Page 17 of The Runaway Duchess

Neal leaned back in his chair. One hand cupped his elbow, the other his chin. He was lean but well-muscled, broad across the shoulders. Bent, his arms bulged. George had been taller, thinner, more finely modeled, with that straight nose, that golden hair. Perfectly beautiful. A wicked angel.

“So,” she said on a breath. “We eloped.” Here the story would depart from reality. “We eloped and went to France. After that he changed completely. Abandoned his old ways. Started picking flowers.” She’d often dreamed such foolishness. George transformed by married life, waking up early enough to take her shopping on Regent Street, to host stylish luncheons, to star in all of London’s most glamorous daytime activities. The heir apparent to a dukedom and his lady promenading. Turning heads. Setting trends.

She managed a weak smile. “And that’s that. Before we knew it, we were legendary plant collectors.”

Neal stirred in his chair, some thought tilting the corner of his mouth. She couldn’t read his expression.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “Only—you defended the Season so staunchly. But you yourself didn’t give a fig for the protocols. Eloping with a childhood friend . . . France, then the Far East . . . multiple commissions from Edevane & Fernsby . . .” He shrugged. “You made your own opportunity.”

“What of it?” She looked at a spot above his head. The spiral of smoke looked almost blue. Belched from the very bowels of that hellacious hearth. “We both know that I am exceptional.”

“Hmm.” The low sound he made might have been affirming or disbelieving. Her eyes flew to him. He had a firm mouth, but his lips knew how to curve just so. He was a flirt. A flirt trying so hard to fool himself about his better nature, he’d fooled her too.

“I never thought to meet my future husband at a musical evening or lawn tennis match,” she said. “I always knew who I was going to marry.”

She’d even delayed her Season by a year because her future husband had tempted her with a wilder, far more alluring proposition. George had helped her orchestrate the lie to her parents, supplying her with the name of the elite finishing school where she was to refine her manners and her French, as well as the name of the genteel friend with whom she’d share her room. He’d even sent the friend’s “mother” to call on her own. To this day, Lavinia had no idea from whence this woman came, a dignified woman, well-bred and solemn, diamonds in her hair, armed with stupefying minutia about the operations of the Parisian school, the charms of its aristocratic headmistress, whom she claimed as a near relation. George could be thoughtless, but he could also be thorough.

The weeks they had spent together on the French coast remained the happiest of her life. She’d learned everything about love, about being in love. Some nights George went out gambling and didn’t come back to the hotel until the early morning, long after she’d cried herself to sleep. But those agonizing absences made his embraces, his kisses, all the sweeter.

The following spring, when she’d debuted, danced in lacy white, sipped lemonade with the other girls, she’d burned with memories, with her secret knowledge. Her wickedness. George had made her flesh of his flesh. She was like him, a beautiful, damned, gorgeous creature, wildly, wickedly alive. Everyone else was stuffed with straw and clockworks. Of course he was going to marry her. As soon as my damned sire stops acting so feudal. As soon as I’ve dispatched his latest mortally plain matrimonial candidate. After Ascot week. After I’ve fixed a few bad tallies. Soon, my darling, my Vinnie. I’ll paint our names on the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, you’ll see. She’d never doubted. She’d turned down a dozen other offers, doling out rejections haughty or enigmatic, depending on the suitor.

She had considered herself engaged to George until the day he died.

How could everything solid melt into air? How could every truth be a falsehood? Her life had reversed, as though she’d passed through the looking glass.

Her heart began to pound that dark rhythm. Doom-doom. Doom-doom.

“You must miss him very much.” Neal spoke softly. She realized, with a small jolt, that he had observed the changes in her expression, mapped the longing, confusion, and despair.

“I thought I would die too,” she replied, fisting her hands. She’d never been able to speak her pain aloud. She’d never had the right. She hadn’t been George’s wife, his fiancée. She hadn’t even been one of his acknowledged conquests. She hadn’t been anything to him at all, not that anyone knew. “I couldn’t bear that the hours kept passing. It made no sense, that the clock hands hadn’t stopped. I felt as though I were going mad.”

Effie had wept openly at the funeral. She and George had never been close, but she was his sister, and very much alone, with Anthony stationed halfway around the world. Lavinia had wept too. No one had looked askance. A pretty, sentimental young girl always had leave to weep in a church. And she had been a childhood friend of the deceased, who was himself a beautiful young man gone before his time. Tears became her.

She had wanted to howl, to gnash her teeth, to burn the church to the ground.

“But the hours did keep passing.” She dug her nails in her palms and took a quick, sharp breath. “I survived it.”

Talking thus, with Neal watching her, his eyes so warm and kind, burst something small and hard inside her. The pain was more, and then, it was less.

He leaned forward, reaching out. She froze as his thumb and forefinger closed on a curl that lay close upon her temple. She felt a slight tug and then he withdrew.

“Ash,” he said wryly, showing her the gray flake, then pressing it to powder.

“Did your mother’s hair turn white in one day?” she asked, touching her curls gingerly. “You never said.”

“I don’t know.” He smiled. “I was three years in South America. Her hair was white enough when I returned, but if it happened in an instant or over months, I’ll never know. My siblings wouldn’t dare contradict her.”

“Why did you leave for so long?” The thick, hot air and the murmur of voices seemed to form a cocoon around them. She felt tired but disinclined to push back her chair, to say good night. The dark stone passages of the inn were empty and foreboding. This room, for better or worse, held all the life.

“Varnham gives three-year contracts, same as Edevane & Fernsby. Why did I leave in the first place, is that the question?”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “Of course that’s what I meant.” Edevane & Fernsby. That would be the nursery that had employed the Pendrakes.

“I went on three collecting missions, in fact. The same as you.” Another flake of ash floated over the table. This one he didn’t catch. He blew upon it, and it looped up and was lost to view against the dark rafters. She tore her gaze from his lips.

Three collecting missions? That made nine years. How old was Mrs. Pendrake? Thirty? A blow, if she could pass for a woman at such a stage of life!