Margaret nodded. “The woman you told me of. I suppose you have not heard from her in years.”
Nathaniel started to nod, then blinked. “Actually, she was at the ball. Before then, I had not seen her in years.”
Margaret frowned. “Do you not think that rather strange?”
“Certainly. But what motive could she possibly have?”
“Perhaps she has changed her mind and decided she wants you for herself.”
Nathaniel shook his head. “She is a married woman.”
“You may trust me when I say that a marriage does not always keep the heart from wanting something different. Do you believe that such a thing could be in her nature?”
Nathaniel considered all that he knew of Tessa. Before Tessa had scorned him for another man, he could never have thought so little of her.
But he’d found her to be callous in the end. Callous and cunning. She’d kept him hooked for weeks after she’d begun spending time with the gentleman who was now her husband, and had managed the deception effortlessly.
“I believe she could be capable of it, though I am uncertain. But even if she has been involved, how will we ever confirm it?”
Margaret seemed to think for a moment. “I have a cousin,” she said. “Who may be able to help. She seems to know everything about everyone. Perhaps she has heard something about this woman you speak of.
If there is any dissatisfaction between her and her husband, I am sure Tessa will know of it.”
Nathaniel thought he’d misheard her. “I’m sorry… what did you say her name was?”
“Tessa.”
Nathaniel felt his vision blur at the edges. All he saw was Margaret’s face and her lips moving around that name. “Lady Tessa Butterfield?” he said the name very slowly.
Margaret looked surprised. “Yes,” she answered. “You know her?”
“I know her very well,” he replied, in a breathy voice. “And I expect she will know a great deal about the lady I once knew.”
“Are they friends?”
“No,” he said, with a grim countenance. “They are one and the same.”
***
Lady Margaret Abigail Baxter, Duchess of Lowe
‘They are one and the same’, he’d said.
It took time for the full weight of that information to sink in. “She came to my house…” Margaret whispered. “And I sent her a letter, inviting her again.” It dawned on her then, in phases. Her cousin was the woman Nathaniel had once loved. Who’d scorned him.
And she’d come to her home to deceive her. “She… she saw me with William that night.” Her words were tumbling out in a rush now.
“She saw him kissing me. And the first time she came to see me, she left in a terrible hurry because she heard you were coming.” The flood of truth was like a baptism and it left her reeling.
But Nathaniel was sidetracked. “He kissed you?” he asked, but Margaret ignored him. They didn’t have time to think of themselves or what they meant to one another just now. That was an issue for later, once they’d resolved this mystery.
“Don’t you see?” She pressed. “She was here, where you stand now. I told her all about you.”
“What did you say?”
She blushed a little. “Everything. How I felt about you. I told her that William had confessed to loving me.”
“How you felt about me? How… how did you feel about me?”
“We don’t have time for this, Nathaniel,” she replied, impatiently, and with flaming red cheeks. It wasn’t fair of him to ask her that when Miss Wilde was still between them. An invisible, but palpable presence.
He looked as if he was going to press the subject, before nodding his agreement. “Very well. Another time then,” he concluded. “What now?”
At this, she was stumped. “I don’t know. How does one confront someone with such an accusation as this?”
Nathaniel didn’t answer. And in his silence, she studied his face. It was so strangely calm. “You do not seem as upset as I expected you to be,” she admitted, with a dubious expression.
Nathaniel took a seat and looked down at his hands, which were twined together between his knees. “Yes,” was all he said.
Margaret sat beside him. “Why?”
He half-smiled and looked at her. “I suppose I am relieved.”
“Relieved?” She looked aghast. “Relieved to find that the woman you love, who once scorned you, wants you after all?” Just speaking the notion aloud made her feel sore.
He shook his head softly. “The woman I once loved,” he corrected her. “I do not love her anymore, Margaret.”
He was looking at her in a queer way. An intense, warm way. It made her skin prickle. Margaret cleared her throat and looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap.
“I am relieved because I see the truth now.”
“The truth?” she said, quietly, and peered up at him from beneath her lashes.
“You did not send that letter. Truly, you didn’t.” He smiled, looking breathless. “And that brings me great joy.”
Why did it give her an awful pang to hear him say that? There was still so much between them. So many obstacles to overcome, and she no longer felt safe in his affections.
She couldn’t trust them anymore than he’d been able to trust that she hadn’t written the letter. Because she had no reason to believe him.
The truth was that Margaret felt as if she’d been broken one too many times. By Joshua. Then by Nathaniel. And she wasn’t ready to put her heart on the line again. Perhaps she never would be.
