Page 176 of The Scandal You Started
Wide, sea-blue eyes stared at him, with short blond locks combed neatly away from a handsome face. All set atop the tall, lean body of a young man in the black half dress he always wore.
“My lord,” the man said breathlessly, as if he’d run to the door.
“Afternoon, Hamilton,” Dominic said, greeting his manservant with a tired smile.
“Evie!” came two feminine voices from inside the house.
They snapped Candreas Hamilton out of his stunned trance, and the young man jumped back to let Dominic enter.
He stepped into his house—home—and two women collided straight into him, punching an “Oomph” from him. An older woman in a blue morning dress that complemented her pale, elegantly aged skin and coiffure of light brown hair, and a younger, shorter spitfire in pale yellow, likely a design of her own, with the same dark brown hair as Dominic.
Mother Penny and Patricia Hanna Thorne.
One patted him down, turning his face this way and that with an anxious frown, while the other attempted to squeeze the air from his lungs. But he relished in the sound of their quick voices, their lovely faces, and familiar floral scents as if he’d gone years without seeing them.
“Evie! Evie, where on Neves have you been?” Mother Penny demanded, her nimble hands grabbing his shoulders like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to shake him or hug him.
Right…Evie. His sisters and Mother Penny called him Evie. Short for Evander. His second name.
Why had he been expecting them to call him Dominic?
“It has been a week,” Patricia said, her voice and light brown eyes bouncing with vivid curiosity. “And you only sent one secretive letter. That too, with a mysterious man who pretended he did not know anything more. He was terrible at lying, though. He knew something, and I wanted to interrogate him, but Art and Solomon would not permit it, no matter what, annoying brothers. You would have let me. That is why you are my favourite. Of course, you were not here—”
“Patricia,” Mother Penny warned.
His youngest sister clapped her lips together sheepishly. “Apologies, Mama. But you must tell Evie how horrendously overbearing Art and Solomon were being.”
“Breathe, little one,” Dominic said through weak laughter as he laid a hand atop her head. “Tell me later, and I will have a word with them both.”
She cinched her arms around him again. “You really are the best.”
“Where are those two anyway?”
Patricia perked up. “They went to Brummel’s to ask if any of your friends at the club had heard from you.” She spun to Candreas, the long ribbons attached to her short sleeves dancing around her elbows. “Darling Candreas, you must quickly send a note and let them know Evie has returned. Oh, and Mary too, of course. Mustn’t forget her or she will have our heads.”
Candreas’s cheeks pinkened and lips thinned as they always did when Patricia called him darling. “I will send one of the footmen,” he said without an ounce of emotion in his tone, his posture tall and hands clasped behind his back.
“I will soak and change before they arrive,” Dominic said.
Candreas nodded. “Of course, I will have the maids fill a tub and—”
“Dominic Evander Jonathan Thorne,” Mother Penny snapped, and he flinched like a child who knew he was in trouble. “You are not moving from this spot until you tell me exactly where you disappeared off to when you had said you were only going to view some horses.”
“I…” he started, but realised he didn’t know what to say.
Wherehadhe been? How did he explain what he wasn’t quite sure of himself?
The clouds in his mind were blocking something.
No, that wasn’t the correct description. The clouds were filling a space that was…empty. Like he was missing a part of himself. Something that had made him whole. Something he longed for. Something he hadn’t wanted to lose. And the excruciating sense of loss was crushing his heart under a pile of jagged rocks.
But how did he tell his family that in a way that wouldn’t worry them?
“I cannot say,” he eventually mumbled.
Then he lumbered away, leaving a puzzled Mother Penny, Patricia, and Candreas behind him.
He couldn’t help feeling like he’d left someone else behind too.
