by Gill, Tamara
"Thank you," she said, a lump wedged in her throat. She stood at the door as they walked down the few steps to enter their carriage. Molly watched them go, thinking over what she would do. If Laura's diary held Hugh's name, her marriage would be over. Her future forever changed to the one she thought she would have when she'd said her vows. She closed the door, turning for the stairs, weary and in need of rest. Tomorrow she would face the answer she sought. Today had already been trying enough.
Hugh watched from the library door as Molly farewelled her aunt and uncle before returning upstairs to her room. He hated to see her so conflicted, sad, and lonely with the choice that she had to make. Desperate that he was, he’d spent the past hour listening in on her discussion with her family. The truth of his conduct was out there, he just needed to find it.
One glimmer of hope that had shone through was the mention of a diary. He could only hope that when Molly found the journal and God save him, he hoped she did, that he would be vindicated and proved innocent in this whole mess.
He knew he could not push her with her choice, make her believe him, he'd tried that enough already and had come up against a brick wall each time. She had to know the truth for them to have any chance of a future together. Any chance of getting her down the aisle a second time to ensure their marriage was legitimate.
Hugh shut the door and walked over to the fire, leaning against the marble mantle. He glanced about the room, his brother's office, not that he'd been taking care of the estates very well since Hugh had lived in Rome. His brother had turned to gambling if the many IOUs in his desk drawer were any indication.
Within a few days of being back in London, Hugh had settled his brother's debts and paid off any accounts he had outstanding around town. Had his brother been trying to ruin the family? That he could never know, but it certainly seemed fiscally that way.
He slumped into a nearby chair and rested his head in his hands. If Laura's diary was never found, Hugh would have to set out to win Molly's trust and love. He could not live without her. To not see her smiling face at him every morning on the pillow next to him. Watch as her cheeks blossomed into a delightful, rosy hue whenever he said anything inappropriate. He couldn't live separately from the one person that was the sole reason his heart kept beating.
And soon they would have a child. A son or daughter that was part of both of them. He did not want to raise the child without her, nor did he wish to only see the child when Molly bade him access. To be a family meant he needed her here with him, sharing their lives and everything else that came their way.
His stomach roiled with the idea that she would come up empty-handed when she searched her aunt and uncle's home. If Laura had burned her diary before she passed, there was no one left to know the truth.
A chill ran down his spine at the possibility that they could be severed from each other forever for a crime he had not committed. But would she trust him even if there was no one to tell her different to what she believed? If she loved him, she would trust his word, for God knows, he was not a liar. He would swear even on his own child's life, that it was not him who had ruined Miss Laura Cox, but his brother, St. Albans.
Chapter 16
Molly slumped back on her heels, staring at her cousin's bedroom, the bedding pulled off, scattered about the floor, and thoroughly searched. The few loose floorboards that she had found had been lifted, and with nothing to show for her efforts beneath them. She glanced down at her arm, blackened from the soot that had tarnished her clothing as she reached up and searched the chimney. With the assistance of a maid, Molly had moved furniture, emptied drawers, and padded the garments still occupying those cupboards, and nothing. Not a trace of this supposed diary.
It was not here, at least not in this room. Laura's chance to tell the truth, to declare once and for all who had wronged her, was not to be found. Perhaps she had burned it, for reasons only Laura herself could fathom. Molly did not blame her. To read the pages of a diary, one that would have initially been filled with love and adoration, of secrets and trysts would be a cause of despair if those moments of affection were no longer hers to have.
Molly would have burned her memories as well.
A little flutter caught her by surprise, and she reached for her stomach, her breath catching. She waited with bated breath to feel the movement again. She lent a half-laugh, half-sob when the little fluttering happened again.
Her baby. Their baby. The love of her life's child and the very man over whom she had to make a choice.
To trust and love him, or leave.
Molly pulled herself up and started for the door. She could not make a choice here, in her cousin's bedroom and where she passed. She needed to go to the one place she had always felt safe at home and at peace.
Within an hour, she was sitting in her best friend's drawing room, waiting for Evie to make an appearance. Her friend bustled into the room, her hair haphazardly pinned atop her head, as if she'd just risen from her bed.
Molly kissed her cheek, pushing down the pang of jealously of no longer having such afternoons abed with her husband. Of scurrying away to make love for as long as they wished. "I do apologize, Evie. I hope I have not imposed."
"Never, my darling." Evie rang for tea and sat across from her, taking in her rumpled gown and fixing the fishcu. "I was merely upstairs with Finn."
Heat bloomed on Evie's cheeks just as a footman knocked on the door, entering with the silver tea tray. Molly bit back her grin as she pulled off her gloves, setting them aside. "I do not know what to do, and I need your guidance."
"Anything, dearest."
"I saw my aunt and uncle, and they have confirmed what I imagined the worst. They do indeed believe the gentleman who seduced my cousin to her downfall was Hugh. He, of course, is adamant that he was not to blame. I do not know whom to believe."
"Does knowing that perhaps Hugh made a mistake in his youth change the way you feel about him? I know what he is accused of is very bad, the ton talk of nothing but his downfall and flee from England, but that will be nothing if you love him."
