The butler had, naturally, slammed the door in Anthony’s face owing to lateness of the hour at which he had arrived, but he did not intend to be so easily dissuaded. He pounded upon the door with his fist until even the nearby windows rattled with the force of it. He’d wake the whole damned household if he had to.
After what felt like an eternity, there was some manner of sour grumbling from behind the door, which slowly opened once more to expose Chris’ scowling face, his blond hair tousled and disheveled. He braced one hand upon the door jamb, revealing the crimson velvet sleeve of his banyan robe, suggesting he’d been pulled—none too willingly—from a sound sleep.
“’Ave you any idea of the time?” he snapped.
“I’ve killed men for less.”
Just what sort of fellow was this man, truly? “Have you, really?”
Chris shrugged.
“Seems likely, at least.” He winced, turning slightly to direct a glare over his shoulder.
“Ow, Phoebe,” he said.
“It was a statement, not a threat. Go back upstairs; you’re not dressed.”
“Your wife?” Anthony asked, as the soft pad of retreating footsteps sounded through the door.
“She pinched my arse,” Chris said.
“Doesn’t think I ought to toss certain words about so cavalierly. That some people—fools, obviously—might take them the wrong way.” His hand tightened upon the door jamb, blunt nails biting into the wood.
“Now,” he said, his voice roughening.
“State yer business and fuck off wiv ye.”
“I need to know where Charity might have gone,” Anthony said in a rush.
“’Ow the ‘ell should I know?” Chris asked, his brows drawing.
“She does what she pleases. I ain’t her keeper.”
“No, but—” But this man and his wife were amongst her closest friends. Surely, if there were anyone who would know, it would be them.
“Please,” he said.
“I’ve been round her flat already. It’s locked up tight. No light in the windows, and she didn’t answer the door. And her nearest neighbor—”
“Fer Christ’s sake,” Chris sighed.
“You disturbed her neighbors?”
“What else was I meant to do?” Anthony said, with a wild little gesticulation of his hands.
“They said they’d seen her packing a few trunks into a carriage just before nightfall. That she’d gone off in it and hadn’t returned.”
“Well, she ain’t here,” Chris said.
“Like as not if she’s taken trunks with her, she’s well clear of London for the foreseeable future.”
“But where?” Anthony asked insistently.
“Please. I have to find her.”
“What for? She ain’t yer wife anymore, is she?” Chris asked.
Anthony felt his face freeze, as if the question had been delivered with a slap to punctuate it.
“She told you?” he asked. “Already?”
“Not as such,” Chris said.
“We ‘appened to be over at hers. Just a friendly visit, you know. She’s been a bit off lately. Phoebe was concerned.”
Off? Off? What was that meant to imply?
“She’d got a letter from the Church,” Chris continued.
“Weren’t no great mystery what about.”
“Did she…say anything of it?” Had she been happy? Relieved?
“Not a word. She’s always been tightlipped. Besides, it weren’t any business o’ mine.” Chris’ gaze scoured his face, searching intently.
“Aw, hell,” he sighed.
“Ye changed yer mind, didn’t ye? Ye got an annulment it’s turned out ye don’t want.”
Anthony flinched from the blunt words.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“And I have got to find her. I have got to tell her—”
Chris inclined his head.
“Tell ‘er what, then?”
“That I love her,” Anthony said, the words tumbling over one another as they poured out of him.
“That I want her to be my wife.” In truth, this time. For the right reasons.
“You certain of that?” Chris asked, squinting at him in rank suspicion, modulating his voice and affecting a more serious inflection.
“You’d be making a duchess of a courtesan. You won’t find acceptance amongst your sort. Neither of you.”
“I have never been more certain of anything in my life,” Anthony said.
“I never wanted the title. I don’t care if we have no place within society. I don’t care if every door in London is closed to us—”
“Bit dramatic there,” Chris said.
“I said your sort. My sort is a different matter entirely. Charity’s one of us, and if it turns out she wants you—well, then, you are, too. ‘Course, it suits my interests to have a duke in my social circle. Could get some use out of that.” He turned his head and shouted, “Phoebe!”
The soft patter of bare feet once again, first from on high as they descended the staircase out of sight, and at last approaching the door.
“For God’s sake, Kit,” a feminine voice sighed in affectionate exasperation.
“It is the middle of the night. You’ll wake the whole street!”
“Charity’s skipped out of London,” Chris said.
“Got to know where she might’ve taken ‘erself off to.”
“If I had to hazard a guess,” Phoebe said.
