Page 19 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

“It’s been my pleasure, Lady Che—” She broke off, uncertain, and darted a glance toward him. “I’ll show myself out.”

Caro stepped to the door beside her. “You will call early tomorrow? For our usual stroll?”

The other woman blinked, as if surprised by the request, but quickly recovered. “Of course.”

“Thank you, my friend.”

He expected Caro to fly at him the moment the door closed behind Mrs. Drummond. Instead, she stood with her back to him, her shoulders rigid, the posture of one battling a desire to walk away. But when she at last spoke, her voice was still infuriatingly calm. “Did you enjoy Paris?” she asked, as if he’d been gone a month at most.

He pretended the answer required reflection. “Not particularly.”

In the autumn and winter of 1802, Paris had been overrun by merrymaking Englishmen pretending the war was over. He hadn’t tarried there long.

“What a pity.” She sounded like someone speaking to a stranger. Which, of course, she was.

He had never been—would never be—anything else to her.

Finally, she turned toward him, her expression blank. “And why are you here, again?”

He felt something like pity then. He could not change the past, but he might have spared her this. “You need a cup of tea,” he declared. “Ring for some fresh water.”

Her slightly unfocused gaze settled on the tray an astonished Mrs. Horn had insisted on bringing him when he’d arrived. He wondered whether he was about to have a teapot lobbed at his head. “I had tea with Mrs. Drummond,” she said.

“Sit down, at least. You’ve had a shock.”

A laugh, not quite hysterical, burbled from her.

Another man would have gone to her, taken her by the elbow, gently led her to a chair. He turned, inexorably, to stone. “Surely you heard rumors about my grandfather’s health? You should have anticipated that I would have no choice but to return to England for a time. Certain matters related to my inheritance must be handled face-to-face.”

She lifted her gaze to him. She was still the only woman—almost the only person—who could look at him without flinching. “I heard nothing of the sort. In any case, what I wish to know is why you are here, in Brighton. If it were only a matter of informing me of your grandfather’s death, a letter would have sufficed. Rest assured, I would’ve asked Mrs. Horn to see that appropriate measures were taken. Crape would already have been hung and—”

“No.” She jerked at the force of the word. “I don’t mourn the man, and I forbid you to.”

A shimmer of gold in her eyes flared at the command in his voice, and he belatedly caught yet another error in his judgment. No doubt he had just guaranteed that she would wear all black from this point forward, forever—and damn him, but she would look no less beautiful.

“Then I could have ordered myself new calling cards, at least.” The sharpness of her retort, its sarcastic, bitter tone, offered less comfort than he had anticipated. “In any case, you had no need to come in person.”

What did it mean that he had wanted, gone out of his way even, to see her? Over the years, he’d grown quite adept at dismissing her from his thoughts—a skill made necessary by the frequency with which she intruded there. From Toulouse, the journey to London would not ordinarily have taken him through Brighton. But then he’d let himself imagine her furious reaction to his sudden reappearance. The spark of fire in her eyes and in her hair.

He should have contented himself with that mental image, rather than insisting on admiring it firsthand.

Before he could frame a response, she spoke again, and this time, he heard something close to fear in her voice. “But since you’re here, now what?”

“Now?” he answered coolly. “Now you are the Duchess of Hartwell. Your acquaintance and entertainments will be even more highly sought. You may look down your nose at all but the queen herself, if you wish.” He let his gaze travel over her.

There was something distressingly familiar about the pale green muslin of her gown.

For six years, and however unwillingly, he had carried a picture of his wife in his mind, the way she had looked that morning in his study, when she had come to him, book in hand, something dangerously like affection in her eyes, and he had…well, panicked, he supposed, and told her he was bound for Paris.

She had been wearing a dress of pale green muslin. He’d hated that dress, all her dresses, on sight. Oh, she’d looked pretty enough in them—she looked pretty in anything and probably, if his senses other than sight could be trusted, would look even prettier in nothing at all. But it had been autumn, and she had been wearing a spring dress—spring of a year or two past, if he didn’t miss his guess.

Those out-of-season, out-of-fashion dresses had been one more reminder of Caro’s damnable family, her father especially, who had run up debts and then expected his daughter to scrimp and sacrifice and had not even shown the decency to balk at marrying her to a monster.

He’d ordered her to buy a new wardrobe, complete. Something befitting a marchioness. Had she done it?

Or was she still wearing the old things to spite him?

He had expected her to be angry, yes. He had not expected to feel anger himself.