Before Three Hundred Guests, the Duke Declared His Marriage Over, Certain His Wife Would Beg Him to Stay — She Placed Her Ring Beside His Glass, Bowed, and Thanked Him for Letting Her Serve His Family

PART 8

Sebastian returned to Ravenshire to find three things waiting: a note from his solicitor about the outstanding wording of the deed, a calling card from Lady Victoria Harkort, and Percival Ashton in the front study with a glass of brandy.

“You went to Dorset,” Percival said. Not a question.

“I did.”

“She told me the door was closed.”

“Don’t be sorry. She was right to close it.”

Victoria’s note, left in his absence, was elegant and controlled and gave nothing away. Sebastian — I understand you wrote with certain questions. I think it would be better to speak in person, as letters can be misread. I remain, as always, your sincere friend.

“She wants to manage this conversation the same way she managed the last one,” Percival said. “In person, so she can watch your face and adjust.”

Sebastian wrote four lines in reply and sent them to London that night: Lady Victoria — You have confirmed everything I needed to know. Wickliffe. He did not explain it further. Her own letter, arriving two days later, insisting she had only ever acted “out of genuine care” for his well-being and had “recommended Mr. Clifton because he is discreet,” confirmed, in her own words, exactly what he had suspected — that she had positioned herself as the one who freed him, and called it friendship.

Mrs. Brent knocked at nine the next morning.

“I received a letter from Mrs. Caulfield. Lady Eleanor became unwell last week — a cold that settled in her chest, from too many hours in an unheated building. She has recovered.” A pause. “But I felt your grace should know.”

Sebastian thought about Eleanor in her dusty coat, working in a building that was not yet heated in October because she was not willing to wait for conditions to be perfect before she began.

“Thank you, Mrs. Brent.”

At the door, she paused, which was becoming a pattern between them.

“Lady Eleanor never once asked me to keep a confidence regarding her own struggles. Not a word to the staff. Not a sigh. She was always impeccably discreet.” Her voice was careful. “I tell you this because what Lady Victoria Harkort has been saying in drawing rooms is being repeated in servants’ halls as well. And in servants’ halls, we know the difference between what is said and what is true.”

She left. Sebastian sat with that for a long time. Then he asked Percival what it would cost Eleanor, socially and practically, to remain publicly associated with the wording he had used that September evening.

“Considerably,” Percival said finally. “Incompatibility, failure to provide a suitable environment — that language leaves the interpretation open, and society generally assumes the wife was at fault when the husband makes the statement first. She has the Kent property and her own income under the Married Women’s Property Act — that much is secure, whatever the deed eventually says. But her name, in this county, is at the mercy of whoever tells the story loudest. And right now, that is Victoria.”

“Then I need to tell a different one,” Sebastian said. “Publicly. In front of the same people who heard the first.”