Page 66 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
Imelda’s eyes swam with tears for the third time that night and it took a Herculean force for Corin to turn away from her, forcing his hands down into his pockets so he didn’t turn and take her back up in his arms.
He would be back for her. Just like he promised.
***
The thought of going back for Imelda was all that kept Corin going. Through the night, and the drab supper he took on his own, his thoughts an array of blood, lust, and anxiety. Through the sleepless hours, he tossed and turned.
Even when his butler arrived with a letter for Romeo that read only:
St. James Park. At nightfall.
Imelda was what he clung to. The thought of her and the life that he wanted to build with her should they make it through long enough to even embark upon it.
Chapter 23
The carriage was abnormally quiet as the sun began its nocturnal climb down from the heavens and toward the horizon outside of the windows.
Spencer was escorting Charlotte to a play along with her mother, having departed earlier from the house that evening with flowers for the both of them. Imelda’s father had opted to go in early with her Uncle John, the two arguing amiably about theatre and the need for it as they had rushed out of the house. That left only Imelda and her Aunt Cassandra to find their own way to Drury Lane.
A fact that Imelda had been glad of, at first.
Aunt Cassandra was far more prone to allow Imelda to sit with her thoughts than anyone else would have been, her gentle chatter only filling the carriage occasionally as they rode across town.
Imelda was too busy worrying about Corin to be very entertaining company.
He’d promised her he’d be back, but he couldn’t keep it. Not really. Not if he was going to be his brother’s second in a duel. What would happen if his brother didn’t show up? Or if some other horrible occurrence happened? It would mean more than just Corinattendingthe whole affair.
And he hadn’t told her when it was to be set. For all she knew, he could be lying dead on a street somewhere, the news of his passing not yet circulating in London.
The thought was damning.
It made her want to throw her hands up and run back to her aunt’s house to change dresses so that she could scour the city for him.
But the question he had kept repeating loomed ever larger in her mind.
Did she trust him?
Of course, she did. Damn him. That was why she had kept the ring he had given her, staring at it long after she should have been asleep and realizing what he had meant by it.
He meant to ask for her hand. Sure. That was one intention, the most obvious one. And she couldn’t even say she had wrapped her head around that one. But why give it to her before he went to this duel?
Because Joanne had seen them. She had walked in on them in the most compromising position possible. And if Corin died and such a thing got out, there would be no salvaging her reputation. Not unless she spun some very good story about the two of them already being engaged and how what Joanne had seen was only just Corin proposing to her.
It would have been a hard story to sell.
If Corin hadn’t given her the ring.
Imelda sighed, looking out of the window and turning the ring around again and again inside the confines of her purse as she considered it all. She didn’t even realize that she had shifted, her purse falling on her lap to reveal the object she’d been twirling until her aunt gasped.
Drat it all.
Imelda looked up just in time to see her aunt’s eyebrows climb her forehead, her wince large enough to put any question of guilt to rest as her Aunt Cassandra looked up to meet her gaze in obvious question.
“Are you going to make me ask?” Aunt Cassandra demanded, her voice slightly raised.
Imelda ducked her head, looking down at the elegant ring in her hand. Was she? No. That wasn’t her intention, but the words felt trapped as she tried to think how to begin to even broach the subject of Corin. There was so much hidden history there.
“Did Theodore propose!?” Aunt Cassandra asked in even higher of a pitch. “Your father had said that we needed to stop pursuing the match there, that you weren’t nearly as interested as we had assumed and that there might be someone else, but if he proposed!”
