Page 2 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

F ive Years Later

“I think I’ve made a gigantic mistake,” Claire Hightower said, frowning at the lawn beneath her window, which just now housed three carriages, formed into a half-circle. “I want to take it back.”

“You can’t take it back,” her sister replied from the bed, where she’d flopped fully into repose the instant she’d arrived an hour earlier. “You know that.”

“I can never take it back, can I? Not anything,” Claire said waspishly, knowing she was being childish. “I guess he’s proof positive of that.”

“I guess he is,” Millie agreed with a little half-smile. “But, for what it’s worth, none of us thought it was a mistake when you lifted the ban, and we don’t think it’s a mistake now. This is his mother’s wedding, Claire. It’s important.”

She sighed, flicking at the curtains and turning back to face the other woman. She felt her heart in her gums, beating against each individual tooth in her mouth. Every thump sounded like his name. “I know that. Obviously, I do. That’s not him down there, anyhow. Not yet.”

“You sound almost disappointed,” Millie said mildly with a raise of her dark brows.

“Well, I’m not!” Claire shot back, coloring.

She wasn’t, was she?

She frowned.

“This is a nightmare.”

“It really isn’t,” Millie said with a laugh. “Who is down there, anyway? Anyone else from London?”

Claire shook her head and sighed. “No, not yet. How many roses do you think Mama will bring?”

“All of them,” Millie answered with immediate, dry certainty. “Every solitary bud.”

It got a smile out of Claire, a little reluctant and a lot childish.

But then, her mother’s roses had always been a source of shared exasperation between her sister and herself.

“I can’t believe she talked you into a bouquet when you got married,” she said, eager to change the subject, to talk about anything but Freddy.

“Ah, well,” said Millie with a languid stretch and a yawn, “it happened gradually, the convincing. Abe was surprised too.”

“Oh, Abe,” said Claire a little dreamily, crossing the room to throw herself onto the bed beside her sister. “I never could have predicted him . I wish I had been with you in London that year, when it all happened.”

“No, you don’t,” said Millie, reaching for and squeezing her hand. “He lived with your husband that year, remember? And then your husband continued living there after the wedding, with both of us. It was …” She trailed off, considering the memory. “It was surprising, really.”

“Surprising,” Claire echoed. “Yes, Freddy is always that.”

Millie turned her head, her cheek pillowed by her dark curls, and frowned. “I’m not throwing barbs at him, Claire. He was surprising to me , and I only expected the very worst of him. I think it will be all right, him coming here. I think it will be well.”

“I hope you’re right this time, Millie,” Claire replied, returning the squeeze and wrinkling her nose at her own words. “I usually hate it when you’re right.”

“You do,” Millie agreed on another, longer yawn, her lashes starting to pull her eyelids down, the exhaustion of the journey catching up with her here in Claire’s bed instead of her own. “Miracles already.”

Claire watched her drift off with narrowed eyes and a tender heart. Fatigue sounded very nice right about now. Oblivion sounded even better.

Alas, neither were available to her just now.

She pulled herself from the bed with a muffled grunt and slid her slippers onto her feet, emerging out into the main halls of her manor.

For the last four years, Claire had been the lady of Crooked Nook, her husband’s ancestral estate in the Cotswolds. She was a countess, of course, just on merit of having married the man. But she functioned as head of the county as well.

While Freddy had languished in jail all those years ago, Claire had staged a legal coup with the other women he’d wronged, even the one he’d jilted in favor of Claire.

It had been Dot who hid Claire when she’d fled back to London in the wake of her crumbling marriage. Sweet, righteous Dot had saved her, even if she hadn’t deserved it. Millie had saved her. Even Ember Donnelly, Freddy’s one-time mistress, had saved Claire.

In fact, they were en route to Crooked Nook now from London. Perhaps it was odd, to have Freddy’s jilted ex-fiancée and his former mistress attend his mother’s wedding, but the world was a strange place.

