Page 9 of A Bride By Morning
Caroline made a noise as she refilled their tea. “I think you’re avoiding my question.”
“I’m not,” Lydia insisted.
“There. See?” Caroline motioned with a hand at Lydia’s face. “You get skittish in the face when you’re lying.”
“And you get smug when you’re right.”
Caroline smiled. “That’s because I’malwaysright. Come now, I hardly have the opportunity to worry over anyone these days.”
A sliver of guilt pierced through Lydia when she realized that she found Caroline’s home so quiet because it had a sole occupant. Other than the servants, the duchess lived alone. She and the Duke of Hastings had been separated for eight long years.
“I can’t tell if this is concern or a threat,” Lydia said, taking the teacup and saucer from Caroline.
“Oh, it’s both. I require an explanation, preferably at length and in great detail.AndI can hold all puddings and further tea hostage until you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Imagine what people would say if I told them you had a cruel streak.”
“No one would ever believe you.” Caroline grinned and gracefully smoothed a hand down her day dress. “Now, tell me what’s really wrong and I’ll reconsider the pudding.”
Lydia stared out the window of the sitting room, her notice falling on the rooftop of Gabriel’s residence. Strange, how he could be so close and yet so far away. His house on the opposite end of the square might as well have been in Kabul.
Lydia released a slow breath. “What do you know about Lord Montgomery’s time in the diplomatic service?” she asked.
Caroline seemed surprised by the question. She set down her teacup and considered thoughtfully. “Very little, I’m afraid. We weren’t particularly close cousins before he left, and he’s remained stubbornly silent about the experience since his retirement.” She cleared her throat delicately. “But weren’t you . . . friends in childhood? Of a sort?”
While Lydia had told Caroline of her previous friendship with Gabriel, the duchess didn’t know how close they were. Lydia kept that past to herself, and Lady Derby, likewise, never divulged the extent of her niece’s relationship with the new Lord Montgomery. That knowledge would have harmed her reputation, implied she was ruined. She did not have the social standing to weather such gossip when all of society so adored Gabriel.
“We were more than friends,” Lydia revealed quietly. “Or we could have been, had he not left.”
Caroline’s features softened. “Oh, Lydia.”
Lydia blinked back the sting of tears, willing them away. She wouldn’t let them fall; she’d already wasted too many hours crying over him. “He asked me to wait for his return,” she continued, her voice flat now. “So he could court me. But then he left, and . . .” Became unrecognizable. Became the sort of man who sifted through someone else’s documents and wrote notes in code.
Lydia’s mind kept repeating a word, a single syllable that reframed the years he spent abroad. That word left Lydia as unbalanced as standing on the edge of a precipice. She rejected that answer every time, but the word refused to dislodge from her thoughts.
She dismissed the notion again, firmly blanking her mind once more.
“I see,” Caroline said gently.
Lydia’s hands tightened around her teacup. Yes, Lydia imagined the duchess did see. They became friends after Lady Derby decided to give a monthly stipend to one of Caroline’s charities; Lydia had recognized a yearning in the duchess that matched her own. A mirrored grief for someone not dead but lost all the same. Everyone knew the Duke and Duchess of Hastings maintained a cordial relationship—neither said a bad word about the other in public, and their separation amounted to little more than the usual aristocratic marriage defined by distance more than any genuine ardor.
But Lydia knew it was more than that. She knew that Caroline loved her husband and that what had happened between them remained as much a painful memory as the day Gabriel spoke those three words to Lydia and then left into the world.
Wait for me.
Lydia straightened her shoulders and stared down at her tea. “I know that Lord Montgomery went first to Vienna to work in the embassy there. Then he later went to Paris and Zürich. After that, his superiors asked him to depart for Kabul.” She pressed her lips together. “In Kabul, he stopped responding to my letters, and I don’t know where he went after that.”
Caroline winced in sympathy. “He was abroad for seven years.” She sighed. “Priorities change.”
“I suppose they do.” Lydia lifted her shoulder. “Perhaps that’s why he returned and acted as if I was a stranger. I was no longer a priority.”
“That’s not what I meant.” The duchess clasped her hands with a pensive look. “Have you considered the possibility that you’re not the one who’s the stranger?” Caroline asked, very gently. “He is.”
Lydia imagined Gabriel the previous night at Lord Coningsby’s ball before their confrontation in the study. He had been dancing with Miss Alice Howard, his dashing smile drawing Lydia’s attention. She had come to memorize the skill of that carefree smile, how it set everyone around him at ease.
But he did not hold that smile for Lydia. It faded as quickly as a snuffed candle flame to reveal the unrecognizable man beneath. Lydia wondered if he resented her for it—that she alone could take one look at him and declare him a fraud.
The single-syllable word rolled around in her mind again like a rock caught against a current, the sharp edges sanding down, changing form. The shape of him had not fit in her mind for the last ten years, but this was an answer to the questions she sought. This was an explanation.