“I’d say her sister’s is most likely. Mercy, that is—not Felicity.”
“You’re certain?”
“No, I’m not certain.” A petulant stamp of a small foot.
“She didn’t bother to tell me, the wretched woman. It’s just that I can’t think of anywhere else she might go. Felicity certainly could not host her, but Mercy and her husband have got an estate in the countryside.” Her hand wrenched at Chris’ shoulder to pull him down a bit, and she peered over it at Anthony.
“Baron Thomas Armitage,” she said.
“That’s Mercy’s husband. His estate is in Kent.”
Kent. It wasn’t so very far, all things considered. He might’ve had a journey to Scotland to contend with.
“There you have it,” Chris said.
“Best we can do. Now kindly get the hell off of my steps and let me get back to bed.”
“Kit,” Phoebe chided.
“Hand to God, Phoebe, if you pinch me again—Christ!” Chris jumped at what had clearly been another pinch. Somewhere now unseen beyond his shoulder, his wife cackled with mischievous glee. Her footsteps retreated once more, slapping across the floor as she fled. Chris rolled his eyes with a sigh.
“Ye’re certain you want one o’ these?” he asked.
“A wife, I mean to say.”
“God, yes.” But it had to be Charity. It could only be Charity.
“Wise man.” A crooked grin tugged at the right-hand corner of Chris’ mouth.
“The right one is a great deal of fun. Off you go, now. I’ve got a wife in dire need of a spanking.” And he closed the door in Anthony’s face, bellowing his wife’s name once more as he went.
Anthony descended the steps, heading for his carriage. He had a direction. Or most of one, at least. But it was far too late—or early, depending upon one’s point of view—to set out for the countryside now. Tomorrow, then, after a proper night’s sleep…and after he’d handled a few necessary details.
***
“I’ve never known you to be so morose,” Mercy said as she cast herself down upon the sofa across from the one upon which Charity lay in a spiritless sprawl within the drawing room, where she had tossed herself just after breakfast.
“Honestly, it’s a bit depressing.”
Just exactly what one wished to hear when in the throes of despair.
“You’re meant to be comforting me, you know,” Charity declared. Or tried to, though it was a rather difficult thing to do with her face buried into the plush fluff of the pillow she’d wedged beneath her head.
“I am heartbroken.”
“Really? I would swear it was only months ago you last swore your heart was far too hard to break,” Mercy said.
“Well, as it happens, I was wrong.” And how that wretched, worthless organ now ached. How woefully ironic it was that she had hardly noticed the softening of it within her chest until it had at last become tender enough to pierce.
“Come,” Mercy said.
“I let you have a good cry upon my shoulder last night when first you arrived. The very least you could do is to give me the salacious details at last.”
“I did,” Charity bit out, aiming a reproving glare in Mercy’s approximate direction.
“Well, it was rather difficult to make out so much as a word through all of the sobbing,” Mercy said.
“I thought it best only to make soothing noises and to pat your back.”
“Terribly sorry for the erroneous assumption that my sister might be willing to comfort me in my hour of need,” Charity mumbled into the pillow.
“Is being permitted to wallow in my self-pity for just a few days without having to make explanations for it too much to ask?”
“Between sisters? Yes.” Mercy dodged the spare pillow Charity lobbed at her.
“Self-pity doesn’t suit you in the least, besides. And I do truly want to know what has set you in such a state, you know. I’ve sent Thomas out of the house for a stroll with the baby. It is only the two of us.”
“And Thomas’ mother,” Charity said.
“And his sister. And your father.” All of whom had been perhaps too solicitous, which had made her feel always on the razor edge of tears. At least she had been spared the addition of Marina, Thomas’ middle sister, who was in the later stages of pregnancy and had been advised against traveling upon roads that had the tendency to turn dangerous this time of year. Probably she would have cracked entirely beneath even one more person dancing attendance upon her.
“You knew that when you chose to come,” Mercy said.
“It’s Christmas. Bound to be family about.”
“It’s only just now December.”
“But it’s Flora’s first Christmas. That makes it particularly special.” Mercy gave a little sigh.
“But I am glad you’ve come, even if it was heartbreak that brought you.”
Finally, a little sisterly sympathy. Charity flopped over onto her back, staring up at the high ceiling which was decorated in little frills of gold paint.
“I was married,” she said.
“And now I am not.” And, officially, she never had been.
“You were…” Mercy leaned forward, riveted.
“I beg your pardon. Married?”
Charity gave a tight nod, cradling a pillow to her chest.
“But you said you had never been in love.”