Sometimes, the strangeness was the only good thing about it.

She sighed, taking the stairs two at a time down to the bottom floor and drifting toward the sound of voices.

The foyer was still very cool, even this late into spring.

She could feel the cold through the soles of her shoes and found it bracing against her hand on the railing.

She inhaled it deeply, inviting the cool into her throat and her lungs, offering it her company.

From the sunroom to the right, she could hear her son expounding on something with great enthusiasm. It made her smile, and solved for her the intention of her next destination. A duet of impressed voices interjected here and there.

Yes, she thought, listening to little Oliver tell a desperate, shrill accounting of his last encounter with a doggy, strangeness was a balm.

How many runaway wives had come to be master of the marital estate? How many countesses, after all, befriended their husband’s mistress? How many could do that?

Claire could. Claire had!

In fact, it had made her mother-in-law think perhaps she could, too!

The dowager countess had already invited her late husband’s bastard to this wedding, though perhaps that was because he had married Dot.

In any event, she had invited him, and then, in a gust of inspiration, she’d looked up at Claire across her desk and said, “Maybe I should invite his mother too. Maybe we have been remiss, treating one another with enmity. After all, Claire, look at you!”

She didn’t know if Patricia Hightower had followed through on that thought. She didn’t know if Miriam Cain would even accept such an invitation. Still, it made her feel rather inspirational and important, knowing she’d sparked the mere thought of it.

She turned into the sunroom with a look of happiness, finding her little boy standing on an ottoman as he attempted to demonstrate just how high his favorite terrier could jump to a rapt-looking and laughing Abraham Murphy.

Her mother-in-law, the dowager, was seated off to the side with her chin in her palm, looking utterly charmed by the display. She caught Claire’s eye first and smiled at her, inclining her head to invite her closer.

“Ah, Lady Bentley!” Abe said in his Scots brogue, sandy brows rising as he came to his feet. “I didn’t hear your approach!”

“Don’t go around admitting such things,” Claire chided playfully. “An investigator should not be so easy to ambush.”

“Aye, maybe not,” Abe chuckled, ruffling Oliver’s golden hair. “But my wife does most of the work, truth be told. I just reap the benefits.”

“Aunt Millie is the best!” Oliver agreed, though such a statement was thoroughly at odds with the worship in his eyes as he gazed at Abe. “The smartest!”

“That’s the truth,” Abe agreed.

He was a handsome devil, Claire thought, watching as he swung Oliver up from the ottoman and into the air before placing him back on the ground.

She had always thought so, in that rugged rapscallion sort of way—not quite pretty, but close enough to be dangerous.

He would never be quite refined, nor classically educated—essential things Claire would have sworn her sister wanted in a partner.

His canniness was entirely inherent and often completely insolent, which perhaps just kept it on better display.

Even so, they seemed blissfully well-matched. Utterly happy. Perfect.

Maybe that was because it had happened slowly, over time. Maybe that’s because it hadn’t been the bolt of lightning but rather the careful scaffolding of real love.

Maybe Claire should stop assuming she knew anything about it at all in the first place.

She frowned, looking away from the man and moving to her mother-in-law’s side.

Even nearing her fifth decade, Patricia Hightower looked every bit the glowing bride.

Her hair was still soft and flaxen, her skin still pale and smooth.

The crinkles at her ice-blue eyes only enhanced her beauty.

She had that classical perfection to her, beauty cultivated through centuries of wealthy men choosing beautiful wives.

She looked quite a bit like her son.

Claire sighed.

Oliver looked like them too, golden-haired and blue-eyed.

Claire herself was entirely a palette of honey. Her hair, her skin, her eyes, all of them glinted somewhere in the murky gradient of a beehive’s bounty. Officially, she would call it brown. Light brown, even, but privately she thought it had quite a lot of color outside of such a simple descriptor.

Privately, she thought it was honey.

