Page 102 of Regency Whispers: Scandalous Matches

‘I thought you were in Northumberland.’

‘I spent a few months in Northumberland after we married, then I moved to London.’

‘No one said, in their letters.’

Alice looked away, glad when the maid bustled in with a plate of eggs and toast and a steaming pot of coffee.

She hadn’t written to Lord Westcroft: there had hardly seemed a point. Her husband was a stranger, a man she had spent very little time with before they were married and even less after. She knew his mother had written detailed letters telling him about the family and the estate, and so had Maria, but she had asked both not to include her in their letters. They had complied, seeing her discomfort of her new position and wanting to do anything to help her feel accepted and settled.

Lord Westcroft waited until they were alone again and then fixed her with an unwavering stare. ‘I know it must be a shock, my turning up like this with no warning.’

‘It is,’ Alice said, buttering her toast a little more vigorously than she normally would. ‘But it is your home. I do not know why I am surprised.’

‘Perhaps because I told you I was leaving and never coming back,’ he said gently.

Alice put down her knife. She could feel the tension in every muscle of her body. For twenty-one years she had not been in control of her own life. She had lived by her parents’ rules, tied to the fate they determined for her, and then suddenly she had been granted her freedom. Lord Westcroft had given her a great gift, she knew that, and her coolness towards him now was only because she feared she might lose that freedom. She exhaled slowly, suppressing the uncertainty and the fear, and turned to her husband.

‘How are you?’ she said, studying him properly. ‘It is good to see you looking so well.’

Simon felt the weight of her scrutiny. Her eyes took their time as she looked over his face and body. He knew what she would see, something entirely unexpected: a man who had gone away to die looking healthier and stronger than ever before.

‘I am well,’ he said quietly. ‘At least, I think I am.’

‘You think...?’

He sighed heavily and glanced out the window to where the sunshine was reflecting off the puddles that lay on the street. It had been a difficult truth to come to terms with, almost as difficult as thinking he was dying.

‘I told you of my father and brother, their headaches, their sudden deaths,’ he said, hoping he would not have to go through the painful history again.

‘Yes, I remember, and your mother told me a little more after we were married, after you left.’

‘Yes, she suffered terribly. First her husband, then her eldest son. Both struck down in their prime when they had young families to care for.’

‘When you left you were getting awful headaches,’ Lady Westcroft prompted gently. ‘It was the reason you were so keen to leave so quickly.’

‘I’d been having them for some time on a daily basis. I’d consulted two reputable doctors, and after listening to the story of my father and brother they both told me the same thing.’ He paused, remembering the first time a doctor had looked him in the eye and told him he was going to die. ‘They told me in all likelihood I would be dead before the year was out.’

‘They couldn’t have known that,’ she murmured, shaking her head.

‘They spoke of a malformation of the vessels in the brain, a condition that runs in families. Apparently it has been seen in cadavers when they have undergone dissection for medical training. Evidence of a catastrophic bleed in the brain and a story of headaches before death.’

She looked away, her fork pushing the egg around on her plate before she laid it down and picked up her cup of coffee, cradling it with both hands.

‘They told you that was what would happen to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘At the time I felt like it only confirmed my suspicions.’

She took a sip of coffee and then looked over at him. ‘Yet you’re still here and look as healthy as a man in his prime.’

‘When I left I was having daily headaches, but over the next few months they gradually dwindled.’

He had been unable to believe it at first, thinking it was perhaps just a short reprieve, but as he had travelled farther from England, his headaches had become fewer. He’d settled in a remote part of Italy, high in the Tuscan hills. It was beautiful there, and for the first time in a long time he had felt at peace.

‘When I had been in Italy for two months I sought the advice of an eminent physician in Florence. I explained my symptoms and what had happened to my father and my brother. He told me it was not yet my time to die.’