“There may be scandal, still, in an annulment,” he said. In fact, there was no particularly easy method to end a marriage which would not lend itself toat least a little infamy.
“Yes,” she allowed, “but less so, I think, than an act of Parliament would entail. Best for all our sakes to keep it as quiet as possible, don’t you think? And an annulment is not, per se, the dissolution of a marriage. It is the complete erasure of one, as if it had never happened at all.” A last sip of her brandy, and she offered her now-empty glass back to him. “Your mother fainted at the news,” she said. “It has been quite a difficult time for your family already. I would spare all of us more difficulty, if it is possible.”
Kind of her, given the circumstances—though perhaps every bit as self-serving as it was generous. A mutually beneficial dissolution; at least in her eyes. “I’ll consult with my solicitor,” he said. “If you would prefer I keep your name out of it while I do—”
“I would, thank you,” she said. She lifted her gaze to his, and to her credit she did not flinch from his ghastly visage. “I would not have told your mother. Why did you?”
“My father,” he said, “did not leave my mother in the best of financial straits. Nor had my brothers adequately provided for their wives. Not intentionally, of course. They simply hadn’t planned on such a damned tragedy.” There should have been so much more time to get their affairs in order. Neither William nor Frederick had yet attained the age of forty at their deaths; Father just one and sixty and to all accounts as healthy as a horse for his age. They should all have had so much more time. “I am the last remaining male, so their protection, their very security falls now to me. If I should die without issue, then the next duke—my insufferable cousin Donald—will no doubt turn my mother and sisters-in-law out. Perhaps they would not be in penury, precisely, but they would certainly have to economize. To grow accustomed to a much-reduced standard of living.”
“Ah,” Charity said. “She wants to keep the title in your immediate family.”
“Quite so,” he said. “Nobody wants to be someone else’s poor relation, most especially a duchess. She has been pressing me to marry, and to produce an heir as swiftly as possible.” Mother might not have any particular fondness for him, but she knew well enough that her lifestyle depended uponhiscontinued good health—and failing that, that of whatever son he might manage to produce.
They had all learned, recently, the fragility of life. How swiftly any particular one might come to an end.
“Well, then,” Charity said, “by all means, you mustconsult with your solicitor as soon as possible. The sooner this fiasco can be resolved, the sooner you may choose a proper duchess and dedicate yourself to the task of producing heirs.”
She sounded so nonchalant about it, as if they shared a secret between the two of them—a private joke, their marriage, one which they might laugh about together at some point in the future. When that marriage had been undone.
Anthony stifled a snort, swallowing down the last of his liquor. “Easier said than done,” he said. “There’s a dearth of women willing even to contemplate the thought of it.”Not even to be a duchess.
“What rubbish.” With a dainty tilt of her nose, Charity expressed her patent disbelief. “Dukes are always in demand. Even those half-senile, gouty, and ancient could expect to land a bride.”
“Yes,” he said. “But I am none of those things. A woman seeking a title might be willing to tie herself to an undesirable husband—provided he has got one foot in the grave already. But no one is lining up to risk staring at my face across a breakfast table in the faint hope that I will expire sooner rather than later.”
“It truly isn’t as bad as all that,” she said, and it didn’t even reek of the patronizing condescension to which he had long become accustomed from those who did not believe their own words. “Everyone has got their own scars to bear. But I am sorry for how you acquired yours, and that they trouble you still. I promise you, when you find the right woman, they will not trouble her.”
For the first time in well over a decade, he felt—perhaps a little less monstrously ugly. She had never seen him at his best, in those days of his youth when he had been handsome. When his face had been attractive enough to turn heads toward him rather than away. “If such a woman exists, she has yet to present herself,” he said, though his tone no doubt conveyed his disbelief. But there was less bitterness within it than he had expected, and it surprised even him. She was easy to talk to, this woman he had married so many years ago. They didn’t know one another, had never really known one another—but she made him feel comfortable in her presence. Made him feel at least a bit more comfortable in his own skin than he had been in recent days. Recent years. Recent decades.
They were discussing the dissolution of their inconvenient marriage, and it was…pleasant. Friendly, even. And to a man with no friends at all who would claim him, even this small amount of camaraderie, this tiny slice of what might have, under different circumstances, passed for idle conversation, was…enjoyable.
“May I rely upon you to make your inquiries and to send word when you have an answer?” she asked.
“So long as you leave your address,” he said. “I’m afraid your—er, friend would not share it with me.”
“He wouldn’t,” she said, and a dimple appeared in her right cheek alongside a smile. “But then, Chris does so like to be contrary and aggravating. I will leave it with your butler, then, on my way out. Good evening, Captain Sharp. It has been a pleasure.” She reached out her hand, and on reflex, he took it in his.
Small. Soft. The very same hand that had given so much comfort to a dying man—or one who had thought he was. His fingers molded around hers in that same manner they had so many years ago; like a drowning man would hold fast to a lifeline. At least until he was forced to relinquish them, and to watch her walk out the door.
A pleasure, she had said. Yes, it had been. More of one than he had expected. More of one than that to which he had been entitled. And he was left alone once again, as he so often found himself—but this time, with the lingering warmth of her hand in his.
His wife. The one he had thought was long gone from this world. He had never expected to outlive her when they had married. He’d thought only to do her the kindness of setting her up for a comfortable widowhood, in repayment for the kindness she had shown to him.
All those years ago, she had been a comfort to a man in dire need of it. But now, he thought—perhaps shemight be a friend.
Chapter Five
Iwon’t have that—thatwomanin my home!”
Anthony suppressed a sigh as his gaze followed his mother’s rapid pacing across the floor. She had been waiting to ambush him at breakfast, having recovered from last evening’s swoon with no ill effects other than a temperament rather more sour than usual. If he had not already become accustomed to such theatrics, it might well have put him off of his breakfast. “You will,” he said, and resented that he’d been forced into the same authoritative tone which he had had to employ too many times in the past during his military career. “And what’s more, you will be polite to her.”
“You court social ruin only by acknowledging her,” Mother said as she wrung her hands in an agony of distress, which Anthony considered more than a trifle overblown. “She is indecent!”
“By what measure?” he asked, carving off a bite of bacon.
“By every measure which matters!” Mother said, spearing him with a sharp look, the vivid blue of her eyes shimmering with glacial frost. “Perhaps you have been too long from England’s shores to pay much attention to such things,” she said, “but you cannot remain ignorant of them forever. She has flaunted her liaisons publicly for years, without so much as an ounce of shame when she has earned pounds and pounds of it.”
Anthony wondered that the gentlemen who had been equally culpable in those liaisons had managed to skirt the judgment that Mother would have heaped upon Charity’s shoulders like burning coals.That is not the way the world works, she had told him, and of course he hadknown it. But still, the injustice of it rankled.
