Oh thank bloody Christ,Margo thought as Henry let her in.
Henry was here. Henry—dear, quiet, sturdy, inimitable Henry—was going to make everything all right.
“Come on,” he said, tucking one hand beneath her elbow and guiding her through the narrow hallway. “You’re soaked. Let’s get you in front of the fire.”
His hands were gentle as he positioned her in his small sitting room, then unfastened the frogs of her cloak. It was that—Henry’s sweet, undeserved gentleness—that pushed Margo over the edge. She shrugged out of her cloak, the heavy wool garment slopping at her feet, and then burst into tears.
She threw herself at Henry’s chest, soaking his waistcoat with her sopping hair and her tears, and the fact that she was making his life worse simply by existing in his vicinity made her cry even harder.
He hesitated for a long moment, and then one hand spread warmly between her shoulder blades. “Margo? What’s wrong?”
She was a disaster. She had ruined everything.
But she couldn’t say that. Not even to Henry.
“Matilda’s gone,” she said instead. She pulled back from his chest—which was startlingly solid, a fact she tended to forget about her brother’s grave best friend—and looked up into his dark eyes. “Oh God, Henry. It’s all my fault.”
“Come,” he said again, and pulled her toward a pair of armchairs in front of the fire.
She’d never been to Henry’s apartments before, though she had his direction from one of his calling cards, which she’d inexplicably tucked in her escritoire years ago. When she’d discovered that Matilda was missing, their brother out of town, she’d gone first to Henry’s office. It had been closed and locked, and she’d had to hire a hack to take her to Bloomsbury, where his small suite was located. Everything was faintly shabby, but well-kept, a polished shine on each piece of furniture.
She settled into the armchair he pulled back for her, and then winced as her hair dripped audibly onto the navy upholstery.
“What do you mean, Matilda’s gone? Where did she go?”
She took a shuddering breath. “Oh, Henry, everything is such a bloody tangle. Matilda—well, you know Matilda. She’s so damnedcertainshe knows what’s best. She’s been—I don’t know ifcourted byis the right phrase, but she’s gotten tangled up with the Marquess of Ashford—”
“Ashford? You’re joking.”
“That’s what I said!” She looked at Henry, at his dear, serious face. Perhaps there had been a time when she had not found him handsome, but she could not remember it. His hair and eyes looked almost black here in the dim room, his mouth the same familiar firm slash. “She said she’d finally found someone who saw her for who she truly is. And I—”
God, she couldn’t say it.
“I did something awful,” Margo said instead. “Something terrible. And I drove her away.”
“What did you—”
She tried to laugh, but it came out choked, almost a sob. “Don’t ask me that, Henry. Please don’t ask me that.”
He looked doubtful, but he nodded. To her surprise, he reached out and brushed her upper arm with his thumb, one firm delicate stroke. Unaccountably, she shivered.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re cold. Let me stoke the coals.”
“No.” She tried to cover his fingers with her own, but he pulled his hand away. Tears stung her eyes again, but she forced herself to keep talking. “Matilda left me a note. She and Ashford have eloped, Henry. They’ve gone to Gretna Green.”
“What?”
It was impossible to believe. Ashford was nearly the age their father would have been, a cold-blooded aristocrat who, rumors said, had driven his first wife to madness alone in the moorlands of Devon. The very idea of the pale-eyed marquess with hersister—brilliant, vibrant, mocking Matilda…
Margo simply could not countenance it.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I started this whole thing. But I’m going to fix it, Henry. I’m not going to let Matilda destroy herself.”
“Margo,” he said cautiously, “if they’ve gone already to Gretna Green, Matilda might be better off if she goes through with the elopement. Her reputation will—”
Margo startled herself with the crack of laughter that burst from her lips. “Don’t be absurd. You know as well as anyone—better than most—that Matilda and I have no reputation to speak of. If we weren’t the wealthiest unmarried heiresses in London and cousins to a royal duke, we wouldn’t be received anywhere in Christendom.”
They’d made a game of it—seeing how far they could go and still benefit from the privilege of the circumstances. It seemed stupid, somehow, now. What had they been trying to prove?
