Eight weeks. Eight weeks since the Hadleigh Fair when Darling had found Cara Beckett in that room with that monster. Eight weeks since Chopwell had fled across the Channel rather than face what was coming to him. And now the bastard was enjoying nice dinners in a good hotel in a French town, looking well, while Darling carried the memory of what he had walked into, while his wife rebuilt herself quietly in London, while Laura?—
James thought about his sister.
Their father had told them both eventually, of course. James at twenty, Daniel at nineteen, home from university, old enough to finally know. It was the sort of truth that, once said, could never be unheard. It had rearranged certain things in both of them permanently. But Laura had suffered the worst of it. Young, innocent Laura who had never hurt a soul but who'd had the course of her life changed in little more than an instant.
Remarkably, she had built something from the shards of what she'd been left with. She'd found the gentlest of souls in Thomas Fairleigh, who loved her beyond reason. Together they led a peaceful and purpose-filled life in Middlesbrough, but it hadn't been a simple thing to accomplish. And just seeing that fiend's name made James' blood boil anew.
Chopwell. Looking well in France.
Only a handful of them knew that the monster had moved on to other victims. Cara Beckett had survived an attempt by the villain, but Darling had come upon them and rescued the woman he ended up making his wife a few weeks later. He'd also challenged the cur to a duel, but the coward had fled.
Looking well in France, indeed.
Darling would need to be told this news, but not today. Not on his brother's wedding day. That conversation would keep until morning, when the house was quieter and there was room for the kind of exchange the situation would require.
James folded the letter and locked it in the top drawer of his desk.
He stood for a long moment with his hand still resting on the wood, looking at nothing in particular, thinking about a man at dinner in Valenciennes who looked well. The absolute intolerable fact of it settled over him like the weather, cold and grey and entirely without remedy, for now.
James was good at waiting. He had always been good at waiting.
After a while, he realized that his brother’s wedding breakfast was still in progress below. His absence would eventually be noted. He was the Duke of Linthorpe. Acklan was his home and he had obligations that would not pause because his mood had shifted.
He straightened and then left his study to fulfill his duties as host.
Billiards Room
Acklan Castle
Cori carefully lined up her shot.
"You’re thinking too much," the Duchess of Hythe told her.
Cori looked up from the billiard table. "I’m thinking."
"You are calculating when you should simply trust your eye." The duchess tilted her head, the picture of patience. "Your father didn’t teach you to think. He taught you to see."
“I dare say—” Cori looked back at the table “—he taught us to do both.” Then she stopped thinking about angles, let her eye settle, and hit her ball cleanly into the red. “The key is knowing when to do which.”
The duchess grinned at her, a bit of pride sparkling in her eyes. “Exactly, my dear.”
"My father would’ve said the same thing," Emma Atherton said, from the window seat where she had stationed herself with her embroidery a while before, but had since done very little of it. "Though about horses, not billiards."
"The principle is universal," the duchess agreed.
Lady Upwell settled near the fire with a glass of sherry she had been nursing since shortly after the wedding breakfast had come to an end. She made a sound that might have been agreement or might have been a woman grateful to be sitting. "It was a very fine shot," she said. "You do seem to have the touch."
"High praise from Harriet," the duchess said, surveying the table.
"Do not push your luck, Margaret," Lady Upwell replied without heat.
The billiard room had been the duchess’ suggestion, which had surprised no one who’d spent more than an hour in her company. She had a gift for steering people toward the unexpected choice and making it feel entirely natural. By the time Lady Upwell had raised an eyebrow and looked as though she might object, the group was already inside the room with the duchess selecting a cue with a rather pointed focus.
It had been the right choice. The afternoon beyond the windows was grey and wet, the rain still coming steadily against the glass, and the wedding breakfast had wound down into a restlessness following a long and emotional day. The billiard room was warm, welcoming, and asked nothing of anyone except attention to the table.
Cori had been glad of it.
She’d expected, once the breakfast ended, to spend the afternoon turning over the events of the morning in her mind. James had said her name. Twice. And he had started to say something else but stopped, and then he’d walked out of the great hall without so much as a backward glance. Cori didn’t know what to make of it or whether it meant anything at all. Her heart had stung from it, though, and that sting hadn’t faded.
