Page 445 of From Rakes to Riches

“Do let me know that all is well with Lady Thurlow.”

He went to Simon’s next, but Simon wasn’t at home. Damn, the man could have helped with the search. But then David didn’t need help when the list of Victoria’s friends was so small. Several of the gentlemen heads of the household were home when he barged in. David didn’t care what they thought as he asked about his wife. He saw several smirks, knew that he looked like a lovesick fool?—

And he didn’t care. Nothing mattered but the need to find Victoria, to make her see thatshewas all that mattered to him, not what other people thought of them.

But no one had seen her. At Banstead House, Victoria’s mother met him in the conservatory as if she’d waited at the windows to follow his progress home.

“Did you find her?” Mrs. Shelby asked.

David shook his head grimly.

“This is all my fault,” she whispered. “I gave her counsel about your marriage, but I never thought it would affect her this way!”

“Mrs. Shelby, don’t blame yourself. I’ll find Victoria,” he said forcefully, “and I’ll make her see?—”

“But do you love her?” she interrupted.

He calmed himself. “Since we were children.”

She wiped at her eyes. “Then go find her and make it right. Because she must have loved you since then as well.”

“Where should I look?”

“There was a place Victoria and her sisters would go when they wanted to be alone. I think they thought I never knew. They called it Willow Pond.”

“Of course I know Willow Pond,” David said, disgusted with himself for not thinking of it first. “She wrote about it often. It’s in the far corner of your garden.”

“She liked to think there—to dream,” the old woman finished quietly.

“I promise you,” he said with passion, “that she won’t have to dream her happiness anymore.”

Mrs. Shelby nodded and covered her mouth and blinked her wet eyes. David left her there, striding outside and down through his garden. There was a small gate somewhere, rusted and never used, even by him. He remembered exactly where to climb the tall stone wall, and he dropped down to the ground on the far side. There were no sounds of gardeners come to chase him away, so he walked down the paths he’d once spied on from the nursery window.

He ducked beneath the low branches of the willow tree and saw Victoria immediately. She sat on a small bench, facing an ornamental pond long gone green with overgrowth. Her hands rested in her lap, and she was humming. She didn’t hear him approach until twigs cracked beneath his feet.

The humming stopped, and her violet eyes opened and looked at him as if she’d known it was he all the time. Her smile was tinged with sadness.

“Hello, David. I was out for a walk and couldn’t resist coming here.”

“I was worried about you, especially after those few lines you wrote in our journal. I confess to being overwhelmed by panic. I looked everywhere, including at any house I thought you might go to.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you.” A soft smile curved her mouth as she glanced down at her lap. “That must have been an interesting sight.”

He stepped closer and she hugged herself, so he stopped. “I looked like a great foolish beast, searching for my wife.”

“They didn’t laugh at you,” she said with distress.

“What harm could that do to me? All I cared about was whatyouthought of me, sweetheart.”

She flinched at the endearment. What could be so wrong?

“But you saw what I wrote in the journal,” she said in a sad voice. “I’ve been keeping a terrible secret. I knew I had to tell you, and that I had to do it in person, not by writing. That would have been the coward’s way out.”

He sat down beside her on the bench. “Then tell me, and we’ll keep it together.”

She sighed. “When you offered to marry me, you asked so little in return, only that I bring you no scandal. I failed you, David. I concealed an important fact about my family, all to spare my mother’s pain and my father’s memory.” Her tone dropped to a murmur. “You see, he killed himself. My sisters and mother and I found him hanged by the neck in our stables.”

He stared at her, aghast at what she’d had to go through, furious with a father who would harm his family so. It made his relationship with his own father seem almost harmless.

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