Page 24 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
Was she jealous?
That was an odd thing to be happy with, though he confessed he was.
Lord, but she was beautiful in a temper.
“I see you have company,” Sybille murmured before they could come close enough to force introductions. “I really do need to get home, Corin. Perhaps I might call on you again soon, with an aim other than the one today.” She shot him a small smile before pulling her hand from under his and heading off to her carriage, leaving Corin to face an irate-looking Imelda who had marched up.
Without her brother, as it so turned out.
“Am I to assume that you’ve come to discuss my proposition?” Corin asked flippantly as he turned to walk up the steps, knowing full well Imelda was storming after him.
He almost laughed at the way she spluttered behind him as he opened the door.
“You didn’t have to send your wife away to hear that news!” Imelda snapped, stomping past him into the foyer and delighting him by the way she continued right on into his study despite only having been there once before.
Like she owned the place.
Now, that was a dangerous thought.
He snorted as he followed her, closing the one door but opting to leave his study door open for propriety. And his own peace of mind.
“My sister-in-law you mean?” he asked, strangely pleased by the fact that she clearly didn’t have as much information on him as he did her.
Imelda stopped short, spinning back to face him with a confused look.
“Lady Sybille Langford is my sister-in-law, my brother Romeo’s wife,” Corin explained, copying his move from before to pass her and head right to the drink cart. This time he pulled two glasses and wine instead of brandy though, pouring both carefully with a mind to the hour of the day. “My late wife’s name was Alice. And she passed a year and a half ago.”
The latter half was said frankly, though it still left a foul taste in his mouth to say it at all.
Imelda looked stricken, her lips parted into a soft ‘o’.
“I didn’t know your wife had died,” she said softly, reaching out for her glass and looking at Corin in a way that immediately made him feel like a charlatan.
For two years he had kept his silence on the truth of Alice. Outside of their very immediate families no one had known. They’d been quick to pay off those who had information concerning Alice and Romeo’s affair, quick to get it under wraps before it got out among the wholeton.
But Imelda made Corin feel rough around the edges. She made him feel bold. She made himfeel.
“Alice was Romeo’s mistress,” Corin said bluntly, making sure to only take a small swallow of his wine as he faced Imelda more fully. He didn’t shy away from her surprised expression. They were the words he’d wished to say to her two years before when that door had been closed in his face. “My brother had been married to Sybille already, and news had gotten out among a few who had caught them at a country party in the gardens with one another. It was why I was called home from Florence.”
The news that had ended their two weeks of bliss, though he hadn’t known the actual emergency until he’d gotten home fully himself.
Imelda staggered back a step, looking around before delicately perching on the edge of the chair she had bumped into.
“Your brother’s…”
“Mistress,” Corin repeated solemnly. “I married her to save them both from ruin. She and I were friends, before and after Romeo. I suppose I was the one who introduced them originally.” And the one to blame for said affair, if one were to look at it like that. “We remained friends until her death as well. She was a good woman. But she was my friend.”
Not his lover, not his wife, the words were imbedded into those he actually spoke aloud. He didn’t bother to hide them. Imelda could hate him as much as she wanted, but he couldn’t bear to have her hate a woman who had deserved none of her ire. Especially not with the hand Alice had ended up being dealt.
“But you—” Imelda cut off, looking flabbergasted as she all but downed her wine in one gulp. “You were married only for…what? Six months?”
“A marriage I could technically annul.” If he were going to confess things, he might as well confess the whole part and parcel. Their marriage had been a sham in every way but on paper. “Alice and I lived together as roommates, in separate rooms, and she died almost exactly six months to the day after our wedding. Of consumption.” How the physicians had missed it for as long as they had he didn’t know. Finding out that she had it had been a shock to them all. Finding out that she wasdyingof it had been an even greater one.
Corin tossed the rest of his wine back and set the glass down on his desk with a heavy hand. “I would like to set things right, Imelda. I would like to help you as I have offered. But I won’t do so through lies or with any of that bad blood between us. I meant everything that I said. And I am terribly, terribly sorry for everything that I put you through.”
But he couldn’t, no matter how much he wanted, regret his decisions. He had done his duty. He always had.
Imelda broke eye contact, staring down at the glass in her hands as she seemed to consider his words.
