Verity had put off looking closely at the words. Once she looked, there was no going back. But didn’t she have to know? Someone had delivered these to her. Someone wanted her to read them, to do something. And she wouldn’t know until she read them all.
Verity exhaled. She nodded to herself and then read the paper.
There was no address on the back, but there was a date.
She thought about that for a moment. It went back nearly five years ago. Her lips curled downward in confusion before she forced herself to begin reading. And once she started, she couldn’t stop.
Only three of the eight papers included dates. All of the dates were before she met Tristan, back when he would have been married to Cassandra.
“Cassandra,” Verity muttered as she spotted the signature left on two of the papers.
The rest of the papers were incomplete, with lines bleeding away onto pages that she didn’t have. She double-checked and tried to piece them together, but the sentences didn’t line up right. Someone had sent her eight separate pages for her to read, to learn something in between the lines.
And she learned them with a heavy heart as several lines stuck out to her, that she stared at for short bouts of eternities.
How dreadful it is out in the country. I wish I were in London. There are days I wonder if he married me just to own something that once belonged to his brother.
What sort of man claims love to a dog, let alone a whelp? The Duke is strange, and I cannot help but doubt his feelings for me. He might love a three-legged pup but has never told me that he loved me. Does he? Could he? Why can’t he love me?
Tristan won’t touch me. I think he’s decided to ignore me. How awful he treats me. Whether or not I am here or in London, it is the same.
He resents me. I know this now for certain. He must. He hates how I live while his brother rots in the ground. Oh, Oliver. Why did you leave me? Some days I worry that the Duke would rather see me under the ground as well. Not even a duchess is safe.
I made it to London! Everyone asks after him, the perfect Duke. They all think him so noble. So brave and endearing for facing war and losing his family. But they don’t know the truth.
What heartache I bear. No one knows what Tristan is really like behind closed doors. They don’t know what it’s like to be kept away in a house in the middle of nowhere. To be ignored. I would have died, suffocated out there, and I don’t think he would have cared. However will I go on?
Verity’s hands began to shake so badly that she could no longer keep reading the words before her. The papers floated to the floor when she let go. Every part of her body felt as though it were floating away and shriveling into nothing as those words echoed in her mind.
What had Cassandra gone through while she was married to Tristan?
Verity blinked hard as she remembered the blame he tossed about last night. But the dead could not defend themselves. Not really. Not without something like their private journals.
A shaky breath slipped between her lips as she rose to her feet. Clasping her hands together under her chin, Verity began to pace. She could still hear the words echoing in her mind.
Cassandra hadn’t said that Tristan did anything wrong, not exactly. She had made no explicit mention of a crime or wrong he had done her. A husband, after all, had every right to his wife.
Verity struggled to make sense of the little she knew about her husband and the words of a poor woman long gone.
What if Tristan had lied to her? What if he had hurt Cassandra? If he had hurt her, what would he do to Verity? Hadn’t he already started ignoring her and tried to keep her in the country like he had done to his first wife?
The pattern was too clear to be ignored.
But he looked so honest, so open last night when he talked…
Doubt bled heavily through her thoughts until she couldn’t take it any longer, refusing to be alone in this.
“Proof,” she told herself in the mirror. “That’s all I need. Proof.”
Verity couldn’t bear the thought of not knowing the truth. Already she had lived under a roof with a husband who was a stranger. But a husband who was a liar? A cruel man? She couldn’t bear it. All she needed was for Tristan to tell her otherwise.
She picked up the papers and left the room with a heavy heart and light feet.
The empty halls towered over her. A beautiful home where she had made improvements. But now, it felt all wrong. The portraits watched her as she felt like an imposter, replacing another duchess in a cycle of silence and cold.
What if she had it all wrong? His stories could be lies, his kiss could be a trick. Maybe she didn’t really know an honest man when she saw one. Did he only wish to possess her, to control her, instead of protecting her? Or perhaps he thought it was all the same?
“Where is he?” she asked a passing footman in a clipped tone.
