She Vanished After the Duke Rejected Her—But When He Found Her Working as a Maid at Another Lord’s Estate, the Eight-Year-Old Boy Beside Her Revealed the Secret She Had Hidden for Nearly a Decade

PART 2 

He had been twenty-four years old when he had first met her, and she had been nineteen—the daughter of Sir Henry Marlo, a baronet whose estate lay only a few miles from the northern boundary of his own family’s lands.

Elizabeth’s mother had been a friend of his own mother in girlhood, and the two women had maintained a correspondence over the years. When the Marlos fell upon difficult times, the Dowager Duchess invited them to spend a season at Everly Hall.

He had not wanted them to come. He had been young then, and proud, and impatient with anything that interfered with his own amusements. The prospect of entertaining a baronet and his family for several weeks had struck him as a tiresome imposition. He had made his objections known to his mother in no uncertain terms, and she had listened with the same patient expression she always wore when he was being unreasonable. And then she had told him that the Marlos would arrive on the twelfth of June, and that he would be expected to behave with courtesy.

So he had behaved with courtesy. And he had fully intended to continue behaving with courtesy until the day he could finally put them back into their carriage and watch them drive away.

But Elizabeth had made it impossible for him to remain distant.

She had not been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, though she had possessed a kind of quiet loveliness that he had come to appreciate more with each passing day. Her hair had been dark, her eyes a warm brown, her features regular but unremarkable. What had set her apart from every other woman of his acquaintance had been the quality of her attention. When she looked at him, she seemed to see him clearly—without the flattery or calculation that colored so many of his social interactions.

By midsummer, he had been inventing excuses to seek her out. His mother had noticed, of course, and had said nothing, but he had seen the knowing look in her eyes, and had understood that she approved.

The Marlos stayed for six weeks, and by the time their visit ended, he had made up his mind to marry her.

He had not proposed immediately. There had been matters to settle first—settlements, family considerations—and he had believed that he had time. Elizabeth returned to her father’s estate with the understanding that he would write to her, and he had written often, long letters in which he discussed the details of his day and hinted at the future he hoped they would share. She had written back with equal warmth, and he had carried her letters in his coat pocket and read them when he thought no one was watching.

Then his father had died.

The previous duke had been ill for months, and the family had prepared themselves for the loss as best they could. But the title had brought with it a weight of responsibility that his twenty-four-year-old self had not fully anticipated. And there had been his mother, who had pulled him aside one evening in the weeks after the funeral, and told him gently but firmly that the family’s financial situation was not as secure as he had believed.

The estate was encumbered. His father had made investments that had failed. The only practical solution, his mother believed, was for him to marry a woman whose fortune could restore the family’s stability at a single stroke.

Elizabeth Marlo had no fortune.