Chapter 19

19

N icholas couldn’t stop pacing. He walked past windows and furniture, over floorboards and carpet, around and around his study until it was a wonder the damn rug didn’t get reduced to threads. Still , he kept up the useless circles, his head careening with all the things that had just come to pass, his chest clenching in knots.

He slowed by the chair where Phoebe had sat. Where they’d both sat, and he’d finally released the dark truths he’d never allowed to have a voice. Where she’d thrown out rejoinders he couldn’t have expected. Where it had all been interrupted before they could glean any sort of finality from it because Phoebe had a visitor.

Sir Ambrose Windham . Her betrothed . A man he’d never met but despised with all the potency of an inferno.

He picked up the pace again, striding past the unlit fireplace. Past the wing chair where she’d fallen into his lap, and he’d first tasted her lips?—

God . He would never occupy this room again without seeing the way her face lit up in pleasure. Without feeling her warmth and imagining the sweet scent of wildflowers.

Pity for him.

He traveled to the sun-streaked windows. The towering bookshelves. The doorway. Then began the loop again for possibly the hundredth time, and still, nothing made sense.

Phoebe Windham didn’t have a betrothed. He’d first found her on the outskirts of Bowden , a woman still in mourning for her cousin and companion, seeking employment and a new place to live. A betrothed woman wouldn’t have found herself in that predicament. Wouldn’t have accepted a governess position.

Unless the sum he’d promised had proved too tempting. Unless there were aspects of herself she’d kept hidden and he’d never really known her. Unless she’d lied .

His lungs constricted, and when he reached his desk this time, he dropped his elbows to the surface, resting his forehead within his fingertips. He was no stranger to being deceived. Perhaps this was yet another example of it.

He screwed his eyelids shut, Cecilia’s arresting face coming to him in the blankness. Twelve years had passed, and he could still envision the night so clearly. Could see her cheeks, still flushed from the exertion of giving birth, and the way she’d paced along the floor in front of him, even after he’d insisted she get back in bed.

You cannot blame me. I never set out to deceive you. This was forced upon us. I didn’t choose it ! The words she’d shouted as tears streamed down her face, and it was impossible to tell whether they came from remorse or fury.

He kept his eyes closed, remaining trapped back on the night he’d both lost and gained everything, and when the memory caused a cloying surge of emotion to rush up, he let it. He didn’t fight back as it racked his body, making his arms shake against the desk and something snap within his chest.

It would have been so much easier to hate her. But in the end, Cecilia had been right: he couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t orchestrated the marriage or tried to trap him; the deception there was all his mother’s. A grave miscalculation on the dowager’s part.

Perhaps the deception hadn’t been Phoebe’s fault, either. Perhaps there was more to it than what appeared on the surface. At that, his eyes came open, a strange prickle shooting down the back of his neck.

The dowager had nothing to do with the situation this time. But he did. He’d insisted Phoebe come to Beaumont Manor , hadn’t truly given her a choice. He’d been the orchestrater, bending things to his will. And , just like his mother, had gotten so much more than he bargained for.

Once again, he’d gained. And lost.

Something rustled in the doorway, and he jerked away from the desk, a name rising in his throat. Phoebe . Because this was all a mistake, a misunderstanding, and she’d come back so they could finish what they’d started.

But there was no one there.

He glanced around the empty space, expecting black skirts, a lip caught between teeth, a half-boot tapping against the floorboards. She didn’t materialize, though. No one materialized, nothing?—

Nothing but a streak of orange that scampered into the room, leaping onto his desktop and then sitting impassively, fixing him with its round yellow eyes.

Of course. Of course it would be the cat, inserting itself into places where it was least wanted.

He clenched his hands by his sides. Felt his mouth tighten and his forehead knot. “ Get out.” He tried to deepen the glower, but even he could admit that his effort lacked conviction. Quite frankly, he didn’t possess the energy.

The cat, apparently, agreed, for it didn’t so much as blink. For once, the blasted creature didn’t even take the trouble to hiss.

“ Get out,” he repeated dully, although he didn’t swing his arms or stomp his feet. In fact, he did nothing but stand there, for now that he’d stopped pacing, each of his limbs felt laden down by weights. “ Go torment someone else.”

Except who else was there? Emily and Mrs . Connelly hadn’t returned from the village. And as for Phoebe … who knew when she’d come back? Would she come back to provide the explanation she’d promised, to gather her meager things, to bid farewell to the girl who’d quickly come to adore her? Or had the final moment he would sit with her, alone, already passed them by?

The cat opened its mouth, the plaintive sound that emerged bordering on a yowl. For a moment, its large, ridiculous tail twitched, and then, it leaped gracefully to the floor, sidling up to his legs. Leaving an offensive clump of fur marring the side of his boot.

He should be incensed, cursing, yelling … Yet all he could do was watch the damn thing as it weaved in and out between his feet.

Blasted nuisance of an animal, always causing trouble, interfering with his solitude when he only wanted peace. And the worst part was, he couldn’t wish the cat away. Not when, for whatever godforsaken reason, Marigold made his daughter happy.

Worse still … he couldn’t wish Phoebe away, either. She’d disrupted his life. Challenged him. Made the most guarded parts of him crack into pieces. Even so, he couldn’t think of her like a mistake that never should have been. Damn him, he couldn’t stop caring .

Sir Ambrose Windham . Wishing very much to see his betrothed . The words persisted in racing through his head, their incongruity grating at his insides. Phoebe hadn’t refuted them. She’d proceeded to depart for the vicarage of her own free will.

But that didn’t mean the words were right. What if … what if there was more to it than that? She’d spoken so little of her family that he found himself frustratingly ignorant, although she had made it clear that she couldn’t remain with them in Bowden . What if something had happened that she wished to escape? What if she were in some sort of trouble?

The idea caused his ribs to tighten. He wouldn’t have let her go had he thought for an instant that any harm would befall her.

And maybe it wouldn’t; maybe that wasn’t the case at all. Maybe she was simply returning to where she belonged. Where she’d always intended to go once she collected her salary. Back to her betrothed.

But could he leave the matter to rest on an assumption?

No . The answer sprang up immediately, and a tremor bolted down his rigid spine. He knew what it was to lose. To retreat. To spend day after day, year after year, at Foxhill because that was the easy option. But never the right one .

Old patterns didn’t need to keep repeating themselves. With Phoebe Windham , he wouldn’t retreat. Regardless of the situation—even if she revealed that things really were as clear-cut as they appeared and she’d lied to him all along—he needed to see her again. To find out what the bloody hell was transpiring at the vicarage with this so-called betrothed.

He gave his foot a shake, making the perturbed cat jump away and finally release the hiss it had been withholding. That was more like it. He took a single moment longer to peer at the mass of orange fur, the bared teeth, the intense yellow eyes.

And then, he was out the door.