“I am pleased that you are relieved,” she said, after several moments of weighted silence. She said it without feeling, in a level, dead voice. When she looked back up at Nathaniel, he had lost his smile.
They held eye contact for a moment, then looked away.
“So what do you propose I do?” Nathaniel asked.
“I propose that we play Tessa at her own game.”
Nathaniel frowned. “We? This needn’t be any concern of yours, Margaret.”
“But it is my concern. She has done both you and I a disservice, which I would have rectified. I want an explanation, direct from her mouth.”
His brows rose a little, as if he almost felt moved by her pledge to help. “Did you think you would be alone in this?” she asked, with a small smile and a lurch of tenderness for him in her stomach.
“I…” he began, but nothing else came. She wondered how often he allowed people to help him. And, with sadness, she also wondered how many people had offered to help in his lifetime. He looked as if the very idea was foreign to him.
To save him the embarrassment of being lost for words, she spoke again. “I will write to her,” she said. “And ask her to come help me pack up my remaining belongings. When she comes, we will both be there and we will confront her head on.”
Nathaniel nodded, but it was clear to her that there was something more on his mind. His lips were pursed like he wanted to say something. “And then you will leave?”
She wished he wouldn’t ask her that. Not now. She wasn’t ready to answer those sorts of questions, least of all to him.
It was Ezra who saved her from having to speak. He called her from the doorway, where he stood staring at Nathaniel.
“Come inside my love,” she said and ushered him towards her.
Ezra came quickly and sat beside her, between her and Nathaniel. She’d never been so grateful for his presence in all her life. “You are still here,” Ezra said to Nathaniel, with a spark of hope in his voice.
“I am,” Nathaniel answered. “Though, I am just about to leave.”
Ezra’s face fell a thousand miles. Nathaniel looked up at Margaret, then back down at her son. “But I will be back very soon,” he added. “Before you go. I promise.”
At this, Ezra looked up at her with a wrinkled brow. “We are not going today?”
“No, my sweet. We are going to stay just a few days more. Is that okay?
”
“If Nathaniel comes,” he answered, in an eager voice and nodded rapidly.
Nathaniel smiled and so did Margaret. Their eyes lifted at the very same moment, meeting over Ezra’s head. She thought about the color of his eyes. Tender moss. And the fall of his lashes, like a curtain of lace.
Nathaniel stayed a little longer, to speak to Ezra, before he took his leave. When she bid him farewell in the doorway, she recalled the night he’d pushed her up against the wall and kissed her with such vigor that she’d felt it all the way to her bones.
She wanted to kiss like that again, but knew that she never would. The very thought terrified her as much as it thrilled her.
Chapter 31
Lord Nathaniel Sterling, Earl of Comptonshire
What an idiot he’d been. When he left the estate, he paused in the courtyard and looked back at it.
It was stripped of almost everything, except the two souls who lived inside. Though they’d been stripped of a great deal, too.
He’d been so absorbed in his own pain that he hadn’t been able to see the obvious.
It wasn’t just Ezra who was broken. Margaret was, too. And so terribly alone.
And I spat on her loneliness.
When he rode out of the grounds, his mind was a mess of muddled thoughts he couldn’t seem to sort through. This changed everything.
Before he broke into a gallop outside of the gates, he caught sight of Clark riding down the path towards him. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Miss Wilde told me you’d come here.”
They hadn’t seen one another since Nathaniel had told his friend to stop offering advice. They looked at one another for a long moment before Clark spoke again. “I have something I need to tell you.”
Nathaniel clicked his tongue, urging his horse on at a slow walk. Clark’s horse fell into step beside him. “She told me.”
Clark blinked. “Is she mad?”
Nathaniel looked at his friend. “Not in the least.”
“You didn’t believe her, did you?”
“Not at first,” he admitted. “But I have come to believe her.”
He looked dumbfounded. “Are you so ruled by your heart, Nathaniel? Who else could have possibly written that letter?”
“You will not like the answer.”
Nathaniel watched Clark’s brow furrow.
“You remember Lady Hartford? Now Lady Butterfield?”
Clark looked perplexed for a second before his countenance flattened out. “You cannot be serious,” he breathed. “Why tamper with you after all these years?”
“She is the Duchess’ cousin. She came to visit her when she last came to Comptonshire.” He paused before adding, with a sidelong glance, “and I have seen her, too. She was at the ball. We danced.”
“And you did not think to mention this to me?”
Nathaniel expelled a breath. “I thought nothing of it myself, at the time.”
