Page 17 of Fatal By Design
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He refused to say where he was going, but…he said I will not hear from him again. Ever.”
Her voice quavered over those words. The enormity of her confession smacked him then. It turned him inside out, and yet Hugh could only grate out a huff of mirthless laughter.
“I should have known.” He stalked away, toward a window, still chewing on bitter laughter.
Audrey followed. “Why should you have?”
“Because it was too easy,” Hugh replied, his back still turned to her. The knot in his stomach expanded. “Because he’s a self-absorbed bastard who once again does as he pleases and leaves you to pick up the pieces.”
Audrey made a noise to hush him—his voice had deepened, and risen, with anger. He spun around, arms held out at his side. “You wish me to be quiet, to keep the truth to myself? My god, Audrey, the man has let the world believe he is dead. His own brothers, his sister. What’s worse, he’s charged you with keeping up the ruse. He’s used you unspeakably, and you want me tohush?”
With a pulse of panic, she looked to the bedroom door and then back to him. “That isn’t true! If I had demanded he stay, that he abandon his plan, I know he would have.”
Hugh sucked in a breath as if she’d pummeled him in the gut. “You consented to this?”
“No, of course not. I tried everything I could think of to dissuade him, but once he’s set his mind to something, it’s like redirecting the tide. If I forced him to stay, he would have been miserable. And I would have been miserable seeing him that way. For all his faults, I love him. I want him to be happy—”
“And what about you? What do you deserve? Less than he does, apparently.”
Hugh scrubbed a hand over his jaw, cutting off the rest of his resentful words. He’d spent the last months feeling guilty as hell for allowing the barest sense of hope now that the duke was gone. He’d gone so far as to consider what would happen after her mourning ended. That she would be free for him to offer his hand. That she would accept him.
Now, he didn’t know what to think. Except that she was stillbloody married.
He exhaled, his throat tight. “It’s been a long and trying day. We both need sleep,” he said flatly and started for her door.
“Hugh, no, please.” She caught his arm as he passed. “I never wanted to lie—I couldn’t, not to you. I never wanted this—”
He covered her hand with his, then gently lifted it from the crook of his arm. He turned it and pressed his lips to her knuckles. Eyes closed, he breathed in the light floral scent of her skin. Then, before he could say anything else to wound her, he released her and stepped back.
“Rest. We’ll discuss this another time. We leave for Haverfield first thing in the morning.”
Then, without meeting her eyes, which he suspected were glassy with tears and disappointment, he turned and left.
* * *
Morning haze still hovered over the lawns of Reddingate, dew glistening on the blades of grass, when Hugh and Audrey departed the next day. He’d directed Norris and Sir to return to Greenbriar and deliver the identities of the dead maid and driver to Fournier and the magistrate. Thornton would have arrived for the house party by then, and Sir was to ask him what he knew about Lord Cartwright. Grant Thornton was a fount of information about the ton; he had a mind like a steel trap, and the company he kept—a mix of ton and demimonde—provided him with more gossip than what Hugh had been privy to the last six years as a Bow Street officer.
Meanwhile, Hugh, Audrey, and Greer would travel to where Millie and Cartwright had planned to meet—Haverfield.
The burden of having to present herself to her mother and uncle had been plainly visible when he’d met with Audrey in the breakfast room at Reddingate. Either that, or the burden stemmed from their tense argument and parting the night before. Hugh hadn’t slept at all. He’d lain in bed, stewing with visions of hunting Philip down wherever he was hiding on the Continent and thrashing him to within an inch of his life. Hugh had floundered for some sort of foothold until dawn, trying to decide where he and Audrey could possibly go from here. The law said she was a widow. The truth said otherwise.
What if he came back? Someday, he may wish to resume the life he’d given up and left behind. Where would that leave Audrey if she had dared to move on by then? Where would that leaveHugh?
She was quiet as they rode in a phaeton, borrowed from Reddingate’s stables toward her childhood home. Hugh was at the reins, with Greer seated between them. He was somewhat grateful he would not feel Audrey’s leg and hip brushing against his for the length of the drive, but the maid’s presence also banished any possibility of a frank discussion.
It was probably for the best.
Barbs of irritation grew under his skin the closer they became to Haverfield. Audrey despised her mother and uncle, and her childhood had not been a happy one. It was going to be damn hard to not punch the baron square in the nose for sending Audrey away to Shadewell Sanatorium, an asylum in Northumberland. But if they wanted answers about Millie and Lord Cartwright, he would have to restrain himself.
Three hours of road travel in the open phaeton, with the sun and humidity and dust, left them looking and feeling weary as they reached Haverfield’s drive. It was a somber procession up to the main manor, a Grand Baroque home with fine prospects of the surrounding dales.
Hugh helped Greer down to the crushed stone drive, then Audrey. He held her hand for an extra moment and tensed his fingers around hers.
“I’m well, I promise,” she said to him.
He’d seen her like this before, when she’d been preparing to enter Shadewell for the first time since her release. She had forced back her distress and gathered her mettle, wearing it around her shoulders like a protective cloak.
“And I will do everything in my power to keep my fists to myself,” he said as they approached the front door. A pang of victory filled his chest when the ice of her protective shield melted long enough for her to chuff soft laughter.
