Vere was suddenly crushed by Freddie’s embrace.
“Oh, Penny, you have no idea. I have missed you so much.”
Tears rolled down Vere’s cheeks: Freddie’s joy, his own shame, regret for all the time they had lost.
He pulled away.
Freddie did not notice his distress. “We must tell everyone right away. Too bad the Season is finished. My goodness, won’t everyone be in for a genuine shock next year. But we can still go to our clubs and make the announcements. And you are not leaving town right away, are you? Angelica is up in Derbyshire visiting her cousin, but she should be back tomorrow. She will be thrilled. Thrilled, I tell you.” He spoke in such a rush his words were shoving one another out of the way. “Let me ring for Mrs. Charles. I think I have a bottle or two of champagne lying around. We must celebrate. We must celebrate properly.”
Freddie reached for the bellpull. Vere grabbed his arm. But what he needed to say stuck in his throat like wet cement. He’d steeled himself to face Freddie’s wrath, not this overwhelming joy. To speak more on the subject would annihilate the happiness that flushed Freddie’s face and glistened in his eyes.
But Vere had no choice. If he allowed himself to stop here, it would be another Big Lie between the two of them, where there were piled too many lies already.
He dropped his hand from Freddie’s arm and clenched it into a fist. “You misunderstood me, Freddie. I haven’t recovered from anything, because there was nothing to recover from. I never had a concussion. It has been my choice to act the idiot.”
Freddie stared at Vere. “What are you saying? You were diagnosed. I talked to Needham myself. He said you suffered a personality-altering traumatic injury to the head.”
“Ask me again about women’s suffrage.”
Some of the color drained from Freddie’s cheeks. “Do you…do you support women’s suffrage?”
For some reason, the role did not immediately come to Vere, as if he were an actor who had already left the stage, stripped off his costume, wiped clean his makeup, and fallen half-asleep, and then was suddenly asked to reprise his performance.
He had to take several deep breaths and imagine strapping a mask over his face. “Women’s suffrage? But what do they need it for? Every woman is going to vote the way her husband tells her to, and we will still end up with the exact same idiots in Parliament! Now if dogs could vote, that would make a difference. They are intelligent, they are loyal to the Crown, and they certainly deserve more of a say in the governance of this country.”
Freddie’s mouth dropped open. He flushed with embarrassment. And then, as Vere watched, his expression slowly darkened into anger. “So all these years, all these years, it was just an act?”
Vere swallowed. “I’m afraid so.”
Freddie stared at him another minute. He drew back his fist. It landed on Vere’s solar plexus with an audible thwack. Vere stumbled a step. Before he could recover, another punch landed. And another. And another. And another. Until he was pinned to the wall.
He’d had no idea Freddie was capable of violence.
“You bastard!” The words exploded in a roar. “You swine! You bloody sham!”
He’d had no idea Freddie was capable of swearing, either.
Freddie stopped, his breaths hard and heavy.
“I’m sorry, Freddie.” Vere could not meet his eyes. He stared at the desk behind Freddie’s back. “I’m sorry.”
“You are sorry? I used to cry like a frigging fountain whenever I thought of you. Did you ever think of that? Did you even care about the people who loved you?”
His words were shards of glass in Vere’s heart. He had tried to spend as much time away from Freddie as possible in the months following his accident, but there had been no mistaking Freddie’s devastation, the tentative hope at the beginning of each new meeting fracturing into splinters of despair.
And now the moment of reckoning had come. Now Freddie saw him for what he truly was.
“And I have never let anyone call you an idiot,” Freddie snarled. “I almost came to blows with Wessex over that. But my God, you are. You are such a sodding idiot.”
He was. God, he was. A sodding idiot and a selfish bastard.
“It was as if you had died. The person who was you was gone. And I had all this grief that I couldn’t even speak of, except maybe to Lady Jane or Angelica, because everyone kept telling me that I should be thankful you were still alive. And I was, and then I would look at this stranger who had your face and your voice and miss you desperately.”
Fresh tears rolled down Vere’s face.
“I’m sorry. I was fixated on Mater’s murder and Pater’s guilt and I was furious you didn’t tell me anything—”
Freddie clamped his hand on Vere’s arm. “How do you know about them?”
“I heard Pater on his deathbed, trying to bully the rector to absolve him of the murder.”
Freddie’s expression changed. He walked away, poured himself a full glass of cognac, and emptied half the glass in one gulp. “For a moment I thought Lady Jane or Angelica told you.”
“Angelica knows too?”
“I would have told only Angelica, but she was away that summer with her family.” Freddie thrust his hand into his hair. “But I don’t understand. What does your knowing what happened to Mater have to do with your act?”
“I’ve been an investigative agent for the Crown, as Lady Jane had been in her day. I thought that was how I would be able to find a measure of peace. And the idiocy was a guise, so nobody would take me seriously.”
Freddie spun around. “My God! So when you saw Mr. Hudson injecting Lady Haysleigh with the chloral, you didn’t stumble upon it by accident.”
“No.”
“And Mr. Douglas, you were investigating him too?”
“Yes.”
Freddie emptied the rest of his cognac. “You could have told me. I would have taken your secret to my grave. And I would have been so proud of you.”
“I should’ve. But I was still seething at you for not telling me—for depriving me of any chance I had to punish Pater.” Vere cringed at the rampant immaturity his words revealed—and the narrowness of his views. Anger and obsession had been for him the only acceptable reactions to the truth. “I seethed for weeks. Maybe months. And when I’d finally calmed down some it seemed that you’d already made your peace with the new me.”
Most of the angry red had faded from Freddie’s cheeks. He shook his head slowly. “I never completely made my peace with the not-you. And I wish you’d come to me; then I could have told you that Pater didn’t need you to punish him: He was in hell already. You should have heard him that night. He begged for three hours, cowering under his counterpane all the while. I had to sit down because I got so tired of standing.”
“But he never showed the slightest remorse.”
“It was his tragedy: He stewed in so much fear without the least understanding that he could and should repent. That he even brought this up with the rector tells me he was terrified of eternal damnation. I pity him.”
Vere braced his hand against the side of a bookcase. “Did you know that I envied you, Freddie? You were able to move on, whereas I wouldn’t and couldn’t let go. I’ve always prided myself on my cleverness—but it is an empty cleverness. How I wish I had some of your wisdom instead.”
Freddie sighed. When he looked at Vere again, there was a deep sympathy in his eyes. Vere almost had to look away; he didn’t deserve Freddie’s sympathy.
“What has it been like for you all these years, Penny?”
Vere blinked back further tears. “It’s been all right and it’s been terrible.”