Page 211 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“Have they found him?”

“Not yet. Pembry has men looking.”

Rosalind lowered her gaze to the letter. Whatever conscience had eventually troubled the guard, it had come far too late. He had helped keep her father imprisoned and written the lie meant to convince his family that Edmund had abandoned them.

His regret did not make him innocent.

Nor did it erase Augusta’s part in what had happened.

She had helped Algernon maintain the illusion that Edmund left London voluntarily, arranged the forged farewell, and later supplied Rosalind with the false story of another woman when she came too close to the truth. She had even helped frighten the man from the auction rooms into silence once he realized how dangerous the situation had become.

Rosalind lowered the letter as Augusta’s face returned to her. She remembered the exhaustion that had seemed so genuine when they questioned her and the bitterness beneath her voice when she had spoken of William.

You’re getting the less complicated brother.

All that time, she had known what Algernon had done.

“She protected him,” Rosalind murmured.

William’s jaw tightened. “She did far more than protect him. She knew my brother had taken your father, helped him keep an innocent man imprisoned, and then lied to you when you came too close to discovering the truth.”

“I know.” Rosalind folded the letter carefully and set it aside. “I am not defending her.”

Some of the anger left his expression, although he looked away rather than answer. Rosalind understood it well enough. Perhaps anger was easier for him to hold than grief.

Augusta had known the parts of Algernon that William had never been allowed to see, and when confronted with what her husband was becoming, she had chosen to help him conceal it rather than stop him.

“What will happen to her?” Rosalind asked after a moment.

“She has been charged as an accomplice. They believe she will face transportation to New South Wales if she is convicted.”

The flatness of William’s voice made the answer feel heavier than anger would have.

Rosalind sat quietly, trying to imagine loving someone enough to discover they had done something monstrous and then choosing to help them hide it. She could not. Yet the past several weeks had taught her that love did not always bring out the best in people.

It could inspire extraordinary courage and equally extraordinary foolishness. In the wrong hands, it could even become an excuse for forgiving things that should never have been forgiven.

“We do strange things for the people we love,” Rosalind said softly.

William met her eyes, and she reached across the space between them to take his hand.

“But perhaps loving someone should sometimes mean refusing to help them destroy themselves.”

His fingers tightened around hers.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then William shifted slightly in the chair, and Rosalind caught the flicker of strain across his face before he could hide it.

“You are tired.”

“I am perfectly well.”

“You have been awake for nearly two hours.”

“A heroic achievement.”

“It will be considerably less heroic if you exhaust yourself and delay our departure.”

William sighed. “I begin to regret teaching you how easily I can be ordered about.”