“Am I right in that something about Havelstock upset you? Or did the eel stew take you the wrong way?”
It felt as though she needed to pull the words up from the bottom of a dark mine, where they were mired in memory. But she managed.
“Lord Havelstock and I were once engaged to be married.”
She had dreaded the need to say those words aloud for years. But it seemed safe to do it now. As though when Lorcan was in the room, nearly anything became safe.
Lorcan was motionless and silent. He seemed to be taking this in.
Perhaps comparing it to the things he thought he knew about her. She wondered if all this time he’d thought she was the veriest spinster.
“And you may have noticed that I am not married to him,” she added. Dryly.
“How did the... not being married to him come about? That was my sorry attempt at being something other than blunt.”
“He fell in love with someone else.”
Again he went quiet.
She realized there was something thrilling about watching his face when he was merely thinking. She pictured his mind as a blade, parsing things.
“Was she a governess?” was what he came out with.
“How...” Her word was nearly arid from shock.
“When we arrived, when Mrs. Durand said the word ‘governess.’ And you looked as though someone had flicked something hot into your eyes.”
She sat for a moment in silence. “I think it’s a very good thing we’ve never played five-card loo.”
Their eyes met and in his there fleetingly glinted a thousand little jokes about games and wagers and the price thereof, spicy little innuendos, considered and rejected as not appropriate for the moment.
How astonishing that she’d only realized this because she’d thought of a few of her own.
“She is a very beautiful girl. The governess,” she added.
“What a shocking plot twist.”
She was surprised into smiling again.
He was still standing before her, motionless but somehow radiating a sort of restlessness. She realized he was once again charged with a need to see her right. It could not be done in this instance. The damage had been inflicted many years ago. The ramifications might very well be permanent.
“If you do not want me to ask questions...” he said.
“No. I don’t mind. I’ll tell you. But I don’t want to bore you.”
“I can truthfully say you have yet to bore me. You are full of surprises, Lady Worth.”
She quirked her mouth. How extraordinary that this was a thing he valued.
She patted the settee near her.
He settled slowly, sat at a proper distance, as if they’d a chaperone, and had never groaned helpless pleasure into each other’s mouths.
“Henry—Lord Havelstock—courted me in the usual way. We had so much in common. And I felt we had such an accord.” She shot a wry sidelong glance at the man with whom she’d had anything but when they’d first met. “It seemed we could speak to each other of anything. It was the first time I felt someone truly knew me. I fell in love. I was twenty when he proposed, and it was like...”
She didn’t want to remember that happiness, because now it seemed evidence of her foolishness and naivete. “Walking on air.”
She didn’t look at Lorcan.