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Chapter Twenty-Six

Jerome returned from Ascot just after nine, to learn that Her Ladyship had gone out in a hackney about an hour and half ago, which extraordinary piece of news made his skin prickle in foreboding. Going up to his room, he took only moments to find her note.

My Dearest Jerome,

I beg you will temper your anger, for I am breaking my promise to you. But the circumstances are, I believe, extenuating. I have taken a hackney and am wearing a veil, so no one will know me. You need not fear any more gossip will be heaped upon us.

I have heeded a request from Rey to meet him, for the poor man is in great distress. I know you find this upsetting, and I am truly sorry to cause you distress, but I owe him a great debt and I cannot in all conscience let him down when he has always been my staunchest champion and friend. I do not expect to be out late and will speak with you upon this matter anon.

Your loving wife,

Ava

The anger boiled up so swiftly it took his breath, fury so white-hot he couldn’t contain it. He had thought he had successfully dealt with the events of a few weeks ago and was getting on with his life happily. Congress between himself and Ava had been both passionate and contented, wrapped up in a warm blanket of mutual love and affection.

This! This threw a cannonball into his fantasy of wedded bliss. He knocked the ornaments on the mantelpiece off with a roar and a sweep of one hand. Which did little to relieve his feelings. He went through to her room, hunting for the correspondence from Lannister that had sent her flying to his side. His hands were shaking by the time he found it stuffed into the top drawer of her writing desk.

Having mastered its contents, he sank down on the bed with weakened knees. He felt gutted. Jealousy roiled through his stomach, making him feel physically sick. What game is Lannister playing? He had thought the man had more honor than this, but clearly his original assessment of him was more accurate than he had been brought to believe more recently. But whatever Lannister’s motives in contravening his request that Ava keep her distance from him, it was Ava’s breaking of her promise that ate at his soul. Her willingness—nay eagerness—to fly to this man’s side whenever he asked it of her in defiance of her husband’s request that she not do so.

She professed to love Jerome, and yet—all his old insecurities came bubbling to the surface, and he wondered in despair how he could ever have fooled himself into thinking he could have a happy marriage. I am not fit for it. I don’t deserve it.

A step on the stairs made him sit up as the door opened and Ava stood there in a plain white muslin gown beneath a blue satin cloak. Her golden curls tumbled around her shoulders beneath a white mantilla, thrown back from her face.

“Jerome!” She smiled, but it was weak, for she saw the paper in his hand. “You got my note?”

“I did.” His voice was husky. He cleared his throat.

She came into the room and shut the door. Then she crossed the room and dropped to her knees before him, clasping her hands. “I know you’re upset. I promise you, there is nothing to worry about. No one will ever know I met with Rey tonight. The waiter thought I was a high-class light-skirts, and his notions of propriety were offended, but he had no inkling of my identity, I assure you.”

“That’s a small consolation, I suppose,” he said bitterly. “You broke your promise to me, Ava.”

“I know,” she said composedly, “but I didn’t seek to hide it from you and even if you had not discovered my note, I planned to confess the whole to you once you came home. If you had been here when I received Rey’s note, I would have spoken to you about it.”

“Would you?” His face pulled tight in a grimace of a smile. “We will never know, will we? I suspect it is too much to assume you would, in that circumstance, have asked me to relieve you of your promise?”

She looked down a moment and then up, squaring her shoulders. “I would have asked for your understanding of why I needed to break it.” He closed his eyes, battling with himself. Her voice came to him, quiet and steady. “I would ask you to trust me.”

He opened his eyes. “I do trust you, Ava. I will admit that at one point in time I doubted, I wondered—I—”

“If you trust me, what is the problem?” she asked.

He shook his head, unable to articulate the hot ball of emotions in his chest.

“Jerome, his sister died!” she said softly. “He has no one else. No family to share his grief. He just wanted a hug!”

Jerome stared into her eyes and his heart turned over in his chest. Jealousy and compassion battled inside him. Part of him wanted to tear Lannister apart for daring to ask his wife for a hug, and part of him felt an unaccustomed surge of sympathy and compassion for the other man. After an inward struggle, he said hoarsely, “God, I’m sorry, Ava. I’m a monster of selfishness.” He put his arms around her bringing her into his chest. “I didn’t even know he had a sister,” his lips pressed against her curls.

“She had been ill for a long time. She never came to London.”

He nodded. “I see. I’m sorry,” he repeated. His chest was aching. He hated that Lannister could command hugs from Ava. Yet it was her open-hearted warmth that he loved so much. But he wanted it all for himself. Which was both unreasonable and selfish. The old prickle of self-loathing tore at him. He was so very far from perfect.

She cupped his face in her hands and smiled mistily at him. “No. I’m sorry to have upset you so. After everything you’ve had to deal with . . .”

In his fragile state, her sympathy tipped him over the edge. Jerome felt tears sting his eyes and the tight ball of pain inside his chest that he had been keeping bound down ever since his arrest for Charis’s murder, suddenly exploded, and he gasped on a sob that wouldn’t be suppressed.

Ava rose up on her knees with an exclamation. “Oh, Jerome!” She clasped his head to her bosom as he clung to her and cried. He had not shed a tear throughout the whole process of his time in prison and the trial. And now it all came boiling out in a flood of white-hot pain. It hurt so damned much he had trouble breathing through the storm of tears. He couldn’t remember crying like this in years. Even after Charis’s death, he hadn’t cried like this. He had shed a few bitter tears of regret, but then he’d packed it all away, pushed it down, tried to forget it.

All the regrets, the failures, the mistakes. All the loneliness of his boyhood, spent in a gloomy, half-empty house that was full of bad memories, with a mother who was ill more often than she was well, and periodic visits from a man whose temper terrified him. All that pain layered on year after year, and consolidated into a hardened ball of self-loathing, hidden beneath a façade that fooled the world into thinking he was perfect.