Clark was quiet for a long time. They both were. When they approached Nathaniel’s estate and dismounted, he heard Clark mutter, “I owe the Duchess an apology.” He said it with such feeling. Though Clark could be impish, he was not unfeeling. “I have done her a terrible disservice.”
“Get in line,” Nathaniel said as his boots hit the dirt. As he handed the horse over to the stable boy, Nathaniel hesitated and looked at his friend. “I have wronged many people in these past few weeks.”
Clark put his hand up to silence him and shook his head. “Let us not speak of it, my friend.”
“But Clark-”
“All is forgiven. I will not speak of it.”
Nathaniel smiled to himself. Clark had always been terribly uncomfortable with displays of feeling. He shook his head and led him inside.
“So, she is innocent after all,” Clark remarked as they entered the drawing room. “What does this mean for the pair of you?”
“I don’t know,” Nathaniel answered. “I wish I knew,” he added, more glumly. “I suppose that is a matter for another time.”
He went to stand beside the window and looked out over the grounds. He didn’t want to sit. He felt too restless.
“And for now?”
“For now, we confront Lady Butterfield.”
“And how do you mean to do that?”
Nathaniel smiled and looked back at his friend. “The Duchess has a plan.”
As Nathaniel relayed the plan to Clark, he realized how much he’d missed talking to his friend. They had a drink together and talked long into the evening.
But there was one subject they avoided. What would become of Nathaniel and Margaret? Though they didn’t speak of it, he could feel it lurking in his mind, waiting to debilitate him. He didn’t want to think of it. He wasn’t ready to.
Because he feared that once he addressed the matter, he’d realize that - in all likelihood – Nathaniel had obliterated his one and only chance with the Duchess.
***
Lady Margaret Abigail Baxter, Duchess of Lowe
“When the Earl arrives, I want you to announce him as Lord William Brandon, the Marquis of Wiltshire. Do you understand?”
Miss White frowned at Margaret. “You want me to lie, Your Grace?”
Margaret smiled a little. Miss White was such a tender soul. She wondered if the woman had ever told a lie in her life. “Just this once, Miss White.”
She blinked as though she couldn’t quite comprehend the idea, but nodded. “Very well, Your Grace. I will do my best to sound convincing.”
“Wonderful. Then you will lead the Earl through to the drawing room.”
Miss White nodded, though she still looked a little concerned. In the meantime, Margaret sent her to prepare tea for Tessa’s arrival. Something to keep her distracted and from obsessing over her role in all this.
Margaret felt like the wait was infinite. She sat in the drawing room alone, having sent Ezra into town with Miss Hallow to keep him from interrupting what was about to happen.
Most importantly, to keep him out the crossfire that was surely about to ensue.
By the time Tessa arrived, Margaret had gnawed her lower lip until even her jaw was sore.
The Lady Butterfield was announced and Tessa flew in like a feather on a breeze. “Oh my darling, my darling, my dearest cousin! I have heard all!” She took a seat and took Margaret’s hands in hers.
Of course she knew all.
She always knew all. Something that truly amazed her, despite how the woman had deceived her.
Looking at her sweet face, it was almost impossible to believe that she’d done what she’d done.
Margaret did not answer at first. Only affected a sad, resigned smile.
“So, you are leaving Comptonshire?”
“I am,” Margaret confirmed. Her eyes flickered to the door. She’d told Nathaniel to arrive at noon. She looked to the clock. Just a few minutes now.
“Oh my dear, such sad news. Though I do think you have made the right decision, I must say.”
“You do?” Margaret asked in a sickly sweet voice full of falseness. But falseness seemed to be so familiar to Tessa that she didn’t even recognize it.
“Why yes,” she said. “What else can you do? After what the Earl has done to you, I cannot imagine what heartbreak you must be suffering. And so soon after your husband’s death.”
Now that she knew this woman to be a liar, Margaret heard deception in every word. Where before she’d felt like Tessa had been sympathizing with her, now she felt mocked.
“And yourself? Will you stay in Comptonshire? Your husband must be missing you terribly.”
Tessa waved her hand dismissively. “I am sure he isn’t,” she replied, almost curtly. It was not the first time Tessa had brushed off the subject of her husband in that way. Margaret felt the urge to push the matter growing in her.
“I am sure he is!” Margaret said. “What man wouldn’t, with such a wife as you? You must love one another so dearly.”
Tessa se
emed to be trying to smile, but it almost looked like a grimace. “Yes…” she said, in a deadpan voice. “Of course we do.”
Oh how she longed to push and push and push until Tessa’s sweetness finally snapped and she showed her true colors. She could see that this was a tender point.
An Earl for the Broken-Hearted Duchess Page 25