“On the contrary, sir,” George sneered, “I have every right.”
“Mina,” Mr. Randolph chocked with high drama while two other gentlemen helped him rise. “Come with me, my love. I’ll keep you safe, you know I will.”
“As will I,” said another one of the men Wilhelmina and George had hired. Mr. Clarence was his name.
Not too far behind them stood Mr. Dale, his dark gaze resting upon Wilhelmina with utter contempt. Her heart shriveled in response to his hard censure, but the truth was, they’d only just met. She owed him nothing. The same could not be said of the man who’d been the husband she’d needed as well as the father her daughter required. So she turned her gaze away from Mr. Dale and surrendered herself to the part she would play for George’s sake – so he could have the happily ever after he deserved – and prayed her path would never cross Mr. Dale’s again.
Still, she could not stop from addressing George’s actions later that evening when they’d left the Pennington residence and were headed for home. She’d had no chance to say good bye to Cynthia before departing, and hoped she and her husband would be all right. Society could be cruel and with every gossiper’s tongue now wagging, life would not be easy for anyone connected to Wilhelmina or George.
“You should have left Mr. Dale alone,” she said while the hackney they’d hired bounced along the cobbled street. “He didn’t deserve to be so rudely insulted.”
George frowned. “You knew the plan, Mina. If you didn’t want to risk me going after him, then why on earth did you flirt with him as you did?”
She slumped against the squabs. Instead of the victory she’d expected to feel at the end of the evening, the only sensations she experienced were defeat, loss, and guilt. “Because I got caught up in the moment. I… I genuinely liked him.”
“Bloody hell.”
She heard the misery in her own laugh while doing her best to hold back the tears. “That sums it up rather nicely.”
“Mina, I’m so sorry.”
“Well, it’s not as though I would have been able to pursue a relationship with him anyway,” she muttered. “And he would have discovered the so-called truth about me eventually, I suppose. I just…”
George put his arm around her and pulled her against his side, offering comfort as always. “Don’t fret. Once we’ve put this debacle behind us you can start over wherever you wish. I’ll make certain of it.”
George intended to sell his furniture business and split the funds between them as soon as their divorce was final. Wilhelmina wasn’t the least bit comfortable with this decision. After all, George and Fiona would need the funds to start over in America. Wilhelmina would have to fight George on this issue, she reckoned – the man was often too kind for his own good.
“Of course,” she said, attempting to keep an optimistic façade for George’s sake.
“Hopefully when all of this is behind us, you’ll meet a man with whom you’ll know both love and passion,” George continued. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You deserve that, Mina, more than anyone else I’ve ever known.”
She appreciated the sentiment but doubted his wish would ever come true. Because once they got their divorce, she would be ruined beyond repair, and no man would want to shackle himself to that.
3
It was Friday, March 21, 1820, nineteen years to the day since Richard Hughes had been felled in battle. Joined by Colin and Grayson as had become tradition, James sat in a quiet corner of White’s and drank to the memory of his friend.
“He would have been four and forty years old by now, had he lived,” Colin muttered morosely. The scar he’d received during the war puckered his right cheek.
James took another long sip of his drink and savored the bite. The memory of the carnage he’d witnessed still haunted him to this day. Limbs had been blasted to smithereens by friendly fire and enemy cannons alike. It had been worse than hell, both bloody and gory, but at least Richard hadn’t been one of the wretched souls forced to writhe in the desert sand while he suffered. His death had been swift. One shot, and he’d been gone, like a flame snuffed out in an instant.
“Do you suppose he would have married?” Grayson asked.
James scoffed. “Only a fool would tie himself to a woman for any duration of time. You’re lucky you managed to avoid the parson’s mousetrap, Grayson. And at least you realized your mistake quick enough to get an annulment, Colin. I wish I’d been as wise.”
“You wouldn’t have Michael then,” Grayson pointed out.
“But you could have divorced your wife once you realized what she was up to,” Colin said, “as Mr. Hewitt is doing.”
James clutched his glass and clenched his jaw. It had been two years since he’d let himself get swept away by impossible notions of shared desire with a woman he’d known he could not have. He would never have done more than flirt with her once he found out she was married, but that hadn’t stopped him from enjoying their brief interaction.
To learn she was just as deceitful as Clara – that she would have welcomed a proposition from him – had twisted his opinion of her completely. Worst of all, it had filled him with an uncanny amount of rage, jealousy, and self-loathing, knowing she’d taken numerous lovers and that he would not be among them.
He’d always prided himself on being an excellent judge of character, but he’d been wrong about Clara, and he’d been wrong about Mrs. Hewitt too. His miscalculation where she was concerned was so unbelievably drastic it drew him to the courtroom in an effort to comprehend his error. For two years he’d followed those damned divorce proceedings, searching for some shred of the wonderful person he’d thought her to be.
In her place, he’d found a silent hauteur he did not recognize, denying him all attempts at justifying his initial opinion. And so, as the case progressed and he learned more about her misdeeds, his hatred for her increased alongside his own self-loathing.
To think he’d been so blindly snared by false charm yet again made him feel like the veriest fool.
