Chapter 28

There were tears in Grace’s eyes. Philip was torn between moving toward her and embracing her and demanding she leave the room.

She did this. Who else could have done it? Who else knew? Only her father. And she went to see him yesterday…

“What?” His mother looked up from where she was crying. Philip nodded toward Grace in answer.

Grace stepped into the room, a tear escaping down her cheek as she looked between the two of them. Her eyes fixed on Philip for longer, an unspoken question lingering in her gaze.

Philip wasn’t surprised. He was a mess of a man. He had no idea where his tailcoat was, his shirt sleeves were rolled up, his waistcoat half unbuttoned, and his knuckles were red and raw from where he had been punching that bag so badly in his boxing room.

“Boxing,” his mother said by way of explanation, pointing at him.

“Oh.” Grace nodded. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “I don’t understand —”

“Don’t you dare.” The words snarled out of Philip’s lips before he could stop them.

Grace’s alarm stole his breath away. The way she jumped back from him hurt. He never wanted to frighten her, but neither could he hold back his anger now.

Everything I have fought to protect now lies in ashes around me.

“Mother.” He moved to crouch down beside her. “I am sorry this has all come out. I’ll come and see you later, but perhaps it’s best you go back to the country now as you wished to. What do you think?”

“Yes. I’d like that.” She nodded, drying more tears on her cheeks. “Lord knows I cannot face the ton again. Not after this.”

Philip took his mother’s hand and helped her to her feet.

“Stay here,” he growled out at Grace. She moved her hands to her hips, looking ready to argue with him again about giving her orders, but he was in no mood for that argument. There was another he was quite determined to have in its place.

He helped his mother out of the room and delivered her into the arms of Mrs. Williamson, who promised to arrange a carriage to have her taken to the country seat. After Philip had waved his mother off, he returned to the study to find Grace re-reading the scandal sheet.

More tears were on her cheeks now. As Philip closed the door behind him, he wanted to believe as they were left alone that she had nothing to do with it, but he couldn’t. His sense of logic and reason argued against him.

“How could you do this?” he hissed out.

“What?” She lifted her head from reading the scandal sheet, staring at him, agog.

“Only you knew about my father’s gambling.”

“I didn’t even know about it until yesterday!” She threw the words at him in sudden fury, casting the scandal sheet aside.

“So you admit you knew. Your father told you.”

“Yes, he told me yesterday. Before that, I knew nothing.”

“How convenient.” He snatched up the sheet from the floor. He moved around the desk, needing it as a barrier between them. He laid the paper flat to the desk, planting his hands to the desk and glaring down at the printed words. “The day you discover my father’s shame, it is printed in the paper overnight.”

“You don’t think…” She didn’t finish the words but marched up to the desk on the other side. “You think I would print this? You think I would do this to us all?”

“You already admitted to me you don’t care what the scandal sheets print of you. The only people this could hurt are me and my mother. Someone I have worked so hard to protect from pain like this, and what do you do? You publish it in London for all to read.” He waved a hand at her in accusation.

“Are you mad!?” She squealed the words in her anger. “I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t ever.”

“I can only presume you wanted to be free of me. That was it, wasn’t it? Why else take this story to a scandal sheet?” His mind was working fast, jumping from one conclusion to the next. The only other time in his life he had ever known such anger was when he had discovered all of his father’s betrayals.

When he had been old enough to understand all the gambling, all the affairs, all the pain his father had delivered to his mother, he’d snapped. He’d destroyed a room. It was the first time he had ever gone to see a boxing match in his life. Rather than just watching the boxing, he’d joined the ring and offered himself up as a fighter.

He”d gone home bleeding and bruised that night, but it was worth it. It had been an escape from other pain.

“You think I want to be free of you?” she said, spluttering her words. “That’s what you think after everything you and I have done together?” She gestured between them.

“You played your part well.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you adhered to your agreement so far in that you were willing to give me an heir. Everything else, well, you put on a good act.” He knew it was cruel to say the words, but it was the only conclusion he could make.

She stumbled away from him. In her usual clumsy way, she tripped on the edge of a chair. She fell into the seat, staring at him in what had to be complete abhorrence.

“That’s what you think?” she seethed quietly. “You think each time I touched you that it was all an act? That I longed for a child? I never even thought of a child before we were married. I am so disliked by the ton that I thought I would never marry. I had abandoned all thought of children equally.”

“So you admit that? You admit that you never wanted to be married? That you only wanted to be alone?” he countered, rounding the desk to move near her. She didn’t argue with this. She just stared up at him as another tear slid down her cheek. “It’s some way to be rid of your husband, Grace. Cruel. Cruel indeed. Couldn’t you have just told me you wanted to leave? Instead of destroying mine and my mother’s reputations so much?”

“That’s enough!” Her voice boomed around the room as she stood again. “If you seriously think I am that sort of woman, that I would hurt you or your mother in such a way, then you do not know me at all.”

“There is no one else who could have done this. Only you or your father.” He thrust a finger toward her. “You were the only two people in the world who knew about my father’s gambling, and we both know your father is too ill to leave the house to possibly visit a scandal sheet writer or a print house, don’t we?”

She reacted as if he had hit her with the words. She stepped back, her lips parted, her hand raising to cover her face.

“If you think me so capable of something like this, then I see you are not the man I thought you were at all.”

What does that mean?

Yet he was too lost to rage to think sensibly, to even think about what it was she was exactly saying. Absorbed by his fury, he had to be rid of her. He needed time to think.

