliner who taught her. That was later. So this is the gap. The biggest one.”
“As I understand it, she took service in another house.”
Chase appeared resolute. Definitive. It had not been a lie. Rosamund had implied the same thing while they journeyed to Paris.
“What family?”
Chase’s expression cracked just enough to be notable. A vague pulsing started on his jaw. A determined hardening of his gaze created a shield. “I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
“Askher.”
“I would rather not. It may not be anything important and I don’t want her thinking—”
“Thinking that you are suspicious of her? Hell, you are, so you may at least say so. This is a damnable way to make a marriage, Kevin. All this time and you have only now come out of your head enough to notice that you have thesegapsin your knowledge of her.”
Kevin waited while Chase’s annoyance dimmed. He had nothing to say for himself. He had been stupidly oblivious to what he did not know about Rosamund. But then he had not needed to know much, except that he desired her.
“Was she some man’s mistress during that time?”
Chase looked over, surprised. “Not that I know of. As I said, she took service again.”
“Yet you won’t tell me the family. That is very odd.”
Chase sank back in his chair. “I swear, I will kill Nicholas. The coward, leaving this to me alone.” He sighed deeply. “I did not say she took service with a family, Kevin. I said she took servicein a house.” He turned his head and looked Kevin right in the eye.
Kevin looked back, perplexed. Then clouds parted and light flowed. Of course. He had been an idiot not to see it before.
Just then the door opened and Nicholas strode in. He came over and looked at the two of them. His expression fell. He sent a questioning glance to Chase, who merely nodded.
“Welcome back, Nicholas,” Kevin said. “Just in time to be spared the moment when Chase told me my intended was a whore.”
* * *
“I should have seen it at once. After all, it is where I learned her name. At Mrs. Darling’s.” Kevin mused over the revelation while Nicholas sat down. “I assumed they only bought bonnets from her. Not that she had lived there. Yet it would have been an excellent place for Uncle to have met her, because it was one of his haunts.”
“You are taking this awfully well,” Nicholas said. “It must be a shock.”
“Not too much of a shock. It does fill the gap neatly.”
“But to learn—That is, to discover—”
“Better now than later,” Chase said.
“So you said this afternoon,” Nicholas said. “I told him your intentions and he turned green. I got it out of him. We decided we should tell you. Better now than later, he said.”
“YoudecidedIshould tell him, as I recall,” Chase snapped.
“I feared a big Kevin scene. Cursing. Rudeness. Nasty sarcasm. Only look, he is being a real soldier despite the destruction of his plans.”
