“You owe Charity an apology as well,” he said gruffly.
“I only wanted to protect you,” she said in a small voice, like that of a chastened child. “To save you from her.”
“Mother,shesavedme. Charity has never deserved your scorn. You owe her,” he said, “for the very fact that we have spoken this evening. Do you know what she whispered to me as she left? After you struck her?Talk to your mother, she said.” There was at least a little gratification to be had in Mother’s fierce sniffle. “She saw something in you that I missed. You owe her for that.”Hell, he thought. They all owed her, in some way or another.
Always the healer first, Charity had mended his fractured family.
∞∞∞
Two days since Charity had last seen Anthony, not because he had been engaged for some other evening event—but because he and his mother had at last cleared the air between them. She had been so pleased to learn it in the note she had received from him, so happy that she had judged correctly. It had seemed a comparatively small sacrifice to make, to give them just a few days of privacy to begin to close those old wounds between them.
But now, she thought, it was bound to be more than that. In retrospect, those two days had been the last of their time together, now spent and unrecoverable. She would not, as she had hoped, be returning to his house this evening.
“Are you going to open it?” Phoebe asked, with an inquisitive tilt of her head as she peeked at the letter Charity held in her hand.
“’Course she is,” Chris said. “Just as soon as she worksup the nerve. Not every day that a marriage ends wivout a death, now, is it?”
Charity suppressed a sigh, casting a censorious look at Chris, who lounged upon her sofa as if he still owned the place. Which he most decidedly did not. “I do not believe,” she said, “anyone invited you to intrude upon my privacy.”
“Didn’t ‘ave to. Such a flimsy lock might as well be an invitation on its own.” He widened his eyes when she glowered, affecting an expression of patently false innocence. “What?” he said. “Phoebe picked the lock this time around.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the letter. “Go on, then, open it.”
“I don’t think she wants to,” Phoebe said quietly. And rather tooobservantly.
The letter had arrived early this morning, sent from the Archbishop himself. A decision had been rendered at last, she was certain of it. Either she was married, or she wasn’t.
“D’you mind if I keep ‘im?” Chris asked, stretching out his leg to nudge Charity’s hip with the toe of his boot. “’E’s a strange one, I’ll grant you. But a pleasant enough bloke, fer a duke.”
“Strange?” Phoebe asked of her husband. “How do you mean, strange?”
“Brought a damned plant to our club,” Chris said. “Said it was meant to be fer some woman.”
Lady Cecily. Her heart twisted in her chest, and the clench of her fingers wrinkled the letter in her hand. The jealousy that kindled in her heart wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. Neither of them had wished to remain married. It was hardly sporting of her to have changed her mind now, when he had decided upon another. She had pushed for the match, after all. And it would be a good one.
Even she had to admit to it.
She wished she could have put off opening the letter for longer than the few hours she already had. Just a few more blissful hours of not knowing, one more evening where she could visit his house with the setting of the sun, with the right to do it. Just one more evening spent in his company. But if she had received a letter, then so, too, had he. And he wouldknow.
She would be able to see it upon his face. The happiness at obtaining the sought-after annulment, or the horror to be put through the public spectacle of divorce.
At least she had gotten the gratification of having opened Mercy’s unforgivably late response before she had come to this one.Yes; come, it had said, in the haphazard scrawl of a harried new mother.Come for Christmas. We’llmake a proper holiday of it.
So she would have somewhere to go, when the worst happened. Somewhere to escape her conflicted emotions for a little while. Some distance from the melancholia that would no doubt enshroud her when she read her fate.
“I liked ‘im,” Chris said, and his grin held only a touch of cunning within it. Mostly without guile, though Charity did not doubt that he would find some way, eventually, to turn a burgeoning friendship to his benefit. But that was all right, so long as Anthony would benefit as well.
And he would. If not from Chris alone, then from the rest of his connections. A ready-made extended social circle sprinkled throughout the aristocracy. He had been brought home at last and settled into his rightful place. Perhaps it would take some time yet for him to feel comfortable within it, but she did not doubt that he would achieve it.
He would have the perfect helpmate to do it. And for that one small blessing, she could be grateful. Eventually. She would find a way to be.
“The words are not going to change themselves upon the page,” Phoebe said softly, in gentle encouragement. “Best to get it over with, no?”
Probably she was right, Charity allowed. The sun would set, eventually. She needed to know by then. She needed to know whether she ought to extend her condolences or her congratulations. And she realized, suddenly, that she could never do so in person. That she could lie to him with words on a page, but not to his face. She could not pretend a shared joy she did not feel, nor a horror that was meant to be mutual.
It did not matter, then, whatwords were written, she reasoned as at last she edged her fingernail beneath the wax stamp and peeled it off. It was the end of them either way.
She unfolded the letter. Scanned the scant few lines contained within.
And knew, even before she had finished, what she would ask of him as her fee.
