Page 50 of The Duke's Hidden Scandal
She took a seat as he did the same, heavy circles below his eyes and a paleness to his skin that was rather alarming.
“I wanted to find out if you were well. I have read the scandal sheets this morning. It is more than any man can bear.”
Colin shook his head. “I did not expect things to escalate so quickly. I only heard talk of it last night, and suddenly it seems to be everywhere.”
Elizabeth hesitated, loathe to add to his burdens but desperate to know what happened. “Is any of it true?”
She held her breath as Colin sighed. “All of it is true, Lizzie, I am sorry to say. Not quite the slander they are printing about him openly lying to his investors, but my father was in a sorry state when he died. I did not discover the truth until some time after his death. The funeral, and all the arrangements for the entail took months to organise. It has taken me the best part of a year to get to where I am, and I am still uncertain where the truth lies.”
“And what have you discovered?”
“That my father was in debt. A lot of debt. I have managed as much as I can, and we are not going to be turned out on the street just yet, but I cannot account for many losses or where the money has gone. That is what I am trying to investigate.”
“I see, and do you have your suspicions?”
“I certainly suspect foul play. I cannot imagine my father would suddenly have become so illiterate in business when he had spent years managing the estate without issue. I thinksomeone influenced him, got to him somehow, and filled his mind with grandiose schemes that turned to dust.”
“And you do not know who it was?”
“I do not.”
Elizabeth frowned, looking about her at the papers on the floor. “And where does this leaveyou?”
Colin looked up. “What do you mean?”
Elizabeth hesitated, she knew what she had seen the night before. She could not remain silent.
“With Lady Wentworth,” she said softly.
Colin sprang to his feet at those words and began to pace. Elizabeth sat still, watching the colour return to his face. The line of his steps was a well-trodden path. He must have been pacing half the night.
“There is nothing between Lady Wentworth and myself,” Colin insisted.
“Colin, you are a terrible liar.” He stopped, turning to her in astonishment as Elizabeth looked back at him defiantly. “I saw you last night, and at the bookshop, and Gunter’s and all of the times in between. She cares for you, and you care for her, as plain as day.”
Colin’s mouth opened and closed several times before his shoulders slumped, and he ran his hands through his hair.
“It can come to nothing.”
“Why, because a few rag sheets tell tales about your father?Speakto Lady Wentworth, Colin. You know she is as good as promised to Lord Kilby, and you will lose her forever. I was going to stay silent, but I could not. Not when the chance of happiness is so close.”
Colin took his seat again, a dejected, drawn expression on his face. Elizabeth’s heart went out to him, desperate to shake him and make him see things more clearly.
“Do you really think she cares for me?” he asked, his voice laced with hope.
“Do you honestly doubt it? She is the sweetest woman alive, and she seeks you out at any event. You speak together most animatedly, and she makes you laugh. I have not seen you laugh in an age. Tell her what has occurred; at the very least, she deserves to know the truth.”
“You are right, as ever,” he said softly. “I must find an answer, and then I will speak to her. I cannot expect her to understand when I still do not understand myself.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Charlotte wondered among the rose beds, feeling a sense of melancholy she could not shake.
She had slept fitfully, the faces of Kilby and the duke swirling through her mind for hours until she could not tell the difference between either man. She had woken several times, climbing from her bed and searching beneath the floorboards for her mother’s journal. Reading it was becoming an obsession; she suspected she would be able to recite some of the passages by heart.
She clutched it to her chest even now, as she walked through the dewy grass. The streets of London were loud and jarring in her ears as she tried to find the peace she had taken for granted in the hills of their country estate.
The high walls at the garden's edge were covered in creeping ivy, and as she wandered slowly between the bushes, she found her gaze drawn to a stone bench partially obscured behind a statue.
