Chapter 29

“Ican’t believe it,” Diana gushed as she sank down into the settee beside Grace.

They had talked at length into the night about what had happened the day before. To Grace’s relief, Diana had come to stay with her for a few days, to fight the loneliness. They had frequently tried to discuss their books and what they were reading at the moment, but inevitably, conversation turned back to the same topic.

Diana clutched a glass of port in her hand as she passed Grace another.

“To think Eleanor’s brother could treat you so. To think he could throw you out of his house.”

“Strange,” Grace whispered. “I had stopped thinking of Philip as just Eleanor’s brother. He was my husband.” She smiled rather sadly, wishing she could claw back the feeling, but it was gone. “It was my home too, not just his. That’s all gone now.”

She took a rather large gulp of the port.

“I’m so sorry it’s come to this, Grace.” Diana laid a hand on her shoulder comfortingly. “I suppose it’s little comfort to say you have a beautiful home here, that you could be happy here?”

“Oh, I know.” Grace nodded, looking around the house. “I have freedom now, don’t I? A lovely home of my own.” Her eyes darted around the warm golden room, the great fireplace bearing hot flames this evening, and the vast landscape portraits on the walls that told tales from distant lands. “Yet at what cost, I wonder?”

“You and the Duke…” Diana spoke slowly, that shyness creeping into her character that always did appear, even when she was with her dearest friends. “Did you love him?”

Grace nodded fast.

“There’s no past tense involved, Diana,” she whispered. “I love him. I do.” She sniffed. “At least, I love the idea of him. I love the man I thought him to be but not the man who he was yesterday.” She shook her head firmly. “He was a different man.”

“Oh, Grace. I’m so sorry.” Diana put down her port glass and wrapped an arm around her, embracing her tightly.

Grace buried her head in her friend’s shoulder, wishing she could hide there for a long time and forget the world. When she eventually pulled away, there were tears in Diana’s eyes too. They clutched hands as they drank their port.

“Is there any way you can make sense of his behavior yesterday? Is there a reason behind why he would be so quick to accuse you of selling such a story?”

Grace sighed, trying to remember everything Philip had said. Most of the reasoned arguments had been lost in anger. It was like trying to dig for something valuable in sludge, very difficult indeed to find.

“He said that only my father knew about the gambling. As my father had told me, there were just the two of us. It had to be one of us,” Grace whispered. “He was right in one thing — my father could not have left the house to sell such a story, and he also wouldn’t give a story like that away.”

“Of course not,” Diana said, shaking his head. “The article accuses your father of being a blackmailer.”

“Exactly. So, Philip felt the logical conclusion was me.” In sudden anger, she leaned forward, nearly spilling her port. She would have done too if Diana hadn’t snatched it from her and rescued it in time. “But how could he think that? How could he not trust me after all that has passed between us? He didn’t even trust me enough to listen to my protests?”

“Eleanor says he’s a man with a temper. Is there any chance when he’s calmed down that he would listen to reason and come around?”

“Pff, I doubt it.” Oddly, Grace was upset at the mention of Eleanor. It seemed no matter what, all of her friends would always think of Philip as Eleanor’s brother and not Grace’s husband. “There was something he said a couple of days ago. Something curious.”

“What’s that?” Diana urged her on, passing her the port back as Grace sat still again.

“He talked of pain when scandal sheets were published about his father’s affairs. Gossip. Whispers. He spoke of pain and not wanting to relive it. It suggested to me that it wasn’t just a matter of reputation but of heart too.”

“Could that be the reason for his anger, Grace?” Diana asked softly. “A desperate man. He wasn’t just angry at the story but having to suffer the pain of seeing his family’s name in the scandal sheets all over again.”

“Oh, Diana, why do you have to sound so wise?” Grace slumped back in her seat. “Yes, that makes sense.”

It all made a lot of sense. It explained why Philip was so fixed on his mother, about persuading her to retreat to the country seat. He thought of his family, of putting them first, and couldn’t bear the pain to be relived all over again.

“God, he must hate me,” Grace whispered. “I understand something now. Whether he truly thinks I’m behind leaking that story or not, he sees me as the reason his family is back in the scandal sheets. Since he married me, we’re always in those pages. He regrets marrying me because of it.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t regret it,” Diana said, but even she couldn’t utter the words with any degree of conviction. “Oh, Grace, I’m so sorry it has come to this. I wish I could say something to make it all better.”

“You are kind, but there is nothing anyone can say or do.” She sat straight, discarding her port glass. “I read in a book once that heartbreak is a little like a broken glass. You can put things back together, so they look right, but you’ll always bear the breakage. You might just have to look hard sometimes to see it.”

