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Grace drew herself up but still struggled to fight off the humiliation clinging to her. Lord Weston clearly knew of his sister’s misuse of her, he might as well know the whole of it. “I first wrote your sister in July of this year. My family had to leave London early, and I was feeling rather sorry for myself for not being able to enjoy the entire Season in Town. During a particularly lonely morning, I sat down and wrote nearly two dozen letters, all to various acquaintances I’d met earlier that year.” As lonely as she’d been that morning, writing letter after letter, it was nothing compared to the utter rejection she’d felt for the next several weeks, waiting for replies that never came.
“Your sister,” Grace said, “was the only one who ever responded.”
“London is full of idiots.”
Grace couldn’t stop the guffaw that escaped her. It wasn’t a London full of idiots that hurt her, it was a London full of prim ladies all too good to associate with the likes of her.
“I wish she’d never written me back at all,” Grace continued, folding her arms against the cold.
“Don’t say that.”
“I am in earnest.” She stared at Lord Weston. “If her only aim was to laugh silently behind my back, to use me for her own enjoyment, then she ought never to have written—”
“She didn’t write you back.”
Grace stared at Lord Weston, not fully understanding what he’d just said. She understood the words clearly enough, but she couldn’t wrap her mind around his point in saying them.
He placed a shoulder against the wall beside the window and leaned heavily against it. “Frances never wrote you back. I did.”
The floor seemed to tip beneath Grace’s feet.He’dwritten her back? What did that even mean? What was he saying?
“Then...” Grace took a small step backward. “Youhave been laughing at me this whole time as well?”
“No.” The word burst from him, firm and resolute. He reached out, taking both her arms in his hands. “Please let me explain.”
Her head was spinning. She wished to pull away from him, but she wasn’t fully sure she could stand just now without his hands holding her up. So she stood still and waited.
Lord Weston must have taken her silence as permission to continue. “When your letter arrived, Frances and I were both in the room. It was clear, by the way she acted, that Frances had no desire to further an acquaintance with you. I felt she was being overly prudish and, in an effort to make her see how childish she was acting, I read your letter aloud to her.”
“You had no right,” Grace heard herself say. Though it hardly sounded like her own voice.
“You are correct, but I wanted Frances to see that ignoring someone simply because their father held no title was wrong.”
Grace shivered. “But I did receive a letter.”
Lord Weston shrugged off his jacket. “In reading your letter, I saw a woman who felt much as I did.” He draped the jacket over her shoulders, pulling it snug against her. “I have often struggled among society. You were so honest in your expression, I found I couldn’t allow it to go unanswered, no matter my sister’s smallness of character.”
His jacket was warm from his body heat. It smelled of him too. Strange that she should know it to behissmell. She hadn’t consciously labeled Lord Weston’s scent before. But smelling it now, she recognized it all the same.
“I wrote you,” he said. “I wrote you and signed my sister’s name to protect you from scandal.”
It was true. If he’d written her and signed his own name and word had gotten out, she would have been ruined. Grace pulled his jacket closer around her still, subtly lifting one of the lapels closer to her cheek. “So all this time?”
“It’s been me.”
Those three simple words brought everything she’d believed for months to a sudden end. She and Lady Frances were not friends, never had been.
“It’s always been me,” Lord Weston said, his voice softer than before.
Her mind threw up letter after letter, confession after confession, for her to remember. Grace folded her arms, her brow creasing. She’d shared more than just the comings and goings of her life. She’d shared private thoughts and hopes. Good heavens—she pressed a hand over her eyes—she’d written to him regarding her first fluttering feelings regarding Lord Brown. How flattered she’d been he’d invited her. How much she’d hoped it meant he intended to further their connection.
She wasn’t humiliated now for the same reasons she’d been before—now at least she knew no one had been secretly laughing at her behind her back—but she felt humiliated all the same. She’d thought she’d been writing to anotherwoman.She never would have worded her letters in such a way had she known she was writing a gentleman.
What must he think of her?
Grace spread her fingers and peered between them. In the dark corridor, he waited, silently watching her. He didn’t move or speak, and neither did she.
The longer she stood there watching him watch her, the more she realized how much shedidn’tknow what he was thinking. She didn’t know what he thought of her or what this meant. Her hand fell away from her face. So many words hung unspoken between them. But she didn’t know what they were. She didn’t know how he felt about her. She wasn’t even sure she knew how she felt abouthim. Not now. Not after all this. Earlier today, things had seemed so clear, but now, everything was a mess. A tangled web of duplicity and half-truths and who knew what else.
Grace dropped her arms to her sides, allowing the jacket to slide down and off her. The cold bit against the bare skin of her arms between her sleeves and gloves.
She held out the jacket. “I think I shall retire to my bedchamber now.”
Lord Weston took the jacket but held it limp in his hand and made no move to put it back on. “Please, you must see that I never intended to hurt you.”
“Must I?” she said. “Honestly, I don’t know what I believe.” She was too tired, too worn down from all the intense emotions of the day to know up from down. “Good night, Lord Weston.”
She didn’t give him time to respond but walked quickly to her room and shut the door firmly behind her.
