Chris folded his arms over his chest. “Ye could petition for a divorce,” he said. “There’s no doubt ye could obtain one, given the circumstances.”
“I’d speak with her first,” Anthony said. “Hardly seems sporting to drag her through the courts without so much as a by-your-leave.”
“You’d…speak with her,” Chris repeated, agog. “She’s been a courtesan. A mistress of more men than only me.”
And he’d been an absent husband. If that look of horror upon her face had been any indication, she’d been every bit as in the dark as had. Once, she’d been a battlefield nurse, an angel to the injured and ailing. An angel tohim. He could still remember the feel of her small, soft hand in his own as she’d sat by the side of his bed. The soothing stroke of her fingers through his hair as he’d tossed and turned in the grip of pain and fever.
What she had done to support herself in the intervening years mattered less than what she had done for a wounded soldier who had relied upon her soothing presence. Who had reached for the comfort of her fingers in that all-consuming darkness he had lived within and had found them every time.
He hadn’t loved her like a man loved a wife. But he had worshiped her like a flower worshiped the sun.
“Whatever else she may have been,” Anthony said, “she is still my wife. Perhaps it is not a…particularly desirable position for her. But it is one nonetheless worthy of my respect.”
A queer silence stretched out again, and once more Anthony felt himself being measured, assessed, evaluated. Those icy blue eyes raked over his face,but strangely did not linger over any one particular distorted feature. As if the scars Anthony wore were immaterial. “Fair enough,” Chris said at last, as he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet, seizing the silver handle of his cane. “I’ll speak wiv ‘er. And if she cares to speak wiv you, she’ll come round yours.”
Come round his? “A moment,” Anthony said as Chris turned his back. “My address. You’ll have need of it.”
Chris gave an answering scoff as he sent a nod of farewell to the nearby table, occupied by his brothers-in-law. “No need,” he said as he turned to go. “I know where you live.”
And damned if he hadn’t made it sound likea threat.
Chapter Three
Heard you got yourself an ‘usband.”
Charity startled, upsetting her tea cup, which tipped onto its side and splashed tea across the white linen tablecloth. “Where the devil did you hear that?” she asked, horrified, as her mind reeled with the shock of it cast so bluntly before her.
“A husband?” Phoebe echoed, turning up her cheek to receive a kiss from Chris as he arrived at the table beside them. “Charity hasn’t got a husband. Has she?”
“Where did you hear it,” Charity ground out between clenched teeth. No longer a question, but a demand. It couldn’t have been Mr. Fortescue; she’d been careful there. And she’d told no one else.No one.
“From the man himself,” Chris said. “He’s a member of my club, it turns out. Which was damned convenient, because I’d been out searching for the bloke most of the day. Word reached me that he’d been making certain inquiries, and I thought—quite reasonably—that he was seeking a mistress. Thought I’d do you a good turn and disabuse him of that notion.” He snatched up a biscuit from the tea tray upon the table, cramming it into his mouth. “Turns out he was seeking his wife.”
Phoebe turned wide blue accusing eyes on Charity, her mouth pursed into a little moue of offense. “You never told me you had a husband.”
“I didn’t know I had one,” Charity said, and her hands trembled as she reached for the teapot to refill her cup. “At least, I didn’t know Istillhad one. He was meant to be dead.”
“Meantto be!”
“I thought he was!” Charity said with a gesture of agitation as she plunked a lump of sugar into her fresh cup of tea. “That is, I thought I had been widowed. It was a very long time ago, and I was very young, and I wasn’t even exactly certain that it was an entirely legal marriage. He was a soldier. I thought he had perished of his injuries in the war.”
“And now,” Chris crowed, and his expression suggested he’d be gnawing upon this little scandal as a source of amusement for some time to come, “he’s a bloodyduke.”
“A duke!” Phoebe’s hand flew up to press over her heart. “You’re a duchess?”
“Quite against my will,” Charity said. “And only just recently…or so I am given to understand.” And not, God willing, for much longer. “He wasn’t a duke when we married. He was only a soldier.”
Phoebe’s blond brows knitted for perhaps a fraction of a second. And then she gasped, her hands flying up to smother it. “No,” she said. “Not Warrington, surely.”
“Oh, yes,” Chris said. “Though he prefers Captain Sharp. Haven’t got the faintest idea why.”
“I suppose—I suppose it must be because he wasn’t meant to inherit,” Phoebe said, as she batted Chris’ hand away from the tea tray as he reached for another biscuit.
“Not meant to inherit?” Charity asked. “What do you mean?”
“You said he was a soldier,” Phoebe said. “The military is a fine, honorable vocation—for a third son, perhaps even for a second. But the heir? No. The scions of noble houses are to be insulated, protected. Nobody sends heirs off to war.”
“I asked around,” Chris said to Charity. “He’s a third son. Two older brothers had to die to put him in the place he now occupies.”
