Page 41 of A Baron's Scandalous Quill
She smiled, amazed at how much they seemed to like the same things. As she reached into the coffer, she found something that didn’t seem to belong with the rest of the papers that had been filed neatly. In a corner of the coffer, bound together with a ribbon, were some letters. She reached for the bundle and lifted the neatly folded letters out of the coffer.
“What’s that?” he asked her.
“I’m not sure.” She untied the ribbon and opened the first letter from the bundle.
“Who’s it from?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at who it was addressed to and who it was from. “There are no names. It’s simply signed from ‘Your Love,’ and it’s addressed to ‘My Dearest Love.’”
“Love?” William frowned.
“You do not know love, my lord?” she teased him with a giggle.
“Any other time, I would laugh, Becca, but the idea that my mother and father addressed one another as such is laughable.” He stood from his seat and moved to stand beside her, peering over her shoulder at the letters. “My mother once said that getting the word ‘love’ out of my father was harder than blood out of a stone. Even in their courtship days, when he had charmed her, she described it as something other than love. He never quite told her that.”
“Oh. How sad.” Becca gulped, her eyes darting over the letter. “My goodness, Will. It is a whole love letter. Read it in detail, look.” She passed it into his grasp. “The two people exchanging these letters loved one another dearly indeed.”
He took the letter from her, narrowing his eyes as he read the words, speaking some of them aloud as he did so.
“My Dearest, to know we have been parted from one another for so long hurts more than I can say. I wish you to know thatif I had discovered another way, any other way to be together, I would have made it happen. Alas, life had not afforded us the opportunity.
One bad chance has followed another, and it seems I am condemned to love you from afar. If only the Lord above had been kinder to us, that we might have spent our lives together after all, as we had once pledged to do.”
“Pledged…” Becca repeated the word, struck by its meaning.
Whoever the two people were in these letters, there had been deep love and promises, perhaps vows were even exchanged.
“God’s wounds.” William stepped away from her, and she followed him, concerned for him, before he fell into the nearest chair. His body was weak as if it had been depleted by what he read, yet he still held the letter up close to his eyes, re-reading it with his gaze darting frantically across the page as if he could not believe the proof before him. “Is it possible?” he whispered. “My father had an affair?”
Chapter 15
“I have been thinking about this all night.”
William took Becca’s bonnet from her as she burst back through his door. He loved the way she had started talking, as if they had not said goodbye and spent the night apart.
“You have?” he asked, his fingers stealing a touch and running down her arms as he removed her spencer jacket for her.
“Oh.” She shivered pleasantly, smiling at him sweetly as he placed the jacket and bonnet on the coat stand.
“These letters.” She took his hand with ease, and he led her toward the drawing room where Henry and a maid had set up tea for them. When they entered the room, they both dropped their hands, trying not to be seen by the two staff members.
“All is set, my lord.” Henry looked one last time at William and winked before he urged the maid out of the room.
What did that mean?
William’s eyes followed his butler as he moved to the door.
“Oh, the staff will be cleaning the staff quarters thoroughly today as we are getting near spring, and it is in much need of airing out. If you need anything, ring the bell for us, my lord.”
“Thank you, Henry.”
Wait, is he telling me there will be no one in the main body of the house?
William didn’t get a chance to find out, though, for Henry and the maid were gone within seconds, leaving him and Becca quite alone.
“The letters,” William said as he reached for the table and sat down. He poured out the tea as Becca served him cake first. They started working naturally around one another now. She knew what size of cake he liked, and he knew just how she took her tea, with the smallest drop of milk and no sugar.
“Yes,” she said with eagerness. “There is nothing in those letters to suggest your father was having an affair. They speak of love, but it’s possible they never acted on it.”
