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Several interminable minutes slipped by as Emily wrestled with her desire to confess all to Tobias. The wind whipped through the streets, howling as it forced its way between buildings and through cracks. Raindrops attacked the ground with the vengeance of a betrayed lover.

How well she knew that anger and frustration. The helplessness and the fear had become a knotted tangle threaded with half-truths and assumptions.

At one time, long ago before Emily had married a selfish, lying bigamist, she’d trusted so effortlessly. But now, with this honorable man, she feared Tobias’s reaction if he learned she’d never been legally wed.

Through no fault of her own, except blindly loving someone, she had no right to call herself Mrs. Grenville. No right to pretend to be a widow of good repute. It mattered not that Clement had deceived her.

She’d lived with a man, been intimate with him, outside the bonds of matrimony. In the eyes of Society, she was a fallen woman.

What was more—and perhaps was even more galling—Emily had many years to reflect on her gullibility and naivety. About what a gudgeon she’d been.

Scarcely older than Avery, in love with the idea of being in love, she’d not been as wise or cautious as she ought to have been. She agreed to marry Clement too soon. Before she knew anything about him other than how debonair he looked in his scarlet coat and that he kissed divinely.

Worse, however, was the recognition deep in Emily’s soul, where she could hardly bear to acknowledge the appalling truth, that what she’d experienced with Clement had been mere infatuation. Not true, abiding love at all.

At times, that truth eviscerated her, made her despise herself for being a fool.

Oh, she’d believed herself wildly, desperately in love with Clement Grenville. Years later, she realized the flighty, powerful obsession had simply been a young, inexperienced girl’s first taste of passion at the hands of a skilled seducer.

She inhaled, filling her lungs, welcoming the burn as she held the air there until her pulse steadied, then slowly released the breath.

Perhaps it was better to tell Tobias the truth. Then, if he decided that Emily was unfit to continue helping with Avery’s Come Out, perhaps Justina was up to the task. The weight of Emily’s guilt and the deception she perpetuated for so long had taken a toll on her.

If that was what he decided, she would accept the offer to be a paid companion that had arrived just yesterday. She’d travel the continent and forget about her tarnished past. Forget? No. That might be too optimistic. Perhaps not forget, but at least not have her history haunt her every waking moment.

No matter how far you run, you’ll never forget Tobias.

That uncompromising fact could not be denied. Nor, truth be told, did Emily want to refute it. Despite her determination otherwise, the Duke of Heatherston had penetrated her fortifications.

Her gaze meshed with his, and the reassurance in the depths of his blue eyes made her bold—gave her courage.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

“I met my husband while acting as hostess to my brother, a British diplomat. Clement was a lieutenant in the navy, but he performed many diplomatic duties and rarely went to sea. I always suspected he was a spy. We married after a very brief courtship. When we’d been married two months, he received notice he was being transferred back to England.”

She paused, listening to Tobias’s breathing. Calm and steady.

The opposite of her irregular heartbeat pounding behind her breastbone and flopping around like a hooked fish.

He didn’t urge Emily to go on, seeming to understand that she needed to tell the tale at her own pace, in her own way. To wade through the pain and humiliation that had left her scarred and trepidatious. Feeling soiled, used, bereft, and worthless.

“I assumed I’d go with him or meet him in England later.” What loving wife wouldn’t have done? “When I asked Clement about the arrangements, he finally confessed he was already married.”

Going rigid beside her, Tobias swore in Gaelic. “Gorach pios de cac.”

Emily had no idea what he said, but given the granite leaching into his tone, it wasn’t repeatable. Regardless, she liked the guttural, lilting quality of the dialect.

Absently fingering the silk frog clasp of her spencer, she recalled that godawful day when her future had shattered. Emily could see it clearly as if it played out before her in this cozy yet masculine study.

Clement’s tense jaw and stiff movements as he methodically packed his belongings while she watched mutely—traumatized and devastated. In shock. His appalling absence of empathy for the dreadful situation he’d placed her in. The excuses he expected her to accept, justifying his unforgivable duplicity.

The expectation that she’d simply return to the fold of her brother’s household and resume her hostess duties. Even if no one else knew her sin and shame, a soiled dove was still a soiled dove.

Richard would’ve turned her out onto the street had he ever learned of her ruin.

“Clement had the gall to profess he truly loved me.” Emily repeated his pathetic, insulting excuses by rote. “His was an arranged marriage. His wife was a harridan. A shrew. He wished he could be with me, but he had three children to consider.”

Her voice, raw and rough, broke.