Page 7 of Duke with a Deception
She was thrilled.
Overjoyed.
She didn’t recall a time in her life when she had been happier. It was as if she had waited an eternity for the moment she would become King’s wife. Everything she had ever wanted was finally, at long last, within her grasp.
Everett turned to her, his countenance as serious as his voice. “And you seem to be bubbling over with excitement, rather like a kettle set to boil.”
“That is because I am.” She grinned and took up the whisky tumbler he had left for her in the customary place. “I am going to be married in the morning.”
“To Kingham.”
Her brother said the name with distaste.
“You like King,” she reminded him, disliking the discord that seemed to have arisen between Riverdale and her betrothed.
“Ilikedhim,” Everett corrected succinctly before taking a hearty drink from his tumbler.
“I note your use of the past tense,” she pointed out, raising a brow. “It’s badly done of you.”
“It’s badly done of Kingham to run away with my sister,” Everett grumbled, every bit as grim.
“We are hardly running away.” She took her own small sip of the whisky, savoring the burn. “We are marrying before half of London tomorrow, if the flurry of invitationsMamanextended is any indication.”
“I don’t want you to marry him,” Everett said with a sigh.
Verity issued an answering sigh of her own, for they had engaged in this argument before on many occasions. “He is your friend.”
“He was my friend—he is no longer. And you are my sister.”
“I love him, Everett.”
“What of Lord Leopold?” he asked quietly.
Verity furrowed her brow, struggling as she always did whenever her brother mentioned the supposed former suitor of her past, a man whose name left her mind curiously blank, a man she couldn’t seem to remember, no matter how hard she tried. “We have discussed this before. I cannot recall him. All I remember of him is what you have told me. I can only suppose that my feelings for him pale in comparison to what I feel for King.”
Her brother clenched his jaw, remaining silent for a few moments as he took in her words, disappointment etched on his countenance. “Are you certain you remember nothing of him? Try, Verity. Try now, before it is too late.”
She shook her head at Everett’s urgency. “I have already done so. There is simply nothing. Ever since I suffered the blow to my head in the fire, parts of my mind have become a blank sheet of paper, waiting to be rewritten. I assume Lord Leopold was once among the missing pages.”
“He was an important part of your life for many years. It is difficult for me to accept that you cannot dredge even the smallest speck of memory from the ether.”
Sadness swept over her. “No one is more frustrated than I am that some parts of my past are shrouded in mystery. But I cannot change what has already happened. All I can do is live for the present and the future. That is why I am so eager to marry Kingham tomorrow. It shall be like beginning anew, in a sense.”
Although she had no memory of what had happened in the fire, it had made its mark upon her, nonetheless. Not just in the scars on her body—the burns on her forearms and wrists, the scar at her hairline, the singed locks that had begun to grow again—but in the nightmares she suffered. It would do her constitution immeasurable good, she did not doubt, to start hernew life with King. She was also bringing young Emma, a girl from the Children’s Foundling Hospital, along with her to her new household. In a way, it would be like starting a family.
Not that she had persuaded King that Emma was meant to be their daughter.
Yet.
King, it seemed, harbored a healthy dislike of children, which made little sense, given his generosity to the orphanage. He claimed he preferred children to remain in households other than his own, but he had been willing to make an exception for Emma out of deference to Verity. Verity was certain that she and Emma could change his opinion, given time and opportunity. After all, there was a reason she loved him.
Many reasons.
“I am not as confident as you are that beginning anew with Kingham is the right decision for you,” her brother said, intruding upon her thoughts.
Verity sipped at her whisky to keep the churlish response forming to herself. She had no wish to quarrel with her brother on the day before her wedding. Or ever, in truth. She and Everett were very close. They always had been. Their fond relationship had not been lost to the abyss, unlike some of her other memories, thank heavens.
“You did not seek my counsel at all before you married Sybil,” Verity pointed out instead, for her brother’s secrecy concerning his marriage to her sister-in-law was still something of a source of irritation for her.
