AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Thomas was almost tempted to give his true answer: that even though he had not yet made up his mind whether or not to discuss the letters he had found with Mother, and following that, Gerard, he felt it was important that he not abandon his brother now that he’d stumbled upon this new knowledge. That was what family did, after all.
And Mother and Gerard were the only family he had left.
Then, of course was the matter of Lady Evelina…despite her anger with him, and the mess he had made of their relationship, he simply did not have the willpower to leave without even the slightest chance of understanding what when wrong between their fathers, and if at all possible, fixing things between them.
“You know me,” Thomas said with a shrug, throat oddly tight. “I’m always the one to make bullheaded decisions.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way, though,” said Gerard, almost pleading.
“Maybe not.” Thomas got to his feet and set the brandy aside. If he stayed here any longer, he would be overcome with emotion, and then who knew what might slip out of his mouth? “But it’s the way it is.”
* * *
A week passed quickly, swollen with false leads and dead ends. Or perhaps that was just because Thomas did not have the spare time to spend continuing to seek out the truth of his father’s murder that he would like.
He was too busy drowning in paperwork from his time in recovery. Their foreign agents were demanding instructions about shipping, and contracts, and what on earth to do about this drought.
Thomas didn’t know. His mind was very much elsewhere, vacillating between the murder, Gerard’s true parentage, and the loss of Lady Evelina.
That’s wasn’t exactly true, though. Thomas was doing everything in his power not to think of Lady Evelina at all.
It was harder than he thought. He kept seeing her everywhere. Not the real Lady Evelina, of course, but traces of her. He might see a woman on the street with similar raven hair. He might pass a fragrance store, from which wafted out the scent of her exact brand of perfume. He might come across a passage in a book or a letter, and think to himself, I wonder what Evelina would make of this.
It got to the point where Thomas spent half the workday actively throwing himself into busy work and minutia just to avoid letting his thoughts drift into dangerous territory, getting bogged down in everything he’d lost.
One such day, Thomas had worked straight through the afternoon meal as heavy rain pounded down on the study’s little window. It was a gray day, and he felt lethargic all the way down to his bones, but he couldn’t afford to take a break. Not if he wanted to accomplish all that needed to get done. Not if he wanted to avoid thinking thoughts that served him no purpose.
Mother entered the study without knocking, holding her head high, as though she meant to address a foreign diplomat rather than her own son. “Thomas. I mean to have a word with you.”
Thomas looked up from the sprawl of papers across his desk, and blinked the fog out of his eyes. He had a headache. Not the sort of headache that had plagued him for days following the attack, but the sort that arose from staring at small print for too long. “What is the matter?”
His thoughts shot to the bundle of perfumed letters, tucked away once more in their original location behind Father’s accounting records from the era. Surely, Mother had not discovered on her own that Thomas had found them?
“May I sit?” the Dowager Duchess asked, nodding toward the chair.
Thomas was too paranoid over what this conversation could be about to protest. “Yes, please.”
She sat down and regarded him with a single raised eyebrow.
It was the look she had given him as a boy, when Thomas had broken something or caused a problem for the staff and was too scared or proud to fess up. Despite the years that had passed, the look had him fidgeting in his seat. “May I ask again what this visit is about?”
“I very well think you know.”
Thomas thought again of the box of letters, and his heart picked up speed. “I…I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Mother.”
She sighed and turned her eyes skyward. When Thomas still didn’t fill in whatever blank she was waiting for, she said, “Lady Evelina. You approached me at Almack's ball, desperate for an introduction. And yet somehow, you’ve managed to offend her this greatly?”
This was absolutely not what Thomas had been expecting his mother to say. When he got over being stunned, his mind began to race at the implications. Was it somehow possible that Mother had found out about what had transpired between himself and Lady Evelina? That he had accused her father of murder?
For all of Thomas’ efforts to keep from burdening his mother with the situation, what else did she know about his and Gerard’s suspicions of the Duke of Alderleaf?
“Can you elaborate?” Thomas asked, throat dry, making the split-second decision to stall for time and try and gather a little bit more information as to what Mother did or didn’t know before jumping in headlong. He’d finally begun to learn a little strategy, at long last.
“Well, it’s obvious you’ve done something odious if just a few weeks ago you were attempting to court Lady Evelina, only to have your name rescinded from the guest list to her engagement ball.”
Thomas’ heart stopped.
Engagementball?
