Page 15 of The Truth About Love and Dukes

“Now that you know where I am, I shall send for my maid. She is all the help I need for the present, since this situation will not be for long. Antonio secured the lease on his own flat here in London yesterday. A fortnight from now, he will be able to obtain the marriage license and we can be wed.”

Though this news confirmed his earlier prediction of Foscarelli’s actions and further cemented his low opinion of the other man’s character, it was nonetheless a relief, for it meant he now had two full weeks to change his mother’s mind. Despite that, he knew he had to tread carefully, and he decided pretending a lack of knowledge about the other man was his best course. “I take it Foscarelli had not previously had a fixed abode in town?”

His mother’s nose wrinkled at the implication. “You make it sound as if he’s been indigent.”

Not indigent, Henry wanted to say. Just low enough to sponge off his friends as long as possible.

Wisely, he didn’t voice that opinion. “Not at all,” he said instead, but he must not have sounded convincing enough.

“It is the season, Henry. You know how difficult it is to find rooms in town. It’s only because it’s nearly August that he’s found rooms of his own at all.”

Henry didn’t debate the point. “Of course,” he said politely. “But if we may, could we discuss your living arrangements rather than those of your . . . ahem . . .” He paused, grasping for a description of Foscarelli he could manage to utter without choking. “Rather than those of your acquaintance? There is no need for you to stay in a hotel, Mama,” he added. “You have a home.”

“Where I would leave myself open to the continual arguments of my children over the course I have chosen? I think I would prefer to remain here. Thomas’s is a perfectly respectable establishment.”

“If one is a tourist, yes. But not if one already has a comfortable home a mere five blocks away.”

His mother drew herself up, the morning light through the windows glinting on her steel-gray hair. “When a woman has chosen to elope, there is no going back.”

At that somewhat melodramatic declaration, Henry had to suppress a sigh. “You aren’t married yet.”

“Which is why I am here, and not already living with Antonio in our new home.”

“New home?” Henry stared at her, dumbfounded. “You intend to live with him in a Camden Town flat?”

“Why not? It is a full-service flat.” There was a hint of amusement in her blue eyes that told him she was teasing him a little, but she spoke again before he could reply. “You may rest easy, Henry. Antonio only leased the flat to apply for the license. We shall sublet it. But I could hardly expect you to welcome him into the ducal residences after the wedding, so I have made an offer to purchase a very comfortable little villa for us. It is in Chiswick, on the river. Once the wedding has taken place, that is where we shall begin our life together. We shall travel to Italy in the autumn, for he does so want me to see Florence, and I have never been—”

“Mama, please,” he cut in, unable to bear it. “You talk as if you and Foscarelli shall be a pair of young newlyweds on honeymoon. You are fifty years old, not nineteen.”

“So I am too old to see the world?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. What you mean is that at my age, I should not be prone to the reckless actions we all take in our youth.”

He stiffened, all his defenses rising to the fore. “Just so. God knows, when I was nineteen, I was unbelievably foolish. My passion blinded me to the consequences of making a rash marriage to someone far beneath my station. But I was paid out for my folly.”

“You married the girl in honorable fashion.”

“Honorable?” he echoed, his voice scathing even to his own ears. “Making a marriage so wrong that I had to conceal it from the world, hide it even from my own family? Putting my own wife away in a cottage in the country, sneaking away from Cambridge to visit her . . . yes,” he said with bitterness, “I was so honorable.”

“You loved her.”

“Did I?” He shook his head. “No, infatuation is not love. Passion is not love. Lust”—he forced the word out—“is not love. Do not paint a romantic picture of my actions, Mama, or attribute to me honor that I did not possess. I married Elena because I wanted her, and I could not have her any other way.” Guilt and regret felt like a weight against his chest, making it even more incumbent upon him to steer his mother from the mistake she was about to make. He leaned forward in his seat, considering his next words with care. They had never spoken openly of his clandestine marriage a decade ago, but though he hated doing so now, it was necessary.

“It only took eight weeks for our mad infatuation to die. Eight weeks, and then there we were: two desperately unhappy souls with nothing in common but the ashes of a dead passion, caught for life in the consequences of our—my—mistake. For it was mine,” he rushed on as she tried again to speak. “The power in the situation was all mine; she had none. Papa said she was my ruin, but—”

“Your father was an unyielding man who could see no way but his own. And in this, he was wrong.”

“I know that. Elena was not my ruin.” He paused, swallowed hard, and met his mother’s gaze. “I was hers. Is it any wonder we were unhappy?”

“Stop, Henry,” she cried, her voice sharp. “Please, stop this. I cannot bear to hear you berate yourself this way.”

He could have continued in this vein. He could have asked her what she and a man so different from herself would share, work toward, and talk about once their passion had cooled and they discovered there was no foundation beneath it. But he refrained, for the point had been made, and hammering it to death would serve no purpose.

“Until this wedding takes place,” he said instead, “would you at least consider returning home? We have friends and acquaintances who live in Berkeley Square. You are bound to be seen coming and going from here, if you haven’t already. What do you imagine our friends will think to see you slipping in and out of a hotel two blocks from your own residence? Or worse, what if they see that man coming here to visit you?”

“Heavens, Henry, you make me sound notorious.”

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