“One needn’t be in love to be married.” She gave a little shrug, awkward and pitiful.
“I didn’t lie to you,” she said.
“I thought I had long been widowed, so it hardly mattered whether or not I had been married, as I wasn’t any longer.”
“But you were,” Mercy said.
“Still married, I mean to say.”
“Much to my surprise. And to his.”
“Your bit of a situation,” Mercy said, quoting from the letter Charity had sent to her not too very long ago, as she curled her legs beneath her upon the sofa, attempting to find a more comfortable position.
“It was a marriage?”
“It was. It isn’t any more.” Charity worried the fringe upon the pillow between her fingers, ruining the delicate threads.
“In the eyes of the Church, it was never anything at all. We secured an annulment.”
“Better that than a divorce.”
“A divorce might well have ruined him socially,” Charity mumbled.
“He’s a duke.”
“You married a duke!”
“Well, he wasn’t a duke at the time!” Charity flounced about upon the sofa, giving Mercy her back.
“And if you could stop shouting at me.”
“I beg your pardon. I was surprised.”
“What, because I had married?”
“No,” Mercy said slowly.
“It’s not that. Not exactly. I suppose it’s more like—I can’t imagine a duke winning your heart.”
“I certainly didn’t ask him to,” Charity said sulkily over her shoulder.
“I didn’t want him to.” But he was so different from every other man she had ever known. Gentle and earnest and a bit shy. Soft where she had always had to be hard. Forgiving and indulgent where she was inclined toward pettiness and jealousy. Sincere, where she had always been irreverent and sardonic. Contrarily, all of the things that had made him the sort of man who would have required her tutelage to find a proper wife had also made him the only sort of man she could ever have loved.
“And he did not…return your feelings?” Mercy inquired delicately.
“He’s a duke,” Charity repeated blandly.
“He can’t have a courtesan for a duchess. He was just as willing to pursue an annulment as I was.” She scrubbed at her eyes, which had once again grown alarmingly moist.
“There’s a lady,” she said.
“One I was helping him to court. Lady Cecily Wainwright. She is just entirely perfect. The right match for him, in every way.”
“Perfect on paper does not mean perfect in truth.”
“I’m afraid she is also perfect in truth,” Charity said on a heartrending sigh.
“I’ve met her. She wasn’t even rude to me, and she knew who I was—or what I was, I should say. Can you imagine? I was devastated to find that she was perfectly pleasant, even to me. And I had wanted so badly to dislike her! To find some fault or flaw which might make me feel at least a tiny bit superior. Is that so petty of me?”
“Yes,” Mercy said crisply, with the hint of a laugh tucked behind her teeth.
“Phoebe said so, too,” Charity muttered, and even that tiny bit of forced levity slipped away from her as melancholia seeped back in.
“I’ll recover,” she said in dogged determination.
“It’s my very first heartbreak, you understand.” And her last. Of that, she would be certain.
“But I should like to spend just a bit of time feeling very miserable and sad for myself. And I don’t want to do it alone in London, where I might encounter him. Them.” Her voice broke across the word, and she pressed her hands to her eyes with a suppressed sob. They kept sneaking up upon her, those horrible little sounds.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,” Mercy said.
“But what will you do when you do return to London?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t yet considered it. Perhaps I won’t return.”
“Oh, come now,” Mercy chided.
“You cannot let yourself be chased from your home by some—some awful duke who rejected you!”
“He’s not awful; he’s wonderful,” Charity returned, offended on Anthony’s behalf.
“And—” She chewed her lower lip, curling in on herself.
“He did not reject me, precisely. I didn’t give him the opportunity.”
“Charity! You wretched little coward!”
“I couldn’t bring myself to face him,” she said plaintively.
“I really, truly wish him every happiness. But I can’t watch him find it with someone else. I just can’t.” Perhaps there would come a time in the future, when the heartache had abated, that the mere prospect of it would not hurt so very badly. But it would not be soon.
“I beg of you, don’t chastise me now. Just—just be a good sister and let me be miserable.”
“May I chastise you later?” Mercy asked in exasperation.
“If you must.”
“Oh, I really must.” Mercy rose from her seat.
“Turnabout is fair play, after all. And I will certainly relish it every bit as much as you once did.” She nudged Charity’s feet, prompting her to bend her knees to free up a bit of space.
“But not right now.” She dropped into the space Charity had made for her.
“Right now, I can just be a sister,” she said as she reached out to give a soothing stroke to the tangle of Charity’s hair.
“Now, then. Tell me everything.”