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Now he felt a cad on both scores. He wanted to marry Kitty, but he couldn’t. He wanted to be a good husband to Octavia, but he couldn’t. Not if that meant giving up Kitty, which he wasn’t prepared to do. It wasn’t only that he loved her, truly and deeply. He also owed her too much to ever leave her. Or maybe that was just an excuse. Still, he could never do it. Leave her. She was, simply, part of him. It would be like living without a limb.
The leaves were slippery beneath his feet as he passed the gated park near his townhouse.
Head bent against the late-night chill and damp, he wondered how he’d managed to get himself in so deep. It was too late to renege on his marriage offer, and it would devastate and quite possibly ruin Octavia, so respectable, so suitable, and so beloved by his mother.
Kitty was, and could never be, a suitable candidate for his wife. Especially not now after the recent scandal which even his own mother had brought up in shocked tones, not knowing of her son’s fatal involvement. She’d heard only what a lucky escape Lord Nash had had from an ambitious actress with designs on his wealth and title.
As he put his hand on the latch to open the gate and two bats flew just above his head, his heart felt it was literally breaking in half. Indeed, he was a man torn in two. How could he break off his betrothal when Octavia looked to him to rescue her from spinsterhood and poverty in a rural backwater? When she was the ideal candidate for a man in his situation looking for a well-connected wife?
But how could he live with himself when the time came to divide his attention between the two women who should have his undivided loyalty? Silverton wasn’t a man who’d ever dreamed of taking a mistress when he already had a wife.
But he was going to be a man who would take a wife when he already had a mistress.
It didn’t sit well with him.
The truth was, he couldn’t live with Kitty, but he couldn’t live without her.
In another salubrious part of town, Lord Partington’s eldest daughter sat at her dressing table, pushing back her curtain of unbound dark hair to scan once more the contents of a letter that enraged her more than any letter she could remember receiving.
In fact, it was beyond outrageous, Araminta thought, resisting the impulse to hurl her bottle of Olympian Dew at the wall.
Everyone said Hetty was the sweeter-natured of Lord Partington’s daughters—Lord knew, she was certainly the plainest!— but Araminta intended brandishing Hetty’s insulting letter in front of all the family so that they could see her sister couldn’t let bygones be bygones.
The fact that Hetty had suggested Araminta’s husband Lord Debenham’s presence for the forthcoming weekend family gathering might be ‘difficult’ was insulting and outrageous.
Clearly Hetty was still making a mountain over a molehill, harking back to the little incident when Debenham had threatened Hetty with a broken bottle. Well, Araminta knew that Debenham had been in his cups that fateful night at Vauxhall Gardens and one could hardly blame him for reacting as he had since Hetty had just announced her intention to expose him over that wretched and apparently incriminating letter Sir Aubrey’s deranged wife had written, implicating Debenham in the attempt on Lord Castlereagh’s life.
“ Somefink wrong, m’lady?” Jane, her maid, had just entered the room and no doubt noticed that outrage was written all over Araminta’s face. Since Jane was already the keeper of Araminta’s most damning secrets, it was a relief to have someone on whom to vent her spleen this morning.
“Can you believe it, Jane, but Hetty has invited me to The Grange for a few days so the babies can be admired by all and sundry, but she says Debenham isn’t welcome.”
“That don’t sound like Miss ’Etty.”
“Well, she’s suggested that it’s too early for us all to be comfortable with each other. She still blames Debenham for trying to blacken Sir Aubrey’s name, though I don’t know how she can say that when no proof that my darling Debenham had anything to do with any bad business has ever been presented.”
“That’s b’cause ya burned that letter wot Sir Aubrey’s wife wrote sayin’ Debenham were guilty of bein’ a Spencean ‘n all ‘em other terrible things; only Lord Debenham pretended it were the other way round ‘n the real villain were Sir Aubrey. So, since yer burned the letter, o’ course there ain’t no evidence. Well, yer thought yer burned the letter only yer bin tryin’ ter get that Lord Ludbridge ter get it back for yer. If ‘e ain’t done it yet, ‘e neva will.”
“Don’t you be saucy with me, Jane!” Araminta snapped. She loathed Jane’s references to the smoldering mistrust between the two dangerous gentlemen Araminta and her sister Hetty had married respectively.
She unscrewed the lid of the Olympian Dew and dabbed a little of the lotion beneath her eyes. “Sir Aubrey’s first wife was deranged so what would she know about anything much less the truth? She killed herself.” Unsteadily she tried to screw the lid back on. “And now I don’t know what to do.” Araminta felt increasingly panicked the more she dwelt on it. “I have to get that letter, only Teddy says his brother needs it, but he won’t tell me why. Really, I don’t know what anyone thinks Debenham is guilty of. ” She took a deep breath as she rose and moved to the window to look out into the rainswept street, though she was distracted by her reflection in the glass. She smiled to force away the frown lines, and turned as she considered the latest new hopeful development. “Anyway, Lord Ludbridge promised he’d get me the letter during our last conversation, and it’s not the only time he’s helped me. You forget it was he who discovered that scheming Kitty La Bijou was mysteriously wearing my necklace, though I won’t publicly condemn her since she did help me that night.”
Jane looked up from where she was removing strands of Araminta’s long dark hair from her hairbrush. “No, it might no’ do ter sling mud at ’er, m’lady, since ya owe ‘er rather more thanks, mayhap, than she’s bin given.”
Araminta decided to ignore the irony in her maid’s words and to drop the subject. She didn’t want to pry too much into how the very necklace Araminta had handed over for a service rendered—a service which no one must ever know about—had come to be in Kitty La Bijou’s hands; or, rather, around her throat.
But, given half a chance, Jane was at the old topic like a dog with a bone. “P’raps it wouldn’t be such a bad fing for you ta find out, m’lady. Yer know Miss Bijou were given the necklace from ‘er admirer. Well, the admirer afore Lord Silverton who she’s wiv now, so it might be interestin’ ter know where ‘e got it from. ”
“Lord Nash,” Araminta muttered. “What a lucky escape for Lord Nash.” No, she was not going to pry too much into where he’d got it from. It had been traded in the underworld, the entrails of society, and a place Araminta wanted to put as far away from her own life as possible—like that half-sister, Lissa, she was determined she’d never recognise or acknowledge.
So she said in a bright voice with a veneer of self-justified disgust, “Can you just imagine it! A peer marrying an actress. What’s the world coming to? I don’t think Papa even knew about Miss Bijou’s existence until I told him she’d come into possession of my necklace, and then he was very grim, and even more so when I mentioned the fact the pair were going to marry secretly.
“Apparently Mama follows the gossip sheets though, and she certainly was shocked by such an ill-matched coupling, so it would seem their feelings are entirely in accord with mine.” She sent a narrow-eyed look at Jane, not sure where her maid’s loyalties lay on this. “Yes indeed, they were both horrified to hear that a man of Lord Nash’s standing would consider marrying a common piece like Miss Bijou.” She trailed her hand over the surface of her dressing table as sh
e stared out of the window, trying not to think of the night Miss Bijou came to her aid and wondering, uncomfortably, how much the girl knew or suspected. “Well, Lord Silverton can enjoy his lovely little plaything, but he’ll have to pander to a wife soon enough. I’ve a mind to hint to his poor bride-to-be that there are hidden depths to her beloved.”
“You know Miss Mandelton?”
“Not in the slightest. But I’ve no doubt she’s a dashing piece. A man like Lord Silverton could have his pick.”
