She sank into the rocking chair—still warm from him—and closed her eyes.
She no longer saw him as a scandalous rake.
She was not certain she ever truly had. The accusation had been convenient—a shield she could hold between them whenever thetruth pressed too close. And it had worked, for a time. Had kept her safe. Had kept the careful architecture of her life intact.
But safety, she was beginning to understand, was just another word for small. For measured. For a life lived inside the margins, never touching the edges.
The candle guttered and went out, leaving her alone in the dark with the sound of Rose’s breathing and the quiet, devastating knowledge that she had fallen in love with her husband.
And she had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
CHAPTER 21
“There is a Lord Whitcombe at the door, Your Grace. With Lady Whitcombe and a gentleman he introduces as his solicitor. They are requesting an audience.”
Alastair’s hand stilled on the page he’d been reading—some tedious correspondence from his London steward that he’d been using as an excuse not to think about last night’s nursery conversation and the way Penelope had looked at him in the candlelight. He glanced up at Mrs. Keating..
“Whitcombe.” He set down the letter. “I don’t know a Lord Whitcombe.”
“No, Your Grace. But he appears to know a great deal about you. He was quite insistent. I’ve put them in the front drawing room.”
A solicitor. The word snagged on something at the back of his mind—an instinct honed by years of navigating London’smore treacherous waters. People who arrived unannounced with solicitors in tow did not come bearing pleasant news.
“Did he state his business?”
“He did not. Only that it concerned—” Mrs. Keating hesitated, and the hesitation told him everything. “A family matter, Your Grace. Regarding the child.”
The temperature in the study dropped by several degrees. Or perhaps that was simply the blood leaving his face.
Whitcombe.
The name landed now with the weight of recognition. Marianne Whitcombe. The initial on the letter.M.Penelope had spoken of the Whitcombes—the strictest and most frightening people she knew, parents who kept their daughter locked away in the countryside, who would sooner destroy a child than allow a scandal to touch their name.
And they were in his drawing room.
Alastair rose. He straightened his coat, adjusted his cravat with fingers that remained steady through sheer force of will, and crossed to the mirror above the fireplace. The man who looked back at him was pale but composed. Good. He could work with composed.
“Mrs. Keating. Please ensure that Her Grace and the child remain upstairs. Under no circumstances are they to be disturbed or informed of our visitors until I say otherwise.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And send Crawford to me. Quietly.”
She disappeared without another word, and Alastair spent the next thirty seconds standing very still in his study, breathing with the deliberate control of a man preparing for battle.
He had spent his entire adult life avoiding confrontation. Deflecting with charm, sidestepping with wit, dissolving tension with a well-placed joke and a rakish smile. It was what he did. What he was good at.
None of that would serve him now.
He walked to the drawing room.
Three figures occupied the space with the territorial assurance of people accustomed to commanding whatever room they entered. Lord Whitcombe stood at the window—a tall, thin man in his sixth decade, with the rigid bearing of someone who had never once questioned his own authority. Silver-streaked hair swept back from a face built entirely of angles: sharp cheekbones, a blade-thin nose, a mouth that appeared to have been pressed into a permanent line of disapproval. His eyes,when they found Alastair’s, held the flat, assessing quality of a man evaluating livestock.
Lady Whitcombe occupied the settee, her hands folded in her lap with deliberate precision. She was handsome in the way of well-preserved aristocratic women—every hair controlled, every crease in her gown vanquished. She did not attempt to hide her contempt. She did not rise when Alastair entered.
The solicitor—a wiry man with ink-stained fingers and the anxious bearing of someone who would rather be anywhere else—stood slightly apart, clutching a leather case as though it contained his only means of escape.
“Lord Whitcombe.” Alastair inclined his head with a courtesy he did not feel. “Lady Whitcombe. I’m told you wished to see me. Forgive my surprise—I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”