She sighed deeply. “Well, that is what I must hope for. I must try to put the pieces of my heart back together again and find a way to live now.” She looked around the room, taking comfort in the warmth of her new home. “What shall we do tomorrow? I believe there is a new exhibition at Somerset House. Shall we go and see that?”

Diana didn’t look enthused by the idea, but to Grace’s relief, Diana nodded.

“Yes. Let’s do that. We shall fill our days with fun things to do.”

“Yes, we shall.” Grace nodded, hoping to some degree that it magically helped.

* * *

“Perhaps you should go slower, Phil.” Aaron’s face looked a little blurry to Philip as he put the glass down beside him on the table.

Philip sank back in his chair at the gentleman’s club, finding that not only was Aaron’s face blurry but the entire room was too.

“For God’s sake, are you going to drink yourself into a stupor every night?”

“You don’t usually tell jokes.”

“I’m not joking now,” Aaron said sharply. He tapped Philip around the arm, clearly trying to get his attention. “Have you seen anything of your wife in the last four days since you sent her out of the house? And don’t think that helped matters. The fact you ousted her was whispered by every tongue in London three days ago.”

Philip sighed, wondering how it was that the whole of London now knew all of his business.

“I haven’t seen her.” Philip shook his head. “Mrs. Williamson tells me that she is making the most of her freedom. She rides and walks every day. She reads her books and is making plans to change the garden. She has bought some new plants. She goes to Somerset House with her friend, Diana.”

“You seem to be keeping track of your wife’s movements.”

Philip fidgeted in his chair, not in a hurry to agree that was exactly what he was doing.

“Enough of this.” Aaron snatched the glass away as Philip tried to take another sip. “You can’t live life like this, Phil.”

“Why not? Seems a jolly good way to do so to me.”

“People will stop talking of your father eventually. They’ll find the next juicy bit of gossip, and then it will be completely forgotten.”

“Hmm.” Philip was not so convinced of this. His mother would always be pitied as the Dowager Duchess whose husband lost their fortunes and played away. He had failed in trying to protect her from such pain.

“As for your wife, it seems to me that Grace —”

“Don’t call her that,” Philip said with sudden possessiveness. He stared at his friend, finding Aaron’s rather sharp expression now coming into focus.

“Your Grace, eh?” Aaron asked, no hint of humor in his face. “Then start acting like it.”

“After what she did, do you expect me —”

“Oh, enough.” Aaron waved a hand at him. “You’ve always had a habit of acting without thinking things through properly. You’re also blinded by anger, frequently.”

“Such compliments from a man who is supposed to be my dearest friend!”

“You are drunk,” Aaron said, quite expertly avoiding Philip’s grabbing hand as he tried to take the whisky glass back. “Think it through, Phil, that’s all I urge you. Why, why in God’s name would Grace not only throw you and your mother into such a dark place but her own father too? Hmm? Or are you so self-absorbed that you did not notice the article accused her father of being a blackmailer?”

Philip stiffened, for he had noticed. It was something that had burned in the back of his mind and was one of the reasons he had turned to drink.

“Grace wouldn’t sell a story that called her father a blackmailer. She loves him too much for that,” Philip whispered.

“There!” Aaron flicked his fingers. “If you in your cups can still agree to that, then why would you accuse her of being the person behind the leak?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense, Aaron. Who else would sell that story?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t believe it was her. I also think that you are in a state without her. Quite frankly, if you’re going to spend your life in such misery just because she lives at the edge of your estate rather than under your roof, then it wasn’t just a marriage of convenience after all.”

Philip managed to successfully get his whisky back. He downed the last of the liquid then stared into the glass.

For the last four days, when he wasn’t drinking, he’d felt isolated and cut off from the world. He’d even refused to see Eleanor and Dorian when they had come calling on him. He’d been lonely, missing Grace and wanting her back.

To find she had returned his gift hurt. He’d kept that book at the side of his bed, feeling like it was a piece of her that he still carried with him.

“Are you in love with her?” Aaron asked, his voice managing to cut through the daze.

Philip looked at Aaron. He didn’t need to say the words, apparently his expression was enough.

“It was never meant to happen,” he said eventually. Aaron’s rigid spine slumped. “I made a vow when I married her that I wouldn’t be my father. I wouldn’t cause her the same misery my father caused my mother.”

“You didn’t want her to fall in love with you.” Aaron didn’t need to phrase it as a question. It was obvious enough.

“I was so busy thinking about that. I didn’t even notice that I was the one falling…” He trailed off.

I miss her. So much.

“What does it matter?” Philip said quickly. “She happily went to the Dowager’s House. She admitted she hadn’t wanted the marriage in the first place. She’ll be very happy without me.”

