There could be no good reason for Lady Averley to be here unless there was some kind of bad news. Was Sybil terribly ill? She had seemed perfectly well the last time he had seen her. Perhaps she was suffering from cold feet regarding their wedding now she knew the truth about his family… how twisted it was.
Yet when he had told her the truth of his parentage, she had told him nothing could have prevailed her to turn her back on him.
“Tell her I shall be down shortly,” he said curtly, throwing back the covers. “And bring me some water.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Tea,” he said as he regarded his clothes. “I shall require tea.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
All too soon, given the fragile nature of his head, he was entering his drawing room, facing the woman he hoped would soon become his mother-in-law. She looked tired, as though she hadn’t slept, and as soon as he shut the door behind him, she sprang to her feet.
“I presume she told you about the letters,” she said without a pretense at niceties.
He blinked. “That she had been receiving threatening letters? She did. Lady Averley, what is this about?”
“Don’t you see?” She wrung her hands, then sat again, as though regretting her momentary loss of composure. “It is a long story and does me little credit, but if you would be so good, I would tell it to you now.”
Something about her tone made him pause, and he settled himself into the seat opposite her. “Tell me,” he said shortly.
Her tale was brief and sordid. There was much she hadn’t told him, he suspected, about what her life had been like as a young courtesan, but under Howard Winston’s wing, she had been thrust into the higher echelons of Polite Society, and had eventually met her first husband.
“Howard demanded my eldest daughter when she came of age,” she explained, tears filling her eyes but not falling. “I agreed, thinking I would likely as not have a daughter, and if I did, that he would not want her. Think how much time passed. Twenty-two years. I thought for certain he would forget.”
George’s jaw was tight enough that he could feel the strain down his neck. “Yet he did not.”
“He did not,” she admitted. “He sent me letters demanding her. Demanding, in short, that I should let her marry him as we had once agreed.” He had not thought he could feel such fear. It drenched him, drowned him, and he was helpless to do anything but search for air. Sybil could not marry him. He did not know Howard Winston, but he already knew the kind of man who would commit this sort of crime, and Sybil could not be allowed near him.
“You are telling me this because no doubt he has her now,” he said.
“You tell me.” Once again, Lady Averley rose and paced the room. “She was with you last night. Did your carriage return home? She did not arrive home as I expected.”
“I—” George paused. He had been drinking last night and did not remember the carriage’s return, but he had not expected to know of its return. And when he had gone to bed, his head had been swimming with alcohol, and the knowledge that the member of his family he had trusted the most was a liar.
He rang the bell pull and summoned the butler. “Foley, do you know if the carriage returned last night after delivering Lady Sybil home?”
Foley’s face was drawn and, George thought, tired. “It did not.”
“What is the meaning of this? Why was I not immediately informed?”
“Its disappearance was only just confirmed, and we did not believe you were in a fit state to receive such news.”
“In the future, you will report such things to me immediately.”
Foley nodded and, understanding the implicit command, shut the door. George pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. Sybil had disappeared on her journey home, and clearly, the situation was fraught enough that Lady Averley had arrived at eight in the morning to inform him of her daughter’s disappearance.
“This Howard Winston was responsible for the threatening letters to Sybil?” he confirmed.
“Yes.”
“And you suspect he is behind her disappearance now?”
“Undoubtedly.”
George considered the possibility his mother was behind it and dismissed it immediately. His mother was a viper, prepared to work thetonto achieve her goals, but she had never physically laid a hand against him, and he doubted she would change her attack for Sybil’s benefit.
“Very well,” he said, rising from his chair and motioning for Lady Averley to join him. “Where does this vermin live? It’s about time I paid him a visit.”