Evie's face swam as the tears Molly had been so stoically holding at bay, burst free. She sniffed. "I love him still. So much that it hurts to think of not being with him, but Laura was my cousin. I was sent away to France because of my family's fear of future rogues taking advantage of me, as poor as I was."
"You are very beautiful, Molly. I can understand your family being worried after such an event."
"I want Hugh, but to love him, despite what he has done means I lose my family. It would mean that all I've ever thought about the situation, my ideals and morals are worthless because I have chosen the very man who created the whole mess." An impossible choice and one she did not wish to make. "I know that Laura was not innocent in all this, she chose to give herself to him, but he could have married her, instead of taking the easy way out and fleeing the country. Hugh could have shouted from the rooftops that his brother had wronged an innocent young woman and be damned the consequences."
Evie stared at her, her eyes full of pity and concern. "I think you just made your decision, my dear," she said, clasping her hand. "But before you do, remember that Hugh was young, a boy of twenty. To go up against one's family, his brother a duke no less, would indeed be very hard. He fled, but that may have been because there was little left for him to do. No other option given to him."
Molly stared at her friend for a long moment, thinking over her words. His choice had he been innocent of the crime would not have been easy, that was true. But if Hugh was the gentleman who had ruined Laura, there was no forgiving of that fact. She would be lying to herself, going against everything she ever believed if she forgave such a sin.
The lump in her throat burned, and as much as she tried to swallow past it, it would not shift. However, was she to leave the man she loved behind? Commence a life where it was only ever half-lived?
"Remember, we're always here for you, my dear."
Molly n
odded. She would need her friends more than ever in the coming months. Oh, who was she fooling? Years to come.
Hugh looked up from his desk, the many letters to staff at St. Albans Abby before his brother's death scattered before him. He would chase down every last servant in England who worked here and the many estates he owned if it meant that he could find a single one of them who knew of his brother's liaison with Miss Cox. His life, his ability to keep his wife, depended on it. He could not fail her in this as well.
He'd failed her once before, he would not do it again.
Molly knocked on his door, waiting at the threshold before coming into the room. Hugh stood, striding over to her and pulling her inside. "You're very pale. What is wrong? Is the baby well?"
She didn't say a word, allowed him to place her onto the settee in front of the fire before he went back and shut the door, giving them privacy.
"I was unable to find Laura's diary, as I had hoped. If she had it with her in London during the time of her child's birth, it is no longer there." She shrugged. "Perhaps it never was."
He sat beside her, the pit of his stomach in knots. Would Molly believe him, or continue to think ill of him? How could she not trust him to be telling the truth? The notion she did not know him well enough to believe him ate at the organ beating in his chest.
"Not finding this diary, what does that mean for us, Molly?" Her answer meant everything to him. If she chose to believe him, trust him, and love him, his life would be fulfilled. After his father had died, the love he'd once known as a child became obsolete. He needed his wife to love him, to understand what he was saying as fact, for it was.
"I'm sorry, Hugh. I cannot stay here."
Hugh stood, distancing himself from her. He needed a moment to think, to take in what she was saying. His stomach roiled at the thought of losing her, and for a moment, he thought he may cast up his accounts. "You do not believe me still. I did not do what you accuse me of, damn it, Molly. I hardly knew Laura, and that is the God’s honest truth. If you choose to believe my lying mother, my bastard of a brother over me, then I suppose perhaps you should leave."
"What are you saying?" She looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears, and he wanted to go to her, beg her to change her mind. To not look at him with eyes that were a mirror image of his.
Heartbroken.
"You may have use of St. Albans Abby in Kent. I will visit prior to the child’s birth and we will marry to ensure its legitimacy. I will be a good father to him or her, but I will not be staying in England forever. I want to return to Rome and expect my son or daughter to learn of his or her life there."
"I did not want this for us. You understand that, do you not?"
He dismissed her words, hurt, and disappointment riding hard on his heels. "What difference does it make now? You have made your choice, and you choose to believe gossip and falsehoods over the man you're supposed to love. I suppose the few weeks that we spent together in Rome meant more to me than they did you."
She stood, coming over to stand before him. "You cannot think that to be true. I loved and adored you."
A bark of laughter escaped at her words. She flinched at the sound. "Loved and adored. All past tense and precisely what our marriage has become. Past tense." He strode for the door, wrenching it open so forcefully that it slammed against the wall with a resounding thwack. "I shall order your belongings to be packed and loaded onto a carriage first thing tomorrow morning. Good day to you, Duchess."
Hugh beat a path toward the front door, ignoring the fact that his vision swam in unshed tears. How could she not judge him justly? Had someone accused her of such crimes, he certainly would have stood by her, not allowed anything to tarnish her name.
He blindly strode across Grosvenor Square, ignoring any who greeted him. He needed a drink. That's what he'd do. He'd go to Whites and get blind drunk, and maybe a night of gambling would soothe his hurt.
The notion was almost as absurd as the idea that Molly would change her mind. That he'd return home later this evening and find her warm in his bed. There was no future here. Not anymore. He had hoped that their life could be both in England and Italy, but it would seem that it was not to be.