“Perhaps not as happy as she’d be with you.” These words hung in the air for a minute. Philip ran a hand through his hair, pulling on the tendrils in stress. “Don’t be a coward, Phil.”

“What did you call me!?” Philip spluttered.

“A coward.” Aaron sat straight, his figure every bit the stiff soldier as he arched his eyebrows in challenge. “Don’t miss out on a chance to be happy with your wife just because you have too much pride to accept you were wrong.”

* * *

Grace trailed her fingers through the lavender flowers she had asked to be planted. With their tiny purple heads, they were a shot of color in a garden that was starting to turn chilly.

“Shall we not go inside?” Diana called from behind her. “This wind is picking up.” As she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, perching on a bench, Grace barely noticed that wind.

She felt an itch, a longing to have that little botanical book back which she had left in the main house. She wished to draw the lavender flower within those pages, to write about its rich scent, and the comfort it could bring.

“You go inside. I’ll follow shortly,” Grace promised.

At least there is one good thing about this place. I am truly free to do as I like now.

She heard Diana’s steps on the gravel path, but there weren’t many of them.

“Oh,” Diana gasped a second later. “Violet is here.”

“Violet?” Grace jerked her head up from the lavender plant, craning her neck to see what Diana was seeing.

It was true; across the garden, they could see up to the gravel drive in front of the Dowager’s House where a carriage had pulled hastily up.

Violet didn’t even wait for the footman to open the door for her but burst free from it. She had ink stains on the palms of her hands as she waved eagerly at them, running toward them.

“She’s covered in ink again,” Diana said with a giggle.

“Someday, she’ll turn up head to toe covered in the stuff.” Grace’s jest made Diana laugh, but Grace could not summon a smile.

Violet was a writer though for some time she had been published under a pseudonym.

“Grace, Grace!” Violet was shouting, waving some papers in her hand. “You will not believe what I have discovered. Grace, you have to hear this.”

Grace stood from the lavender bushes, not even bothering to wipe down the soil from the skirt of her gown, for what was the point?

“You look as if you have been caught in a whirlwind, Vi,” Diana said in interest as she caught up to them in the garden.

“I feel like I have.” Violet stopped running, red in the face as she leaned forward to catch her breath, still clutching papers. “You will not believe what I have heard this morning. I had to come and see you, Grace. Oh, it changes everything.”

“What on earth is going on?” Grace asked. “Come, sit down. You look ready to burst.” She and Diana steered Violet back to the bench behind them. She sat but barely managed to perch on the very edge for she looked so excited.

“I was at the print house this morning.” She waved the papers in front of her. “I was talking to my publisher about my latest book when a whole cohort of ladies walked in. As you can imagine, I hardly wanted to be seen by them in there. Lord knows what they’d whisper about me, so I quickly made an excuse to the publisher and hid in his office.”

“Did they see you?” Diana asked with concern.

“No, thank goodness.” Violet shook her head. “But they started talking to the publisher, and from my position, I could listen in. Mrs. Robertson was amongst them. It turns out, they write for one of the scandal sheets. They had come to collect all their stories together for their next print runt.”

The name, Mrs. Robertson, made Grace stiffen. It made sense to her now why the incident with the carriage in Covent Garden had appeared so quickly in the scandal sheets, for Mrs. Robertson was there to witness it even though she had twisted the truth in her retelling of it.

“Mrs. Robertson,” she whispered. “Has she been behind all of the stories about me?”

“No.” Violet turned to face her completely on the bench. “That is just it, Grace. One of the other ladies was asking Mrs. Robertson where she got all this information on you from, for you and your husband are the talk of the town because of it. Mrs. Robertson started talking about a good source, how she had someone inside your father’s house who was very ready indeed to tell her all she needed to know.”

“My father’s house?” Grace’s mind worked fast. That day when she and her father had talked of the late Duke of Berkley’s gambling, had there been a maid with their ear pressed against the door, listening into their conversation? Had there been a gardener who had seen her climb in through the window then stepped closer to hear all that was said. “Who?”

“Surely no one in that house would betray your family so much,” Diana muttered, fear lacing her voice. “The mere thought…” She shuddered. “It’s unthinkable.”

“There is someone.” Violet nodded firmly. “Grace, I am so sorry to be the one to tell you this.” She reached for Grace’s hand and gripped it tightly. “For it is no staff member, no visitor; it is someone much closer to home.”

“It cannot be,” Grace whispered in horror. She thought of her mother and how much Althea had always despaired of her, yet it seemed unthinkable that a lady so focused on propriety would consider putting her own daughter’s name in the scandal sheets. “Do not tell me it was my mother.”

“No, no, not your mother.” Violet shook her head firmly. “It was your cousin. It was Tabitha.”