Page 109

“No,” Ernest exhaled as they halted at the edge of the pavement, waiting to cross the street. “No, from…from my brother, Charles’s, mother.”

As he had expected, there was shock and surprise on Gwen’s face—much like the shock and surprise he had felt when he’d first received the letter.

“So your father’s first wife—but she died in childbirth, did she not?”

“She did,” Ernest said heavily as they stepped across the road. Only when they reached the opposite pavement did he add, his stomach twisting, “She wrote this letter on the night she died.”

Gwen stared in astonishment as they continued walking slowly along the street. “Addressed to you?”

“Addressed to the future Lord Frasemere,” Ernest said, swallowing hard. “I suppose she presumed—she had just given birth to a son. I suppose she thought it would be Charles who read it.”

It had been most disconcerting to read the letter, almost as though he were intruding on a private moment between two people who were both gone now. A moment that could never be recovered.

“What does it—I mean, you don’t have to tell me,” amended Gwen hastily, her cheeks pinking. “My curiosity doesn’t oblige you to share it with me.”

And that was another thing that Ernest adored about this woman of his.

Oh, she would never stop being curious, and he didn’t want her to. Her curiosity was one of the things he loved about her.

But that curiosity was balanced with a compassion he had rarely found in another person. She was, at times, incredibly mature.

“She… She expresses her wishes for the happiness of the future Lord Frasemere,” Ernest said as he exhaled a laugh. “It’s strange, really. To read a letter that is not intended for oneself.”

“You are Lord Frasemere,” Gwen pointed out quietly as he led her down a street much quieter than the one they had been walking down.

“She wrote it thinking of Charles, the babe she had just borne,” said Ernest with a shrug. “It feels intrusive in a way, but I can understand why the solicitors sent it on to me. It was… It was unsealed.”

“Already opened?” His future bride’s brow furrowed before her eyebrows shot up as understanding dawned. “Your brother—Charles, he’d already read it!”

“He had.” Fourteen, sixteen, eighteen…there. Twenty.

Ernest came to a halt outside number twenty and looked up at the townhouse.

It was pleasant. Not well looked after—there was a certain empty feel to it, even standing here from the pavement. But it appeared to be a pleasant enough place, with large bay windows and four floors. The roof could do with a spot of repair and the front door dearly needed a fresh spot of paint, but it was a home.

It could be a home, for someone.

“Why…are we standing here staring at someone’s house?”

Ernest blinked. Gwen was standing beside him, her arm still in his, an expression of clear confusion wrinkling her nose.

Well, he supposed this was it. The key that had come with the letter was already weighing heavily in his pocket.

“This house,” he said quietly, “was the property of my father’s first wife. Her father’s home, apparently.”

The furrow had returned to Gwen’s brow. “So… So whom does it belong to now? Did she have any siblings?”

“She did, but that is immaterial. Apparently,” said Ernest with a dry laugh, “she willed it to the future Lord Frasemere.”

Gwen stared at him, then back at the house. “But—But she meant her son! Her baby, your brother, Charles. Surely, she meant only him.”

“The letter, which she wrote in her birthing bed when she knew that death was coming, states that she wills it to the future Lord Frasemere,” Ernest said quietly. Reading such a letter, full of love and affection for a child just born, had been…disconcerting. “Apparently, it was only to be given to the future Lord Frasemere upon his decision to take a wife. To enable him to marry for love.”

You will always have a home, my boy. A home for love.

“‘For love’?” Gwen breathed, staring up at the house.

Ernest shook his head ruefully. “The arrival—the original arrival of this letter. I don’t know why a solicitor sent it before my father was dead, but perhaps Charles had written to the firm asking if there was any recourse for him to marry against his father’s wishes. That must have been it. That must have been the reason why Charles and Laura… They could not have hoped to be married without it. My father would have cut him off, left him with nothing and she had nothing to begin with—”