For years he'd been known as the villainous younger brother of the Duke of St. Albans. Well, now they could keep him that way. The fight to clear his name fled, and his shoulders slumped. Let the ton and his wife believe what they wanted. They could all bloody well damn go to the devil.
Chapter 17
St. Albans Abby – Kent
The Season ended in town, and fall turned the leaves orange and brown across the land. Soon winter would be upon them, and so too would her time to have her child. Their child.
Molly had moved down to the ducal country estate in Kent after her inability to find the diary of her cousin and read in Laura's own words what had really happened that Season all those years ago.
The days stretched endlessly without Hugh, and Molly found herself thinking more and more about what her husband was doing why she was rusticating in the country. She read, of course, did needlepoint, walked about the estate, learning the lay of the lands, and the tenant farmers who worked for Hugh, but it was not the same.
She missed him.
Dreadfully so, and a little part of her mind would not let go of the hurt, the devastation she had read in his eyes the day she parted from him in London. An awful gnawing feeling kept her awake at night, telling her that she'd made a mistake. That it was his elder brother and not Hugh who had done her cousin wrong.
That she should have believed him above everyone else.
The more she spoke to the staff here at the Abby, the more she doubted what society and her family had come to accept. The late duke was not missed. In fact, he was tantamount to a bully if Hugh's sister, who returned last week from Bath, explained him to be.
Since her return, Sarah had been a godsend, keeping her company and helping her to know of the family dynamics that Hugh had grown up with. All of those things, including Hugh's adamant statement that he was innocent, culminated in her change of mind.
Which left another problem for her to face.
However, was she to stand before Hugh and ask for forgiveness? Ask him to forgive her for allowing what others believed to sway her opinion of him? She had left him. Her husband. The man she loved more than anyone or anything in this world, save for the child that grew in her womb.
He would never forgive her.
"Is that a carriage?"
Molly looked up from the Belle Assemble she was staring at and not the least interested in what lay in her lap and glanced toward the front drive. They were seated in the parlor that sat just off the entrance hall, the room giving its occupants full view of anyone who visited the estate.
The carriage was traveling faster than it ought, and Molly stood, going to the window to see who it was that had come. Sarah joined her, her brow furrowed as a woman all but bolted from the vehicle before it even stopped.
"I've never seen the lady before. Do you know her?" Sarah asked, turning toward her.
Molly was already moving toward the front foyer just as her aunt stepped into the room. Her attention immediately snapped to the cloth parcel she held in her hands, held closed by a frayed pink ribbon.
"Aunt, whatever are you doing here?" Molly kissed her cheek, hope blooming in her soul that her aunt's arrival could mean something in regards to Laura and her diary.
She was not wrong. "I found it. I found Laura's diary. Here," she said, handing it to her. "Read it."
Molly took the parcel. She pulled the ribbon, untying the knot, and glanced at what lay inside. Pages upon pages of letters, love notes, and in Laura's own hand, her own thoughts and dreams.
"I thought this lost forever. However, did you find it?"
Molly started toward the parlor, her mind scrambling to find a letter from the gentleman whom Laura had loved. The word Henry stood out like a blemish on a nose. Her eyes scanned the notes, the adulatio
ns, the longing, the sweet words between the two. Laura's sincere and Henry's, the late Duke of St. Albans a means and ways toward getting what he wanted. Laura in his bed.
"You could have kept this from me. To show me this does not put Laura into the best light, along with the duke. Even so, I cannot tell you how very happy I am to see these letters."
Sarah sat beside Molly, reaching out to clasp her about the shoulders. "I told you Hugh was innocent. Henry was a cad, a troublesome boy who grew up to be a selfish, arrogant man. I like to think that Hugh and I are like our father, kind, honest, and honorable. Henry took after Mama in all his wayward traits."
Molly's aunt studied Sarah a moment as if only just noticing her presence. "Aunt Jossalin, this is Lady Sarah Farley, Hugh's younger sister. Sarah, this is my aunt Jossalin Cox, Laura's mama."
Sarah inclined her head a little. "I am happy to meet you, Mrs. Cox, and I'm sorry for all that you've suffered at my family's hand."
"It was not your doing, my dear." Her aunt's lips lifted into a semblance of a smile, but pain lurked in her blue orbs—pain left by the late duke's treatment of her daughter and what ultimately happened to Molly’s cousin.
"Where did you find it?" Molly asked, skimming through pages and pages of notes. Henry was certainly a gentleman who knew how to play to a woman's heartstrings. The sweet gestures, his appreciation of her gowns at balls, and how her cousin comported herself within society would make anyone think that an offer of marriage would be forthcoming.
"A maid had packed it away with some of Laura's things upon her passing. The trunk was forgotten in the attic. On a whim, I decided to look through her old things, reminisce I suppose. See if I could still smell her." Tears welled in her aunt's eyes, and she dabbed at her face with her hand. "It was sitting atop of all her gowns and shawls. I was so lost in my grief when we were in London. I did not think of her things that were left to pack away at our country house. The staff took the initiative and did that for us, and I never sought to check on that myself. I wish I had, for had I done so, these many weeks you've been living estranged from His Grace would not have happened."