She had thought herself made of stronger stuff in the beginning. She had been, at best, overconfident. At worst, immeasurably foolish. But war had killed any tenderness which had lived within her heart. Hardened her and sharpened her to a diamond’s cold, flawless finish. She hadbecomestrong. As strong as she had needed to be in the years that had followed.
“And that is the whole of it,” she said. “A comedy of errors—or a tragedy in this case, as we have both ended up with an undesirable spouse. But not for much longer, God willing.”
A quick, quiet annulment. Surelyif anyone might be able to secure one, it would be a duke.
ChapterSix
Anthony collapsed into a chair in the library, well past exhausted after his most recent meeting with his solicitor. There had been rather too many of those meetings just lately, all in the service of sorting out his father’s affairs, and his brothers’, and his own. The minutia of inheriting a title without warning was mind-numbing, and with altogether too much damned paperwork to it.
He’d flummoxed his solicitor with this most recent complication, but then that was to have been expected. There was little precedent for a situation such as his, the man had acknowledged, though Anthony rather suspected that that was because there was little precedent for one’s presumed-deceased wife unexpectedly presenting herself so many years later.
But in the end, and with a full explanation of the circumstances that had led to this awkward and uncomfortable situation, the man had haltingly supposed that securing an annulment just might well be possible. If the Ecclesiastical Court could be convinced. If he and Charity were both willing to give evidence and testify to the fact that it had never been a real marriage in any sense of the word.
Anthony had tasked the man with making those inquiries with all due discretion, but his solicitor had suggested it could be some time—months, possibly—before a firm verdict one way or another was rendered. Still, he had said, their chances appeared decent on the basis of the facts.
He would have to tell Charity, of course. She was waiting on word; no doubt she wished to be free of him, legally speaking, as soon as possible. He owed her an accounting of his visit with his solicitor, so that she might prepare herself in advance for whatever questioning to which the Ecclesiastical Court might subject her.
God, what a damned mess.
Somewhere on the sideboard behind him there was a decanter of liquor, and he reached for it with one hand, feeling blindly for the cold crystal as heclosed his eye and rubbed away the beginnings of a headache which had begun to settle in at his temple. He caught the neck of the decanter in his fingers, dragging it over his shoulder to land in his lap, and when he opened his eye once more—
Anthony jumped in surprise, biting back the instinctive oath that curled around his tongue. “Helen,” he said. “You startled me.”
His sister-in-law stood before him, clutching handfuls of skirts in her fingers. The black of her gown swallowed whatever color her pale skin might have claimed, lending her a rather ghostly air. That, coupled with her tendency to move about the house so very silently had led to more than a few awkward moments where her sudden appearance—or disappearance—had been a startling occurrence. For both of them, he thought, since she had always appeared as if she wished she were anywhere else but in his presence.
“I knocked at the door,” she hastened to assure him, a nervous swallow bobbing in her throat. “I thought you must have heard. I’m sorry to have invaded your privacy.”
“You needn’t ask my permission to use the library. You live here as well.” For there was nowhere else, at present, for them to go. Once, his brothers had held leases upon their own townhouses in the city. But those had since expired, and he’d naturally offered their bereaved spouses rooms in the family home—at least until other, more suitable arrangements could be made for them.
It had not, however, made his company any more pleasant or easier to bear. Like always, Helen could not quite bring herself to meet his eye, her gaze bouncing around the room, falling upon anything, anywhere other than his face.
“The girls,” she said abruptly, an odd little warble in her voice. “They’ve spent so much time within the nursery just lately. I thought I’d have them down for dinner.”
“Of course,” he said. “As you wish.” Unusual, perhaps, but then the whole family was still deep in mourning, and there was little opportunity for the children for anything but the occasional walk about the garden. Public visits and social calls beyond the reception of visitors extolling their condolences had been right out—and would be for several months.
“If you don’t mind,” she added.
“I don’t.”
“That is to say,” she persisted, swiping her tongue across her dry lips. “The girls are so fragile, YourGrace—”
“Anthony is fine. You are my sister-in-law.”
“It might be best…it might be best if you were to—”
If he were to make himself scarce this evening. To eat elsewhere, lest his face turn the appetites of little girls who tended to run from him on those rare occasions their paths crossed. As ifhewere the monster which lurked beneath the beds of naughty children, waiting to drag them off into the dark. Months now they’d shared the same house, and still they were terrified of him.
The desire he’d had for the liquor still in its unopened decanter waned abruptly. “I see,” he said. “I suppose I will dine elsewhere this evening.”
Helen’s shoulders, which had pinched up around her ears in fearful apprehension, lowered with her sigh of relief. “Thank you, Your Grace—”
“Anthony.”
“They’ll warm up to you,” she hastened to assure him. “They’re just young. Impressionable.” A curtsey, given hastily as she retreated. “They’ll—they’ll come to appreciate you.” And then she was gone, loath, like most, to remain in his presence any longer than was strictly necessary. Whisking silently out the door, a ghost once more roaming the halls.
Unbidden, Charity’s assurance that the right woman would not be put off by his scars traipsed through his head, and he scoffed as he replaced the decanter. If his own family—his own flesh and blood—could not manage to overlook them, how could anyone else ever be expected to do so?
Yet she had sounded sincere in it, convinced of it. She alone had not shied away from him. She had looked him dead in the eye, unflinching. And it had felt—good, he thought. For one person, at least, not to tiptoe around what might be perceived as a sensitive subject. It had felt good to be seen for more than his injuries. Notpastthem, he thought, butthroughthem to the man beneath, because she alone had understood and shared his experiences of war. She alone seemed to have recalled that there was in fact a man behind the wretched scarring. A person, with thoughts and feelings of his own.
