“You really should leave, Your Grace,” she said. “I have received your message, and I have explained why I am unable to attend. Please, be on your way… and I hope that your final outing with Selina is… satisfactory.”
Suspicion creased Matthew’s eyes, though his smirk spoke of a man who was rather pleased with the outcome.
“I am sure I shall hear all about it from my friend,” Evelyn added, an urgency in her voice.
Despite his unwillingness to leave without hearing her say that a future with the baron was what she wanted, and his reluctance to give Matthew the satisfaction of seeing him leave, Hugo could not refuse Evelyn’s request. He was clearly causing her distress, and it was the very last thing he wanted.
With a nod of his head, he acquiesced. But not before murmuring, in a low voice, “I knew that necklace would become you perfectly.”
With that, he walked out, frustration and confusion buzzing through him, as if a nest of wasps had been set loose in his veins.
“Why was he here?” Matthew demanded to know in the wake of Hugo’s departure, oblivious to his sister’s distress.
Evelyn kept her gaze fixed on the floor, her hand moving to the necklace at her throat, lightly twisting the chains around her fingertips. “He told you. He came to give me a message.”
“What message?” Matthew asked bluntly, with that same command in his voice.
She swallowed past the aching lump in her throat. “To invite me to chaperone his outing with Miss Parsons. He was passing, so he thought he would deliver the message on Selina’s behalf. It is not as if I have been allowed to see her myself.”
“You will soon be married. What need do you have for friends?” Matthew said, so lost in the wilderness of their father’s way of living that he really thought that was the only way to exist. To isolate, to rarely socialize, to have no one beyond one’s own family, one’s sons.
Evelyn moved forward, turning to slip past him. “I should return to my chambers to ready myself for dinner.”
“He is not to come into this house again,” Matthew snarled as she went by him. “I do not know why father allowed him in.”
Evelyn flashed her brother a bitter smile, her heart cracking in her chest. “I would not worry about that, Matthew. He has no further reason to visit this place.”
Without waiting for the contemptuous remark that would assuredly follow, she headed up the stairs to her room, her fingertips still wrapped with the chains of the necklace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The fire crackled in the grate of Hugo’s study, spitting sparks that flared and faded like his thoughts. He was supposed to meet with Dominic and Laurence at their usual gentlemen’s club, but he had sent word of a headache that was not a complete lie, for onewasstarting to form at his temples. By morning, considering the amount of brandy he intended to consume, there would absolutely be a headache to complain about.
He sipped from the glass he had just refilled and glowered at the dancing flames, cursing their merriment.
If she is not happy with the arrangement, then why is she doing it?
Of course, she had not said she wasnothappy with the arrangement, but he had seen the panic, the terror, the misery, etched upon her beautiful face. Her plea for him to leave was surely because he had been tapping too close to the root of the truth.
“You cannot possibly want him for a husband,” he muttered, as he grabbed one of the scrunched-up balls of paper on the side-table and tossed it into the fire.
There was a considerable pile of them: the failures from his attempts to write a letter to Evelyn, asking all of the questions she had already refused to answer.
The edges of the paper blackened and curled, tinged with glowing red for a moment, before it disintegrated into ash.
“He would bore you senseless,” he continued, tossing another ball. “He is unworthy of you. Not once did I hear of him asking how your ankle was. You will simply be going from one gloomy existence to another if you?—”
A knock at the door halted his soliloquy.
“Who is it?” he barked, his words already slurring.
The door opened and Octavia poked her head inside, her eyes widening in shock as she saw him. “I… thought you were in here with someone. Did I not just hear voices?”
“I was reciting poetry,” he said with a snort, as he gathered up another ball of paper and hurled it into the flames.
She frowned and stepped further into the room, closing the door behind him. “Are you not supposed to be out somewhere with Dominic and Laurence?” She paused, noting the decanter ofbrandy. “Is it your plan to be desperately unwell at the botanical gardens tomorrow?”
“It does not matter if I am, for I am not going,” he replied, taking another pointed sip of his drink. “I should never have agreed to it in the first place. Yes, I realize that the auction was for a good cause, but I would have given the money myself if I had known that…”
