Page 81 of Earl, Enemy, Husband?

He missed her like the very devil.

‘You should go,’ his mother had said, after he’d told her the tale. ‘Explain what happened.’

‘Go,’ George had said. ‘It was all my fault,’ he’d said. ‘She did it on purpose.’ He meant Eloise. ‘She saw your wife and wanted to cause trouble. My God, Gray, you were right all along. I should have trusted you.’

His wife should have trusted him. He wasn’t the one who needed to apologise. He had done nothing wrong. But his wife had deemed him guilty without giving him a chance to explain. If she didn’t trust him, then what was the point?

Except, being without her was like having a sore tooth: it ached constantly. He had not felt this way when Eloise had turned him down. What he’d experienced then was like a fly bite compared to a mauling by a tiger.

Foley led him to the ballroom and opened the door. The wooden floor gleamed, the walls glittered with gilt and the light from outside flooded in through the new French doors. It looked exactly as he had imagined it would. Only now, missing a wife, he could hardly ask members of the ton to join him for a ball. And he didn’t really care. The ball meant nothing.

‘What am I looking at?’

Foley pointed to the chandelier and then the floor below. It glittered with crystal shards from the chandelier.

Graydon frowned. ‘What happened?’

Foley shook his head. ‘I found it that way when I came in here two days ago. The chandelier is old. I don’t believe there is a problem with the structure.’

‘Believe?’

‘I am as certain as I can be.’

Graydon sighed. The renovations to the house had cost a great deal more than he had anticipated and now, with what he had given to Eloise, he really did not need any additional expenses.

‘You need to order a new chandelier, then.’

‘I thought perhaps Lady Blackdown might like to look at the catalogue I have.’

Graydon froze.

Of course, everyone in the area must know that his wife was living at the Dearing house. It would look odd if he did not visit. The last thing he wanted was the local gossips to have a field day at his expense. He’d endured enough of that as a boy, with regard to his father.

‘Give me the catalogue. I will see what she says.’

Foley dashed off to fetch it.

Graydon gazed around the ballroom. He’d had such high hopes when he’d returned from Canada. He’d arrived in the New World feeling as if his life had been ruined because of Eloise. Now it seemed she was doing it again.

Carve your own path, Gray. The naysayers will only hold you back. It was Uncle Robert’s voice in his head. He’d been a great believer in a man doing the right thing.

Foley returned with a bound tome. He rifled through its pages. ‘This section here is where all the larger pieces are to be found, my lord. I would suggest something in Venetian glass as being appropriate.’ He bent the corner of the page and handed Graydon the book, who tucked it under his arm, took his leave of Foley and set out to walk the Dearings’.

A slight heat haze lay over the rolling landscape. A light breeze whispered through the trees and hedgerows where birds twittered and cheeped. His boots kicked up dust in the lane which only a month or so ago had been nothing but puddles and mud.

He recalled their first meeting: the glare from beneath those startlingly dark eyebrows; the diminutive height of her as he set her on her feet. The memory made him smile.

If he was honest, he’d been a bit smitten from the moment he’d seen her, which was odd when he thought about it. Of course, he hadn’t realised it then.

He leaned on the top bar of the stile, looking across the field to the Dearing house. That field, the one that had brought them together.

Strangely, two days after Florence had left him, his man of business had arrived in a fluster. He’d found an old box of papers in his attic, papers that included the deed to this field: what irony.

If he’d found it a couple of months ago, he and Florence would never have married and he would be happy.

No. He would have offered for her eventually, surely?

He contemplated what he would say to her now. What was the right thing? That was the question. Insist his wife return to London with him, as he had every right to do? Or humble himself, even if he had done nothing wrong?