Regina shot her a sideways wicked grin. “First, I am in mourning and that is an entirely inappropriate question.”
“I beg your pard—”
“And second, whowouldn’tfancy that man?” Regina’s grin widened. “He looks like he stepped out of the pages of a novel about the Greek gods.” She fanned herself with her hand.
Nicole returned her grin. “He’s quite handsome, I’ll give you that.”
“And he carries a truncheon and handcuffs,” Regina added, clapping a melodramatic hand to her breast as though to still a rampaging heart.
“He has a pistol too,” Nicole said with a wink.
Regina shivered. “I’ll wager he does.”
Nicole’s crack of laughter echoed across the corridor. “That’s why I love you, Regina. You’re positively irreverent.”
“What do I have to be reverent about, I ask you?” Regina sighed. “I’m absolutely sick over John’s death, but honestly it’s truly made me consider things…”
All the mirth faded from Nicole’s expression. “Such as?”
“Such as how terribly short life can be. I need to change. I must pursue the things I want.”
“Which are…?”
“Precisely what I need to decide,” Regina said with another sigh. She shook her head. “You never told me… what happened between you and Mark… to make you leave for so long?”
Nicole stared up at the gorgeous painting of the mother-in-law she’d never met. Memories overtook her.
***
It hadn’t been until that fateful night three months after they’d married, that all hell broke loose.
Nicole had come home from a meeting with Daffin and Mark had been there, a grim look on his face. An open letter sat on the table in front of him, a bouquet of white roses tossed haphazardly on the tabletop.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her brow knitted in confusion.
He pointed to the letter. “This.”
She slid the letter off the table. It was written in her mother’s hand. She looked up at Mark. “You read a letter from my mother to me?”
She hadn’t been alarmed. Usually her mother’s letters were filled with inane bits of gossip or boring news about the servants at the country estate. What did it matter if Mark read it?
“It was addressed to both of us,” he intoned.
She flipped the letter over to see the front. He was right. It was addressed to “My darlings, Nicole and Mark.”
“So.” Alarm crept up Nicole’s back. “What did she say?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. “Read it yourself.”
She scanned the words. The first page was a lot of inane drivel as usual, but as she turned the page, her breath caught in her throat as she saw the words that would forever haunt her.“I do hope you reconcile with your family, dear Mark. We’d love to have the duke and duchess for Christmas dinner in Sussex.”
She glanced up at Mark, her heart racing.
His voice was calm, measured, but there was no mistaking the anger there. “You know?”
“Know what?” Her heart thumped in her chest. Her grasp had gone moist and trembling on the pages of the letter.
“Nicole, I swear, if you lie to me…” A muscle leaped in his jaw. He closed his eyes. “You know who my family is?”
