Page 86 of Forever Her Bachelor

CHAPTER 26

Dear Chauncey,

You have always meant everything to me, and nothing would make me happier than being more with you.

P.S. Please return to me soon.

Yours,

Kitten (The Chemist)

Pippa sat staring at her husband as they traveled through Mayfair, passing rows and rows of elegant homes, intent on going to one of London’s deadliest neighborhoods, St. Giles. She opened and closed her mouth several times, wanting to say something. She still could not believe that he wanted to find Maggie and the child before returning to the comforts of their home. She saw the penitence on his handsome countenance and could only imagine how heavy the pain of the past was on his heart.

St. Clara had spent most of their itinerant journey reading his mother’s journal while Pippa devoted her time waitingfor the guillotine to drop. She was unflappable, assessing her husband for any signs of irritability.

His careless dismissal of her and their relationship left a bitter, acidic taste in her mouth. Even with his innocence from her earlier heartbreak, Pippa still found it difficult to separate the two instances. Everything was the same: the overwhelming sensation of being crushed into a million tiny pieces, darkness surrounding her vision, threatening to consume the light that she so desperately tried to cling to.

The truth was she was afraid to let him in again. Pippa had barely found herself after the Maggie incident. The words of the late duke had haunted her for years. When St. Clara had informed her that they would live apart, Pippa felt like the same girl all over again.

Small, weak, standing in front of a formidable duke.

Now, he wanted her to forget, to forgive his momentary lack of judgment after she had willingly given herself to him. Confessions of love had been on the tip of her tongue that night in the Queen Anne rooms before her world combusted into flames.

Pippa loved him most vehemently; the overwhelming emotion had slowly conquered her in the days they had become reacquainted. Now, she recognized that it had always been a small piece of her, brewing in the far corners of her heart and mind. Pippa was now clearly aware that she had loved him even at sixteen.

It had been different when they were younger, like a whisper flying away on a cool breeze. The bond that was formed as innocent children couldn’t withstand the former duke and Maggie’s confession. As a girl, Pippa knew her friend had only offered for her to save her from a loveless marriage, and she had accepted because he was the one person she depended on more than anything.

The last fortnight with him, discovering their connection again, had reawakened the bond, sparked it, morphed it into the sun. A sun that grew so bright and hot within her that it had consumed her before she was even aware. Their wedding day and handfasting had shown Pippa exactly who she and St. Clara were always meant to be, and he’d ruined it all in one day.

Traveling the English roads had been grueling, especially with the heavy fog of uncertainty between them. Pippa wanted to believe his confession of love, but the pain of his words and actions was still a fresh wound on her soul. She knew that Chauncey was contemptuous of his family’s past. She knew very well what type of man his father had been.

Setting down the journal filled with grief and broken heartedness, Pippa watched as he gazed out the window. The scenery was fast changing from a bustling metropolitan city to the overcrowded slums of St. Giles.

It was a dreary afternoon. Pippa looked out the small window as they grew closer to St. Giles. The air had become putrid, the people turning from the aristocracy to the working class. Unaccompanied children dressed in rags ran up and down the overcrowded streets. A small wisp of a girl slipped her hand into the pocket of an unsuspecting man, took out its contents, and ran.

Chuckling, Pippa turned back to her husband, her eyes traveling from his stoic expression to the closed journal beside him. She understood that reading what had happened to his mother was not an easy task. She had read every page of the journal and understood clearly what the other woman had gone through. The late duke’s treachery ran deeper than Chauncey could ever imagine.

His father had not only shamed his wife who had been used most horridly by the late marquess, but he’d tried to take Amelia from her. He had arranged for a family to take the then-youngAmelia without his wife’s knowing. It was his one condition to forgive his wife, but the late duchess refused him, deciding to keep her daughter and live her life in shame.

Taking in her husband’s vacant stare, red-rimmed eyes, and the closed journal, Pippa knew he had finally learned what a true monster his father had really been.

It was devastating. She wanted to comfort him, to wrap her arms around him and never let go, but she was still afraid. So afraid that he might cast her aside as if she were nothing.

“Are you well?” she whispered, her voice carrying through the carriage. She may have been vexed with him, but she did not want him to suffer.

There was a long pause, no sound but their heavy breaths and Newt’s occasional purr. Pippa waited, giving him time to acclimate to what he had just read.

Her body jerked involuntarily, wanting to be by his side, but she couldn’t. Not yet. She needed to know that he would never abandon her.

“She told him …” The murmured words slicing through the heavy air pierced Pippa with the intensity of them. “She told him, and he blamed her. Like it was her fault that she was violated.”

Heart shattering for him, Pippa could no longer sit and witness his pain. She rushed to her husband, taking him in her embrace. He clung to her, his body heaving with the weight of his father’s betrayal. He finally knew who Ludlow Bennett, the former Duke of St. Clara, had really been.

“I believed every cruel word he told me about her.” He buried his head in her neck, his hold on her tightening as his lips brushed the sensitive skin of her neck. She tried to control her body’s response, but there was no denying the quiver of need that ran through her.

Pippa’s arms strained as she squeezed him tighter to her, no longer caring about his behavior in Staffordshire. He was her Chauncey, and he needed her strength. Strength that she had in abundance. “You were an impressionable child; you are not to blame. Your father spoke poison about her to her own son.”

Chauncey released her, dragging his hand over his damp face. “I should’ve known!” he cried, his voice shaking with agonizing pain.