Page 94 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

She drew a breath, and her lungs filled completely for the first time in weeks.

CHAPTER 30

The news reached Oliver before breakfast.

He was standing at the study window, watching rain flatten the last of the roses in the Grosvenor Square garden, when Phelps appeared in the doorway carrying the morning post on a silver tray and an expression he was trying very hard to govern.

“The letters, Your Grace.”

“Thank you, Phelps.”

Phelps did not leave. He set the tray on the desk and adjusted the position of the inkwell and straightened a pen that was already straight. Oliver turned from the window.

“Is there anything else?”

“I would not presume to mention it, sir.”

Oliver shook his head slightly. “You are mentioning it by not mentioning it. Out with it.”

Phelps drew a measured breath. “Cook heard from the grocer this morning, sir, that Mr. Frederick Langley’s engagement to Miss Fairchild has been dissolved. The grocer heard it from Lady Caldwell’s housekeeper, who heard it from Mrs. Fenton’s maid.” He aligned the pen tray a fraction to the left. “I understand the news has been widely circulated.”

Oliver’s hand stilled on the curtain.

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon, sir.”

Oliver released the curtain. The fabric swung back across the glass and cut the grey morning light in half. He crossed to the desk, picked up the post, set it down without reading a single envelope.

“That will be all, Phelps.”

“Very good, sir.”

Phelps retreated. The door clicked shut. Oliver stood at the desk and pressed his knuckles against the leather blotter until the ridges of his bones went white.

Frederick had ended the engagement.

He inhaled quickly. There was only one explanation. Frederick had seen what half of London had whispered about since the Bancroft ball, since the coat, since the dances and the waltzes and the corridor at Lady Hathaway’s. He had looked at the woman he intended to marry and believed that her affections had been claimed elsewhere, and he had done the decent, painful, inevitable thing.

Oliver sank into the desk chair. The leather protested beneath him. Above the mantelpiece, the clock measured the silence in its steady, indifferent strokes, and he listened to it the way he had listened to clocks in this house since childhood, counting the seconds between one disaster and the next.

She would blame him. She had every right. He had convinced the entire Ton that he was courting her. Of course Frederick would believe it was true—that was what they had bargained on. He never thought beyond Frederick noticing her. Never thought that the man would not want to be second to another. Then he had walked away, leaving her behind.

He should write to her. He owed her that much. An apology, though the word felt thin against the weight of what he had done. He pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer and uncapped the ink.

Dear Miss Fairchild,

The pen hovered. The ink dried on the nib. Every sentence he composed after those two words collapsed. What could he write that would not sound like a man trying to ease his own conscience? What apology could survive the distance between his desk and her parlor, where she sat right now, bearing the consequences of his failures alone?

He capped the ink. He folded the blank paper in half and slid it beneath the blotter.

“Phelps.”

The door opened within seconds, and Phelps appeared.

“Sir?”

“Have Hargreaves prepare the travelling carriage. I will leave for Ashford Hall in the morning.”