stashing his bills and letters. And found the list locked away, exactly where he’d put it when he’d moved here. Since he had the key on a fob on his waistcoat and that key had never been out of his possession, it meant she must have read it before they reached Mayfield.
And still done her utmost to be a good wife to him. He shut his eyes, grimacing as he recalled one instance after another, when she’d made the best of his blunders while all the while she must have been trying to overlook this.
Well, he’d just have to go after her. Tell her he’d never meant to hurt her...
He got as far as the corridor, before it struck him that he’d never done anything but hurt her. Blundering, clumsy fool that he was...he’d watched her growing more and more depressed with every day that passed, wishing he knew what to say, how to reach her.
And now he saw that it had never been possible. There was no way he could defend the indefensible.
No wonder she’d left him. He would have left him if he’d been married to such an oaf!
He staggered back into his father’s rooms, dropped into the nearest chair and put his head in his hands.
What was he going to do? How was he going to explain this to her? Win her back?
Win her back? He’d never had her to win back. Because he’d told her he wasn’t looking for affection from marriage.
And this was why.
When men fell in love, it made them weak, vulnerable. God, he hadn’t even realised he had fallen in love with Mary, until just now, when he’d read her list and realised how much she must hate him. Felt the pain of her fury pierce his heart the way her hatpin had pierced the soft down of his pillow.
His feelings for her had crept up behind him and ambushed him while he’d been distracted by congratulating himself for being clever enough to write that list and pick such a perfect woman.
Why hadn’t he seen that picking the perfect woman would practically ensure he would fall in love with her?
Because he was a fool, that was why.
A fool to think he could marry a girl like Mary, and live with her, and make love to her, and be able to keep his heart intact.
Let alone keep her at his side.
She’d gone and he couldn’t really blame her.
All he could do was hope she’d find the happiness, away from him, that he couldn’t give her himself.
And find some way of coming to terms with it all.
* * *
Gilbey informed Mary that the roads were too bad to make the journey all in one stage, so they stopped at an inn that wasn’t anywhere near as bad as her husband had led her to believe might be the case.
It probably helped that she stalked into the building, still hurt and angry at her husband, and ready to take it out on whoever happened to cross her next. Susan did her part, too, making up the bed in the best chamber with sheets Mrs Brownlow had provided, with such disdain for the hotel’s bedding that all the staff treated Mary as though she was a duchess. But all the bowing and scraping from the landlord and his minions could not quite compensate Mary for the knowledge that when her husband had travelled with her, he’d hired a well-sprung, comfy little post-chaise, rather than put up with the antiquated, lumbering carriage that Gilbey had unearthed from somewhere. When she’d travelled with him, she hadn’t ended up aching all over and feeling so sick and dizzy that she would have cheerfully curled up on the rug in front of the fire, just as long as she could get her head down.
And then, of course, thoughts of spending nights on hearthrugs in front of fires had churned her insides up so much that she could have been offered the finest, softest feather bed, and it would still have felt like an instrument of torture.
* * *
It was past noon by the time Mary reached London the following day. She heaved a sigh of relief when she finally alighted outside one of the largest, most imposing mansions she had ever seen.
Gilbey, and the horrid carriage, disappeared round the side of the house at once. Taking the precious horses to the warmth of their luxurious stables, she supposed. Susan, carrying Mary’s bag, mounted the steps ahead of her and knocked on the glossily painted, black front door.
‘Lady Havelock, you say?’ The butler who opened the door raised one eyebrow in a way that implied he very much doubted it. ‘We received no notice of your intention to take up residence.’
This was a problem Mary hadn’t anticipated, though perhaps she should have done. It was just like her husband to have forgotten to inform the most relevant people involved.
‘Well, I’m not spending another night in a hotel,’ she snapped. One had been more than enough. And she was blowed if she was going to write to him and tell him his servants wouldn’t let her into the house he’d promised she could treat as her own. She’d come to London in part to prove that she could stand on her own two feet. Survive without him. She wasn’t going to crumble, and beg for his help, at the very first sign of trouble.
‘What’s to do, Mr Simmons?’
A stern-looking, grey-haired lady came up behind the butler, who was obstinately barring the way into the house, and peered over his shoulder.
‘There is a person claiming to be Lady Havelock,’ said the butler disapprovingly.
‘Well, the notice was in the Gazette, so I dare say his lordship has married somebody.’
While the butler and the woman she assumed was the housekeeper discussed the likelihood of her being an impostor, Mary’s temper, which had been on a low simmer all the way to London, came rapidly to a boil.
She’d had enough of people talking about her as if she wasn’t there. Of making decisions for her, and about her, and packing her off to London in ramshackle coaches to houses where nobody either expected or welcomed her.
‘It’s all very well thinking it is your duty to guard my husband’s property from impostors,’ she pointed out in accents that were as freezing as the rain that had just started to fall. ‘But if you value your positions at all...’
‘That’s ’er, right enough,’ a third voice piped up, preventing her from saying exactly how she would exact retribution. ‘Leastaways,’ said a small boy, who pushed his way between the butler and the housekeeper, ‘she’s the one wot was wiv ’is lordship when he saved me from the nubbing cheat.’
‘Indeed?’ The butler’s expression underwent a most satisfying change. At about the same moment she recognised the little boy. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been dressed in rags and her husband had been dragging him out of Westminster Abbey by the scruff of his neck.
‘My goodness, but you’ve changed,’ said Mary to the boy. He’d not only filled out, but seemed to have grown taller, too. Of course that might have been an illusion, caused by the fact that he wasn’t cowering. Or wearing filthy, ill-fitting clothes. And the fact that his hair was clean, and neatly brushed.
‘That’s wot plenty of grub and a reg’lar bob ken’ll do fer yer,’ said the former pickpocket,
