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When Daphne arrived home the following day, she promptly took a bath and then burrowed under the covers despite it being barely noon. Though her carriage made the journey in relative ease, Daphne was exhausted from the constant travel and took to her bed to rest, but her churning thoughts would not allow her to slumber.
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If her father had intended for her to have those letters, where were they? His heart failure had been so unexpected, only a few weeks after her marriage to Sylvester. They’d had a terrible row when she had discovered the blackmail, and he had been so insistent he had done it to secure her future. How she had cried that he had ruined her love and happiness, and he had only looked at her without remorse. Their few conversations after had been stilted and filled with tension.
Not once had he mentioned that he had left her those dreadful letters as leverage. There had been no special request in his will, only bequeathing her a portion and her mother’s escritoire.
Mother’s writing desk…
Her heart seemed to drop away. Invigorated, she pushed from the bed and hurried downstairs to the drawing room. The small desk that her mother had favored sat under a window facing the gardens. Daphne rushed over to it, pulling out the drawers and feeling for the hidden panel she knew existed. She had seen her mother on more than one occasion place special remembrances in it. It took her several minutes before she could pry open the fake bottom lining the drawer.
The breath whooshed from her lungs. A packet of letters bounded by a black ribbon rested there. She took them with fingers that trembled and counted eleven letters detailing the scheme of his terrible blackmail. How had he lived with himself?
Daphne closed her eyes, pained, when she spied the one belonging to Lady Henrietta.
Inside was the damming truth that had led her husband to ruin her father with such systematic ruthlessness and to treat her with such awful indifference.
Her throat went tight with sorrow. Footsteps echoed in the hallway, and she hid the packet in the folds of her gown. The housekeeper entered.
“A note for you, my lady,” she said, handing Daphne the letter, then departing.
Meet me in Hyde Park along the Serpentine within the hour,
Georgiana.
Daphne set the note down on the writing desk and rang the bell pull.
The light footsteps of a maid pattered across the Aubusson rug.
“Inform Letty I’ll be riding, and I’ll be wearing the light green riding habit.”
“Yes, your ladyship,” she said with a bob and hurried away.
Daphne pressed a hand to her stomach, hating the disquiet twisting through her gut. She glanced down at the letters, tempted to read them, but in truth, she could not. Most of the families she knew, and she did not want to know their secrets. How relieved they must have been when her father died, and how kind of them to not treat her with contempt. Well, not all. Now she understood Lady Dawkins’s and Mrs. Marbury’s polite distance.
Carefully returning the letters to her pocket, she made her way from the drawing room and up to her chambers. She had to speak with her husband; however, she would first meet with Georgiana. Daphne was a bit grateful for the reprieve of dealing with the fact that her brother had tried to blackmail her husband, and that he had kept it from her. Why?
Chapter Thirteen
A little over an hour later, Daphne rode with ease beside Georgiana as they trotted along Rotten Row. There were hardly any other riders in Hyde Park, and Daphne found she quite enjoyed the serenity of the late evening. They halted their horses and dismounted, trusting the hovering grooms to see to their horses’ needs.
“My husband made the arrangements for you. Here is the address,” Georgiana said, discreetly handing Daphne a small sheet of paper.
She unfolded it. Audley Street. “And what is here?”
Her friend sent her a chiding glance. “The scandal you are pursuing.”
She glanced at the note once more. The place of her ruination and freedom. Except she was not entirely confident that was the path forward anymore. “I declare I never expected to feel this jolt of anxiety,” she said softly. “But I mustn’t be deterred from my heart’s wishes.” Though she still had a week left for their bargain to be completed.
“You could give Carrington another chance.”
Daphne wanted an esteem that knew no bounds and could weather any storm. “He has not spoken of love or any tender sentiments, despite the wonderful times we’ve been having. What we now have is friendship and passion, which is more than most genteel marriages have. I should be contented.” There was a part of her that would throw away all fear and caution and remain with Sylvester at all cost if he promised more. “I’m dreadfully sorry to have put you through all this trouble to arrange a clandestine meeting. He…he has vowed to set me free if after trying I am still unhappy.”
“And are you?” Georgiana asked gently, her blue eyes soft with concern.
Daphne pressed a hand to her chest, aware of the quiet ache that burned in her heart. “I have experienced contentment I never knew possible,” Daphne confessed. “But there is still an emptiness inside. I told him I’ve always loved him, and he displayed no tender feelings. My heart grows heavier. I find that I wonder often if our marriage will once again return to a state of icy civility once I have borne my earl his heir.”
