Heiress in Red Silk, Hunter, Madeline [good beach reads TXT] 📗

Chase was good at dissembling, but Kevin had known him long enough to spot when it was happening. “And your wife said not a word to you about it? I find that hard to believe.”

Chase was also good at hiding discomfort, but Kevin knew the signs of that too. So when Chase rose to fill his glass, and drank some before returning to his chair, Kevin fully expected the impassive expression turned in his direction.

“As I said, you should ask Miss Jameson.”

“I’m asking you.”

“You are indeed.” Chase showed irritation. He drank another swallow. “Damn. Fine, what gaps do you see? I’ll fill them if I can. Minerva told me much, but not everything. Which is why Miss Jameson, or Minerva herself, would be the better person to question.”

He would rather not question Rosamund, and he would never face Minerva over this. “She came up to Town when she was maybe seventeen. She was in service for a while. How long?”

“Approximately a year and a half.”

“Then she left.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why she left?”

“No.”

Chase was lying. Kevin let it pass, since he already had that information.

“Where did she go then? Not to that milliner who taught her. That was later. So this is the gap. The biggest one.”

“As I understand it, she took service in another house.”

Chase appeared resolute. Definitive. It had not been a lie. Rosamund had implied the same thing while they journeyed to Paris.

“What family?”

Chase’s expression cracked just enough to be notable. A vague pulsing started on his jaw. A determined hardening of his gaze created a shield. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“Ask her.”

“I would rather not. It may not be anything important and I don’t want her thinking—”

“Thinking that you are suspicious of her? Hell, you are, so you may at least say so. This is a damnable way to make a marriage, Kevin. All this time and you have only now come out of your head enough to notice that you have these gaps in your knowledge of her.”

Kevin waited while Chase’s annoyance dimmed. He had nothing to say for himself. He had been stupidly oblivious to what he did not know about Rosamund. But then he had not needed to know much, except that he desired her.

“Was she some man’s mistress during that time?”

Chase looked over, surprised. “Not that I know of. As I said, she took service again.”

“Yet you won’t tell me the family. That is very odd.”

Chase sank back in his chair. “I swear, I will kill Nicholas. The coward, leaving this to me alone.” He sighed deeply. “I did not say she took service with a family, Kevin. I said she took service in a house.” He turned his head and looked Kevin right in the eye.

Kevin looked back, perplexed. Then clouds parted and light flowed. Of course. He had been an idiot not to see it before.

Just then the door opened and Nicholas strode in. He came over and looked at the two of them. His expression fell. He sent a questioning glance to Chase, who merely nodded.

“Welcome back, Nicholas,” Kevin said. “Just in time to be spared the moment when Chase told me my intended was a whore.”

* * *

“I should have seen it at once. After all, it is where I learned her name. At Mrs. Darling’s.” Kevin mused over the revelation while Nicholas sat down. “I assumed they only bought bonnets from her. Not that she had lived there. Yet it would have been an excellent place for Uncle to have met her, because it was one of his haunts.”

“You are taking this awfully well,” Nicholas said. “It must be a shock.”

“Not too much of a shock. It does fill the gap neatly.”

“But to learn—That is, to discover—”

“Better now than later,” Chase said.

“So you said this afternoon,” Nicholas said. “I told him your intentions and he turned green. I got it out of him. We decided we should tell you. Better now than later, he said.”

“You decided I should tell him, as I recall,” Chase snapped.

“I feared a big Kevin scene. Cursing. Rudeness. Nasty sarcasm. Only look, he is being a real soldier despite the destruction of his plans.”

“That is because this doesn’t affect my plans.”

They both peered at him. Nicholas looked dismayed. “Damnation, I knew it. Practical marriage hell. He is enthralled by her, Chase. He’ll do this even now that he knows.”

“I’m never enthralled. I’m sure, however, that while she may have taken service in that house, she was not one of the ladies of the house.”

“You can’t be sure,” Chase said.

“Mrs. Darling would never employ a woman as ignorant as this one is. That house is famous for an elevated level of expertise.”

It took a five count for them to comprehend what he had said.

Chase looked relieved, probably because he would not have to explain to Minerva how he had ruined Miss Jameson’s possible engagement. “Tell me, if you didn’t know with such certainty that she could not have worked there as a soiled dove, would you still become engaged to her?”

“Yes.” It surprised Kevin that he knew the answer right away.

“Good. Because it is inevitable that men probably saw her there. One day one of them may say something. You might start practicing with pistols as well as swords.”

Chapter Seventeen

Rosamund did not see Kevin for two days after their return. After spending the second one with her morning tutor, then setting her house in order, she donned a bonnet and walked to Minerva’s house in the afternoon. As she handed over her card, she realized it was the first time she had paid a social call like this, in her new role of wealthy heiress.

She wondered if Minerva knew about her liaison with Kevin. It entered her mind that her friend might disapprove, and not receive her.

While she waited for the verdict, she pictured what it would be like to be rebuffed. It would happen eventually. Perhaps not with Minerva, but some other woman. She might think she had started a friendship