Page 37 of A Duke in Disguise
“My lady. Aunt.” He laid his hand on her sleeve. “Visit your solicitor. I beg of you.”
Verity watched as the two of them stared at one another. Ash’s jaw clenched and his aunt looked up at him in confusion. “But, the terms of our arrangement,” Lady Caroline said incomprehensibly. “Your month is not up.”
“This has to be stopped, and now. Send me the time and direction and I’ll go with you to the solicitor.” He looked miserable. Verity did not know what they were talking about, but it certainly wasn’t a mere visit to a family solicitor. Something was happening that was beyond her comprehension, something that made Ash look more morose than she had ever seen him. He must have sensed her gaze on him, because he met her eyes and frowned. “I wish it could be otherwise,” he said, and she didn’t know whether he was speaking to her or to himself.
Lady Caroline left, and Verity and Ash stood two paces apart on the shop floor, he regarding her with a look so bleak that she knew they were both about to get their hearts broken.
“I’ve been lying to you,” Ash said. He ought to have rehearsed what he’d say to Verity, how he’d explain both the truth and why he waited to tell her. But every time the thought bubbled to the surface of his mind, he refused to think about it. He thought he’d have more time, even as he knew that no amount of time in the world would have made this easier.
“Ash,” she said gently. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
He wished she wouldn’t be gentle. She was going to be furious with him and he didn’t think he could stand to see her affection transform into anger right before his eyes. “I told you that Lady Caroline believed me to be her brother’s son. That much is true. But my parents were married at the time of my birth. And my father was the Duke of Arundel’s oldest son.”
She went absolutely still before his eyes. He wasn’t even certain she was breathing; she certainly wasn’t blinking. “Does she have evidence?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“This is what you were talking about when you said your uncle had to be stopped. You weren’t talking about murdering him, but disinheriting him.”
“My aunt believes any future wife of his will be in danger. I’m more worried that he’ll murder my aunt.” Verity stared at him. “I know she’s almost a stranger, but I’ve grown fond of her. I don’t know if it’s because of some inherited sympathy for one another, but for whatever reason I can’t stand to let this man harm her.”
“You don’t need to explain to me why you don’t want to stand idly by while innocent women are killed,” Verity said slowly. “I think I know you well enough to understand that.”
“But you see what this will mean for me,” he said. “For us.”
She hadn’t. He could see the dismay fall across her face like a veil as she understood. “Quite,” she said at length. “How long have you known, Ash?”
“I only found out a week ago.”
“The day you kissed me,” she said wistfully. “That was the first thing you did after finding out, Ash?”
“Being with you was the one thing I wanted, the one thing I wouldn’t be able to do... after.”
“Bollocks, you couldn’t.” There it was, that flash of anger he had been waiting for. “Utter bollocks.”
“I know I ought to have said something, but I wanted this month so damned badly and I thought you did too. I thought...” He had harbored the shadow of a hope that somehow none of it would matter to her, that they would find a way. But that hope had started out flimsy and feeble, nothing he could really convince himself of. Now, standing in front of her, truth out in the open, he knew it for the lie it had always been.
“You think I wouldn’t have wanted to be with you if I knew the truth?” Her fists were balled at her sides.
Oh God, she was going to make him spell it out. “There’s no future between us. You wouldn’t marry anyone, let alone a duke. Don’t even pretend to tell me you’d consent to that.”
“Of course I wouldn’t. But there’s a middle ground between marriage and just fucking off out of my life forever, Ash. Christ, give me a little bit of credit, will you?”
“What would that middle ground look like? I visit you here, on my way to my seat in the House of Lords? Everyone you know refers to you as the Duke of Arundel’s mistress? You fall pregnant and I—no, Verity. No, there isn’t a middle ground.”
“There’s friendship, Ash. There’s everything we’ve been to one another for more than ten years. If you think I’d throw that away and disclaim you just because your parents happened to be married and one of them titled, then you don’t know me at all.”
“A pox on friendship. I’m in love with you, you stubborn ass, and I don’t know how to undo that!”
“Nobody is asking you to, you thick-headed idiot!”
It was entirely plain that she was not hearing him. “I ought to go before we have a row.”
She threw her hands up in a gesture of frustration that he had seen her use dozens of times when exasperated during a quarrel with Nate. “Bit late for that! By all means go. You were planning on leaving for good, after all.” She shook her head and went upstairs, and he resisted the urge to go after her, to try and make things right. This couldn’t be made right.
An hour later he stood at the front door of Arundel House.
Chapter Fourteen