It was unseemly, she’d been told by her mother as a child, to describe her own looks in such poetic terms, even if they were completely correct.

“I saw the carriages in the drive,” she said to Patricia. “Who has arrived?”

“My sisters,” answered the other woman with a wrinkle of her nose, “and my father. The other carriage was a relation of Raul’s, come up from Portugal. I do hope Mr. Cresson arrives soon. I need another translator in these walls before more Portuguese people land on our doorstep.”

“Where is Raul?” Claire asked, tilting her head. “I haven’t seen him today.”

Patricia scoffed, a blushing smile finding its way onto her lips. “If I had to guess? Back with the tailor again. The man is determined to cultivate a perfect fit.”

“Bless him,” Claire answered with a smile of her own. “I hope Mr. Cresson arrives soon as well. I am missing his wife. I want all of my London people here at once, in fact. I just got my sister and she’s already gone to sleep.”

“Has she?” asked Abe, unabashed at his eavesdropping.

Insolent , thought Claire, but charming.

“She has,” Claire answered directly, the flatness of her tone at least giving the man cause to grin at his own bad manners. “Do you know when the others were planning to start their journey here?”

Abe tapped his chin. “Silas and Dot were supposed to follow the day after us,” he said as though he were dredging up their specters in his mind as he spoke. “I think Ember and Joe are planning to travel with …”

He trailed off, clicking his tongue.

“With Freddy,” Claire finished for him, crossing her arms. “You can say his name, Abe, it won’t melt me.”

“With Freddy,” Abe said immediately, inclining his head in acknowledgement. “I’m not sure when they are setting out, though. They were hot in the midst of purchasing a storefront, last I saw. I’m sure they’ll depart once that is tied up.”

Claire kept his gaze for a beat longer than she should have.

He knew, she realized immediately. He knew how badly she wanted to ask questions. She’d worn it all over her face.

Mercifully, her angelic little boy stepped in to distract before the thought could take root in Abe’s mind. “Do you want to meet the new puppies?” he asked, grabbing at Abe’s hand, impatient for the attention to return to him. “Do you want to see them, Uncle Abe? Do you?”

“Of course I do, lad,” Abe laughed, sparkling with joy as he was tugged out of the room.

Patricia and Claire watched them go.

“Does he know,” Claire asked after a moment, “that the puppies are in the dower house?”

“He does not,” Patricia answered with a mischievous little smile. “Usually, I’d trail along to observe an unsuspecting soul’s first encounter with Tommy, but alas, I find myself quite spent for motivation while playing the bride.”

Claire laughed. Tommy was her son’s great-grandmother, a steel beam of a woman with very little patience for overt charm. It was hard to say how Abe Murphy would fare against her, even with little Oliver in tow.

“She might like him,” Patricia said, tilting her head thoughtfully. “She tends to prefer more common folk, after all.”

“Be nice,” chided Claire, while silently and completely agreeing.

She smiled, unchastened. “Frederick—my Frederick, I mean, Freddy’s father—he used to introduce people to his mother by asking them first if they had worn something thick that day. He’d tell them they were going to need the armor.”

“It’s good advice,” Claire replied, leaning against the sideboard with a sigh. “Freddy said the same thing to me once, when speaking of her. Almost word for word.”

“Ah, well, boys and their fathers,” Patricia replied wistfully, blinking a couple of times at the sunlight streaming in through the large windows opposite them, little dust motes dancing in the air.

Claire watched them too, watched how languid and unbothered they were by the world around them. Oh, to be a dust mote.

“Speaking of which,” Patricia cut into her thoughts, scattering the motes with her very breath. “What have you told Oliver? Do you plan to … to introduce them? When he arrives, I mean?”

“I …” Claire tried to swallow, her throat suddenly dry. “I … oh, drat. Oh, dratting hell!”

“Ah,” said the dowager countess, not unkindly. “Perhaps it’s something to think about, dear.”

Claire huffed.

She had quite enough to think about already.