Page 96 of Not his Marchioness
Charlotte’s throat tightened. Those were the very children she meant to save with her school, yet how could a classroom shield them from such misery when this was the place to which they would return?
Flop-houses lined the streets, women lounging in doorways with painted faces and gowns that bared more than they concealed.
Charlotte tugged her hood lower. It was not safe. Every instinct screamed at her to turn back.
But she could not. She had to see.
The carriage ahead turned sharply down a narrow alley. A tavern stood there, its sign creaking on rusty hinges.The Prince’s Arms. How His Royal Highness must loathe having his name displayed so. Or perhaps he did not care at all.
“Stop,” Charlotte breathed.
Rhys’s carriage halted before the tavern. She watched as the door swung open and he descended.
Her breath misted in white bursts. She sank low into her seat, her cloak drawn close.
Gideon did not follow. The carriage rattled away, leaving Rhys alone. And then—God help her—he disappeared inside.
Charlotte sat frozen. Her lungs burned with the cold, but she scarcely felt it.
Her husband had come here, to such a place.
Did he always visit the same woman? Did he love her? Did she give him something Charlotte never could?
Her stomach churned. She shook her head fiercely. She would not—couldnot—imagine it.
“Take me back home,” she whispered, hating the quiver in her voice.
The coachman asked no questions. With quiet skill, he steered the cart around and drove away, but not before Charlotte caught one final image through the tavern doorway.
Rhys stood by the stairs while a woman—auburn-haired, bare-shouldered, candlelight shimmering on her skin—descended toward him. She smiled at him. Not with the demure politeness Charlotte had been taught, but with the intimacy of a long acquaintance.
The cart jolted forward, and she lost them. But the damage was done.
Something inside her shattered. She had wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe their Christmas had meant as much to him asit had to her—that he had turned a corner at last, that the life she longed for was within reach.
She had been wrong. Lord Emery, that hateful man, had been right.
Tears burned hot as they slid down her chilled cheeks.
By the time they emerged from the stench of St. Giles and turned back toward Mayfair, Charlotte understood. Emery had written not to gain her hand—she was already wed. No, he had written to wound. To see her heart break.
And he had succeeded.
She might not have married London’s worst rake, but she was bound to the man who had always hunted Emery’s heels for that title. And worse, she had given him her heart.
It was a mistake that would haunt her for the rest of her days.
CHAPTER 38
She looked much the same as the last time he had seen her, perhaps even better. Not quite so drawn, not quite so beaten down.
“My Lord, I have not seen you in an age. I thought you had forsaken us forever, now that you have a beautiful young wife.”
Rhys managed a smile, though it was forced. He did have a beautiful young wife. A wife who, this very evening, had seemed suspicious of his story. He had given her a plausible one: Gideon’s fatherwashosting gentlemen that night. The trouble was that neither he nor Gideon had been invited.
Charlotte, perceptive as ever, had been suspicious. Again, he wondered if he ought to have told her about the letter. But then he reminded himself why he had not. He was not certain whether its contents were true. And Lizzie hardly looked like a woman in dire straits, much less one with a sickly child on their deathbed.
“How may I help you, My Lord?” she asked, drawing him out of his thoughts.