“Well, you did all of this to be free of me. To no longer have a husband, so you will have your wish.” He stepped back, distancing himself from her completely. “You were to go to the Dowager’s House on the estate anyway at the end of the month. You can go there now, today, and you won’t have to see me again.”

“What? You’re sending me out of the house?”

“You said you wanted your freedom. I am giving you exactly what you wanted,” he reminded her, putting himself behind the desk, so it was a barrier to her.

Never had he known this pain. It was as if Grace had crushed him, turned him completely to ash.

“You have your freedom from me, from this life; you will be independent. If enough times passes and we find you are not carrying my heir, then we can revisit this discussion again.”

“You must be joking —” she spat at him.

“It was our agreement when we married. We shall return to the rules we agreed on that day. Anything else, the riding, the picnicking together, all of it can be forgotten. Is that understood?”

She suddenly stood tall. For someone so much shorter than him, Grace appeared to dominate the room. That regalness was back in her figure, even as a tear slid down her cheek.

“Well, I made a vow, did I not?” she said in a cool and distanced voice he had never known she was capable of. “I vowed to obey you.” The scoff was plain. She delivered the most perfect curtsy, not quivering or looking as if she was about to trip for single second. When she stood straight, she wiped away her final tear. “You have your wish, your Grace.”

She turned and walked away from the room. Her last words, she tossed over her shoulder. “You will not be bothered by me again.”

* * *

Grace didn’t stop crying as she packed her bags. Two maids helped her. They were kind, solicitous, overly helpful, and she was grateful for their sweetness, just as she was grateful that they did not ask her too many questions. They did not ask why she cried or why they were moving her.

She expected they already knew. Someone in the staff must have known how to read and had probably spread the gossip of what was in that scandal sheet to the rest of the household by now.

As Grace packed up the last of her things, she halted, finding on her bedside table the small gift which Philip had given her the day they had shared their picnic. With careful fingers, she picked up the botanical notebook and flicked through the pages.

It was a beautiful thing. She had believed the man who had given her such a gift was a kind man, but would a kind man really jump to this conclusion so firmly? If Philip was every inch the man she had fallen in love with, why would he not even listen to her? Why was he so convinced she was behind this story in the scandal sheets?

“Would you like to take it with you, Your Grace?” one of the maids asked gently, clearly afraid to startle her.

“No, thank you.” Grace returned the book to the table. “Would you have it returned to the Duke please? He can have his money back for it. I’m sure that’s what he wants.”

She sniffed and stopped further tears from falling. She pulled a shawl up around her shoulders and left the room. The maids followed behind her, carrying her bags.

In the hallway, Mrs. Williamson had come to say goodbye. She took Grace’s hand with affection. The red eyes suggested that Mrs. Williamson too had been crying though she tried her best not to show it.

“I have sent some good staff to the Dowager’s house,” she said with eagerness. “You will be well looked after there, Your Grace. And with your permission, I’d like to come and visit you?”

“You have been very kind, thank you. I’d like that very much.”

As they released hands, Grace thought she saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye, much further down the corridor. She turned to look at it, wondering if Philip was watching her from the doorway of his study, but if he had been there, he had vanished into the shadows too fast for her to see him.

He is simply glad I am leaving.

She followed the maids out of the house to the small carriage which had been prepared to take her to the edge of the estate. She pulled her shawl up over her head to hide her face from the falling rain and mask future tears that threatened to fall.

Determinedly, she didn’t look back at the house as the carriage pulled away. She was afraid to see Philip’s silhouette in one of the windows, watching as she parted.

Instead, she stared across the carriage in the darkness. Night was coming in thick and fast now as summer turned to autumn. There was a chilly breeze too, making her wrap her arms tighter around her.

As the carriage carried her away, a thought occurred to her.

Philip had accused her of wanting out of the marriage, claiming this was why she had given such a story to the scandal sheets, but what if it was the other way around? What if when Philip saw the story, he saw it as an opportunity to be free of her? To be free of the wife he had never wanted in the first place?

She closed her eyes as the carriage came to a stop, thinking of the first night she and Philip had kissed which had led to this whole mess.

“It seems so long ago now,” she whispered.

The carriage door was opened. Turning to climb down out of the carriage, she set her eyes on the Dowager House.

She had seen it at a distance before when she was riding but never so close before.

There was a time in her life when she would have thought it a perfect life. The house, though smaller than the main one, was still grand. Red brick, stretching over two floors, it had a beautiful appearance. In the lantern lights that had been lit, it glowed orange and golden, warm and welcoming.

Yes, before she had married Philip, to be offered a life alone in this home where she had her freedom to operate far away from a husband’s orders, it would have been a pleasant life indeed, but not anymore. As she walked toward the house, she felt a longing to be back in the main house, to be beside Philip again.

Only, she wanted to be beside the Philip who had made love to her, the one who had gone riding with her, racing her, the one who had shared that picnic with her, the one who had kissed her that first night and urged in whispered voices that she was his.

She wanted nothing to do with the Philip who had cast her out of his house and accused her of such malice.

“Do you like it, Your Grace?” the maid asked as she carried one of Grace’s bags up to the house.

“It’s a very fine place,” Grace said woodenly. “Yes, I shall find a way to be happy here.”

With this resolution in mind, she strode up the front stoop and into the house. When she tripped on the top step, she actually managed to laugh through her tears.

At least now, there was no Philip, no mother, and no one else in the ton to grimace and despair of her when she made a fool of herself.

Alas, I truly am free.