Page 16 of His Forgotten Bride
My Lord,
I beg you will forgive the tardiness of this missive. I have spent the past several weeks in search of your lady, without much success until I received your note.
I did find, as you suggested, carved into the willow tree on your ancestral estate, your initials, alongside the initials C H.
Armed with this information, I resumed my search. Though I found many families whose surnames matched with the latter initial, until I reached Wensley Hollow I found none with daughters whose given names began with C who were also of the correct age to fit within your timeline of events.
In Wensley Hollow, however, I discovered the Harris family. It is just the widow left living now, but she did once have a daughter, called Catherine. Though the widow Harris is now suffering an ailment that leaves her a bit vague of her thoughts, village gossip is that several years ago (no one seems clear on exactly how many years ago this was), Catherine found herself with child and without a husband to show for her situation.
She never named the father of her child publicly, and though I could find no one who specifically recalls the two of you together, I feel that the chances are indeed high that she was the woman you sought.
I regret to inform you that she passed some years ago in childbed, and the baby with her. I realize this is likely not the answer you sought, but it is the only one I have to give you.
A marriage, if one ever existed—and I could find no evidence of it—will therefore not present a problem to you, should you seek out a new bride.
I hope, however, that this knowledge gives you some measure of peace.
Sincerely,
John Bascomb
Gabriel fought against the nausea that roiled in his gut and climbed into his throat. It was worse than he’d thought. A hundred thousand times worse. A million. In all his imaginings, this had been the one that he’d never let himself think—that his mysterious shadow girl had died. And she’d died alone and in agony bearing the child he’d given her, thinking he had abandoned her.
His heart gave a vicious beat in his chest for the woman he’d left behind, for the child he’d lost years ago and had never had the opportunity to mourn. Years they’d been gone and he hadn’t known it. Years he’d stewed in his own unhappiness, thinking he’d experienced the worst pain imaginable, that no one could possibly have suffered as much as he.
What a fool he had been. What a self-righteous, sanctimonious fool. There wasalwaysa worse pain.
His ill-timed accident had forced Catherine into a terrible situation. Perhaps, if he had come out the other side of his accident with memory intact, she would even now be at his side, safe and secure in his home, their child at his or her lessons in the nursery. Perhaps her life could have been saved. Perhaps they’d have had several more children. Instead she had died alone and in shame, even as he had been convalescing in his father’s manor house, recovering from the accident that had taken from him everything of value.
Between himself and his father, they had all but sentenced the poor woman to an ignominious death.
His arms curled in, trying to recapture the feel of her from his dream, to retain some small bit of the woman whose life he had destroyed, the woman who now lived only in his piecemeal memories. She had doubtless deserved more than to be a shade, a shadow, remembered to him only in fragments of thought, in a few shreds of sound and a nameless longing that occasionally pierced his heart.
And now there could never be more of her. Just like her memory, she was ephemeral—she had slipped away from the world and from him, and he would never hold her, never hear the enchanting melody of her voice, never wind her hair around his fingers or kiss her or—
The nausea won out. He propelled himself across the room and slammed his shoulder into the window, and it popped free of its frame and crashed to the ground. He leaned out of it and expelled the contents of his stomach in a painful rush, and suddenly the air stank of half-digested whisky on roses. He retched long after his stomach was empty and at last, when the brutal spasms passed, he sank back into the room and reached for the whisky decanter. First he swished the liquor around his mouth to exorcise the foul taste, and then he set straight back into drinking with the intent of doing it all over again.
Until he stopped hurting.
Until he could feel nothing once more.
Until he could forget that which he’d striven for so long to remember.
∞∞∞
Claire returned long after dark had fallen, and Mr. Bradshaw met her in the foyer, lines of worry bracketing his mouth. Soundlessly he took her coat and bonnet, but his eyes kept drifting to the hallway.
“Has something happened?” Claire inquired. “Monsieur Bissonet—”
Mr. Bradshaw shook his head. “No,” he said. “Nothing so simple as that.” He hesitated, the tense lines of his face betraying his concern. “His lordship’s been in the library all day, just pacing and drinking,” he said at last. “I sent Sukey in to call him to dinner while you were out, and he tossed a book at her. I’ve seen him in states before, but nothing like this.Neverlike this.”
An eerie prickle of unease skittered up Claire’s spine. If the staff had seen Gabriel through migraines and collapses andepisodesbefore now, and yet Mr. Bradshaw was concerned about thisparticularstate, then it must be severe indeed.
“I’ll handle it,” she said. She’d managed a high-spirited chef; she could manage a drunken marquess. How difficult could it possibly be to handle a gentleman so deep in his cups?
“Are you certain?” Mr. Bradshaw asked. “I mean to say, I don’t doubt your capabilities,” he added, “but I’ve never seen his lordship quite so…volatile.”
“Quite certain,” Claire replied, though of course she was not. But confidence, or at least the illusion thereof, had put her in good stead numerous times before, and she had been rather adept at managing Gabriel in his younger days. The trick was, she supposed, to never let the manknowhe was being managed.