Mayhap she should give them more time, and perhaps in time affection and trust would develop between her and the earl.
Georgiana smiled. “I will respect whatever decision you make. There is something else,” she said, reaching into the pockets of her riding habit to withdraw a larger folded paper.
“What is it?”
“I believe it to be your husband’s secrets.”
Daphne’s heart jolted, and her hands trembled as she took the papers.
Georgiana sighed. “The only reason my husband gave me this is because I asked for it, and he knows how much I love you. He told me that your father held a very damning scandal over your earl, and while he did not confide in me the nature of the scandal, Rhys told me of the terrible consequences to Lord Carrington’s family.”
“What consequences?”
“Around the time your father was blackmailing Carrington, his sister tried to take her life.”
Shock and sorrow darted through Daphne. “Your husband is certain of this?” she asked hoarsely. Now she understood the rage and pain her husband had breathed with on their wedding night. His cruel words had cloaked his agony.
Concern flashed in Georgiana’s eyes. “He is. When I asked him about Carrington’s secrets, my husband revealed your father had traded for similar information years ago, over six precisely. Rhys did say he had destroyed the copy of the letters he had provided to your father and he would not revive an investigation into Carrington because he respected him. Is all well? You’ve gone terribly pale.”
“No,” Daphne whispered, tears burning her eyes. “Did you read this report?” Suddenly and inexplicably, she wanted to protect her husband from further harm more than she wanted her next breath.
“That would be a dreadfully encroaching thing to do. I would never intrude in such a manner.”
“Is it possible this information could be wrong?” The very notion her father could have acted with such callous disregard for someone made her feel ill.
“My husband trades and barters secrets,” Georgiana said without any hint of shame that her husband was so dastardly. “If there is any scandal, he has the uncanny ability to unearth it. Servants talk, people gossip, there is always a thread to follow is how he describes it.”
Daphne tore up the paper into tiny pieces and stuffed them in her pocket. “After our wedding, Sylvester made me painfully aware he had been forced to wed me and that no other sentiments had moved him when he made his offer. But I did not know how my father persuaded him. Papa wouldn’t tell me, and Carrington made no allowance for my ignorance,” she whispered. “I am the cause of his family’s pain. How could he touch me with such passion when he has no affection for me? Simply because he needs an heir? Has that all the past weeks have been about?”
It was evident why no sentiments had been whispered from his lips, even when he pleasured her with such wicked passion. In his heart, she was just as guilty as her father, and Sylvester would never need more from
her than an heir and an agreeable marriage. How she now hated the word agreeable and the lack of complexity and heart it implied in a union. So many emotions and memories tumbled through her—it was now clear why Sylvester had not even attended her father’s small funeral for the sake of propriety.
She hadn’t understood and had resented him even more for it. But this…
The foundations of her anger and bitterness and her determination to flee her wretched marriage had been dealt a heart-wrenching blow. How could I have been so self-absorbed in my pain? She had a cousin living in the vicinity of Bath, and she was tempted to flee there for a few days, or weeks, perhaps months while she gathered her wits.
Then the fierce need to see Sylvester rushed through her. “Forgive me, Georgiana, but I must leave at once.”
“Go, do what you must,” her friend urged, hugging her briefly.
Daphne hurried away and mounted her mare with the assistance of her groom and then rode away. Several minutes after, she alighted at their townhouse in Grosvenor Square and quickly ascended the stairs. The door opened as she reached the top steps, and she sailed inside the elegant and exquisitely appointed house. “Is his lordship home?”
“Yes, my lady. He is presently in the library,” Knobbs replied.
She made her way to the library and dawdled for a few minutes before she knocked once, opened the door, and entered. The room was empty. Daphne wasted no time checking the drawing room and music room before she mounted the stairs to her room. He must have left the townhouse and the staff was unaware.
She opened the door to her chamber and faltered. Her husband was staring at the packet of letters she had found. Daphne swallowed. A few had dropped out of the pockets of her discarded gown onto the carpeted floor. With a hand that trembled, she closed the door and leaned against it. Sylvester’s head snapped up.
His jaw tightened imperceptibly, and she tried to swallow against the sudden tightness in her throat.
“Strange, I do not see an envelope with my sister’s name,” he said, glancing up from the letters. He stared at her with a guarded watchfulness and chilling civility.
