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“But you intended to take revenge.” She needed to know what kind of man he had become.
“I intended to take him to court and see him hanged.” Fierceness overtook his features.
There, standing so proud and firm before her, she could only imagine the pain he went through with the loss of his mother. A nearly ineluctable impulse of closing the few feet between them and enfolding him in her arms spread in her. She tensed to prevent herself from doing it. She would not be able to stop. Ever. “How long?”
“How long I ‘disappeared’?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
She nodded.
“For about two months.” His scrutiny of her did not relent.
“That was why they thought you dead.” She mused aloud. “And maybe officers on leave spread the rumour here in London.”
“It may have been the case.” Forceful air left him. “Little chance of writing for I travelled incognito.”
“Why did you not write before you left?” It would have saved a lot of heartbreak, she thought grimly.
“I did not have the time. My superiors took the opportunity to send me on other missions, too.”
“I-“
The drawing room door flew open. “Romulus, my boy!” His cheerful aunt broke the sorrowful atmosphere. “You should take Lady Winchester to the library. I am sure she will be entranced with the collection of books you helped me gather.”
She rushed to answer before him. “I am sorry, Lady Derby.” She drafted a faint smile. “I should go right away.” She just wanted the solitude of her home to munch on what he revealed.
“How unfortunate, my dear.” Her shrewd observation allowed nothing to go unnoticed. “We shall see it another day, no doubt.”
“No doubt, my lady.” She replied distracted and curtsied. “Your Grace.”
Head spinning with thoughts, she left as quickly as decorum allowed.
* * *
His aunt fixed him with one of her knowing stares. “Did you manage to tell her what you came here to tell?”
Naturally, the woman who helped him into adulthood invited him to this soiree. He did not have time to finish the book they were discussing, so he declined her invitation. But asked who had accepted. He thought it better to meet her here, because whenever they were alone, conversation was the last thing in his mind. “I had to.” He rubbed the nape of his neck, under his queue.
“I assume you two did not meet recently.” She sat on a settee.
Respectfully sitting on a chair, and not plopping on it as he wished, air blew from him. “No, not really.” He paused, unsure as to how much he should disclose to her.
“In her estate, before she married, then.” Her maternal instincts continued as sharp as ever.
He nodded. “We wanted to get married as soon as I could obtain leave.”
“But…?” She sounded as if she was trying to open a difficult bottle of wine, though she never had to do it once in her life.
“There were rumours that I was dead and she married another.”
“Rumours?” She said bewildered. “I spent a lot of time in the country at that time, raising your cousins. I do not remember these things.”
“Didier must have heard something.” His younger brother sowed his wild oats in town at that time.
“If the girl says she learned them, she cannot be wrong.” The Viscountess adjusted one of her bracelets distractedly. “She is a very forthright type of woman.”
“Undoubtedly.” He agreed, one of the qualities he r
eluctantly admired in her. Among many others, he had to admit.
