Jem’s head snapped back. “I say, Em. Such language.”
“—ballroom-leaving, card-cheating, paintbrush-dropping idiot.” The invective poured out of her in one breath. She struck Henry again before pulling him into a hug that crushed the breath from his body.
“I’m glad to see you too, Emily,” Henry said with the scrap of air left to him.
She sniffled as she pulled away, her eyes red. “I was so worried, Hal. I didn’t want to say anything to the boys last night. I just prayed you’d both be home safe this morning.” She folded her arms tight across her chest and shrugged. “So, now I can get angry in peace. But I suppose you might as well have some breakfast while I yell at you.”
“That hardly sounds conducive to digestion,” Henry said with a smile. It didn’t bother him at all. Not the hitting, not the cursing, not the threats of more yelling. He understood the hidden meaning there. It all meant I love you, as surely as Jem had when he had begged Henry not to duel.
Every time they called him Hal, they told him so. I love you.
How could he repay the constancy of his family? He’d tried to make amends to Jem this morning, but how could he make amends to Emily?
He’d start with an apology. Henry caught her on one shoulder as they filed in to breakfast, his fingers snarling, clumsy, in her tangled hair. “I’m sorry, Emily. The waiting must have been awful.”
She looked up at him, blinking with a force that belied the dryness of her eyes. “It was. But I’m sure you didn’t have the best morning of your life, either.”
“I don’t know.” Henry considered. “I might have, at that.” Emily narrowed her eyes, and he shrugged. “Hit me again if you need to. I’m sure I deserve it.”
“You do. But I’ll save it till you’ve got a few kippers in you.”
Her hands whisked down the length of her borrowed dressing gown, and a look of chagrin crossed her face. “I suppose I ought to get dressed first. The food’s ready, though. I had it laid out not half an hour ago.”
“You look lovely, Em,” Jem said. He kissed his wife on the nose, then moved to the sideboard and began lifting dish covers. “Even wearing my dressing gown. You’re the loveliest thing I’ve seen all day, and I’ve already been up for a couple of hours.”
Emily laughed shakily. “Since you’ve only seen a passel of men, Jemmy, that’s not much of a compliment.”
“Sure it is.” Jem began serving eggs onto a plate. “I saw Hal duel and not get himself killed. That’s something.”
Behind Jem’s back, Henry’s eyes found Emily’s. She offered him a watery smile as Jem talked on, heedless of the compliment he’d just paid both his wife and brother.
“Gad, you can’t believe how he can shoot. Em, it was amazing. He just waited, cool as any of Gunter’s ices, then took his shot. Deloped, really. Hal, I don’t think Wadsworth will ever be the same. Nor the tree, for that matter.”
He chuckled, turning with his filled plate. “Oh. But I’m not proud of you. Not for dueling.”
“Of course not,” Henry and Emily said in unison. Proud, Jem kept saying. It didn’t matter that it was prefaced with the word “not.” Henry could tell what he meant. Jem never was good at hiding his feelings, even behind disclaiming words.
This type of pride was very different from the precarious feeling that had hacked at Henry’s peace of mind since he returned to London. There was pride, and there was proud of. He’d had a bitter surfeit of the former. The latter was sweet, much more to his taste.
Jem seated himself, but before he could draw in his chair, Emily perched on his lap. Jem’s light eyes flew wide open. “I say, Em. Ah… are you all right?”
She laid her head on her husband’s shoulder. “Not yet,” she said, tugging at his lapels. “But I will be. Now tell me everything that happened. And if you leave anything out, I’ll rub bacon grease all over your coat.”
Jem needed no further encouragement to begin, forking up eggs with his right hand as his left held his wife tight. After a few seconds, Henry began to feel distinctly superfluous.
It wasn’t that he was embarrassed watching Jem and Emily cuddle and talk; it was comforting to know that a husband and wife could still care for each other so much after ten years of marriage. No, it was more as though his part was over. He’d played it this morning at Chalk Farm. For an encore, he’d allowed Emily to batter him, and he’d given her an apology.
And now there was nothing to do but leave the stage. Perhaps he had better go to Winter Cottage. There would be no shame in it now. It might even be peaceful.
But regret twanged through him. All the letters that had poured in this morning, just because Henry had acted like a damned fool—or maybe like a man who’d come to his senses after long insanity. It was a small comfort to know that he could move easily through polite society again.
Only a small comfort, though. The letter he most wanted he had not received. And the woman who might have written it didn’t exist.
No sense in filling a plate with unwanted food, listening to Jem hash over the morning. Henry had little appetite for any of it.
He started to move toward the door of the dining room, but Emily called him back.
“Wait, Hal.” She patted at the bulky dressing gown, finding a pocket and pulling forth a folded square of paper.
As she held it out, Henry’s fingers began to tingle. He felt more shaky and uncertain than he had when waiting for Wadsworth to take his shot.
“This came by runner this morning, just like all the other letters. It arrived about a quarter hour after you left.” Her mouth curved, her smile knowing but tired. “I set it aside. This one’s special.”
Henry reached across the burnished wood table and took the square. There was no seal on the wax; it was just a heavy blob of red.
He knew who it was from, though. He knew from the feel of the paper, the heft of the letter in his hand. Even before he cracked the seal, he knew.
What it said, though, he could not imagine.
Only one way to find out. “Excuse me,” he said, and hurried up to his bedchamber as if carrying a forbidden treasure.
The letter was thick, several sheets folded together. Page after page of Caro’s heavy paper. Line after line in Frances’s hand. She’d falsified its form, he realized, when she showed him her handwriting during their writing lesson. She’d hidden her true self, but here it was.
He took a deep breath and found a chair. None of this sitting on the ground nonsense.
And he read his letter.
Twenty-Five
Dear Henry,
If you’re reading this, you are alive, and you aren’t so angry with me that you threw the letter in the fire at once. I suppose that’s a reasonable starting point.
I regret the way we parted earlier, though it was probably inevitable. I delayed so long in telling you the truth about the letters—my letters—because I knew you would be disappointed.
And you might still be, after you read this letter, but you deserve to know everything about my past. First, because it returns the favor of your confidence in kind; second, because I hope it will help you understand why I wrote you the first letter, and why I kept sending more though I knew you thought them from Caroline.
I was the much-loved only child of a Sussex baronet. As you know, Caroline is my cousin. She is the daughter of my father’s younger brother, a clergyman who held a prosperous living a half-day’s drive away from my father’s home. As we grew up, I was the privileged one, with a rich dowry, though Caroline’s beauty was always thought to be dowry in itself—dazzling enough for the clergyman’s daughter to have a season of her own. But I was the one on whom my parents pinned the hopes of a good match. I was to advance us all.