Page 88 of Wedded to the Beastly Duke
“They were not merely friends,” she said when she had finished reading the letters. Adam was staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face. “This changes everything.”
“Does it?”
“Yes! Consider this passage.I know you are contemplating marriage, though you did not have the gall to tell me yourself, and I confess the notion pains me. How can you cast what we have to the wind in order to obtain a wife for the sake of pleasing Society? Are you ashamed of me and what we have?”
Adam’s face tensed. “What are you insinuating?”
“And there’s this.You were with Lord Davenport last night, were you not? Laughing and drinking and playing cards while I was in the country. Did you find him as handsome as me? Perhaps you were hoping he was also amenable to the kind of affection I harbor for you.”
She looked up at him, her expression grave. This explained so many things—the haunted expression Nicholas sometimes had while speaking about William, their close relationship, the potential reasons behind William’s death.
If William had been so very jealous, obsessing over Nicholas to the point he objected to his marriage—a marriage she could see even from a distance was for convenience’s sake only—and objecting to Nicholas spending time with other men, then perhaps their relationship was volatile.
“I must speak with him,” Adam said, his jaw set.
“Are you angry with him?”
“Nicholas? Yes, if he had something to do with William’s death.”
“And if not?”
He shook his head tightly. “This thing between them was a big thing to conceal from me,” he said after a long moment. “And I suppose I understand, in part, but…”
She reached over to squeeze his hand. “I understand.”
It was a revelation, a significant one, especially when taking into account the length of time they had all known each other.
If William loved Nicholas, and all the evidence suggested it was a deep, all-consuming love, then that was a large piece of his brother that Adam had never known.
And nowwouldnever know, not directly.
She could only imagine how he felt.
* * *
Adam sat silently, Emmeline’s hand in his, as they rode back home in the darkness. The knowledge that his brother and Nicholas had been in love—that Nicholas had hidden the truth from him even after William’s death, and that William had never trusted him with the deepest parts of himself—hurt.
But more than that, there was anger.
If Nicholas, after all this, was responsible for William’s death, Adam did not know how he would contain himself. This was the worst of all infractions, the deepest kind of betrayal.
He would not let it stand.
Beside him, Emmeline rested her head on his shoulder. “Peace,” she murmured. “We will find him tomorrow and learn all there is to know.”
Tomorrow was not soon enough. As his ancestral home came into view, a mere silhouette in the darkness, he vowed that he would stop at nothing to bring justice to his brother, even if it was too late to bring him back to life.
Rage was a hot, tight ball in his chest as he jumped out of the carriage and strode to the front door, his wife by his side, silent as though she knew that now was the time for silence.
Later, they would talk, and she would let him speak. She would listen, and she would soothe his anger with her gentle words, and he would find some measure of equilibrium.
But for now, the last thing he wanted was soothing.
“Tomorrow, I shall go to London,” he told her as he hurried up the stairwell. She followed him. “And I will discover the truth once and for all.”
As he reached the landing, however, he discovered that there was no need to wait. For there, standing as though caught like a rabbit in front of the fire, was Nicholas.
Adam was not accustomed to his friend looking so discomfited and out of his depth. Evidently, he was not expecting either of them to have arrived so suddenly, and faced with them, he looked unusually pale. A little disoriented, as though finding them in their house was the stranger of the two scenarios.
