“You are home early, madam.”
“I was forced to depart Lady Walcott’s soiree early after hearing the most alarming gossip,” she said, walking into the room.
Hell. She’d not received his note. “There is no doubt you are eager to tell me, and I, of course, must listen.”
She glared at him. “The ballroom was rife with talk that you visited Wiltshire and married your mistress,” his mother said with cool aplomb.
“You can rest assured that is a rumor.”
She wilted with visible relief.
“I did not marry my mistress. In fact, I’ve never had a mistress.”
Her spine snapped straight. “But you did marry?”
Her shocked tone settled into the room, and the alarm in it actually caused him to smile.
“You are smiling,” she said faintly, walking to sit on the sofa facing him. “I am not sure if that portends good fortune or something ominous.” Yet she looked hopeful and it twisted his heart to see it.
“I did marry Miss Adeline, Sir Archibald Hayes’s daughter. They are from Somerset.”
At first joy cascaded over his mother’s face, but it was quickly replaced by a frown. “Sir Archibald…Sir Archibald,” she muttered. “I do not believe I am familiar with the Hayes from Somerset.”
“I would think not, they do not move in your elevated circles.”
“Then the girl is without connections?”
He merely grunted.
“What happened to the list I created? Those young ladies were highly agreeable in wealth and connections. I cannot fathom why you would not have made any one of them your duchess, but this unknown…miss.”
He drummed his fingers on the desk. “The situation was of such, it was best I married Adeline with haste.”
“Good heavens.” Lady Harriet’s hand fluttered to her throat. “So the ghastly rumor of a compromising situation has merit? I never thought you had it in you, Edmond, after…” she glanced away into the fireplace.
After Maryann.
It was curious that the bracing pain he would normally feel when his mother had slipped and mentioned his departed wife was absent. “You can say her name, Mother.”
She gasped, and he understood. He’d not allowed any discourse in relation to Maryann since her funeral.
“Tell me about this young miss,” she finally said with a birdlike look of enquiry.
He surged to his feet and walked to the windows, tugging the curtains open, they overlooked the lake. The moonlight was reflected on the water in the ripples of a light breeze. The lights that remained still burning in the house sparkled in the surface of the water as an occasional trout surfaced to eat some nocturnal insect. “There is not much to tell. We just met.”
“Then at least tell me how you came to be married.”
“I visited Lord Gladstone to complete settlement negotiations for Lady Evelyn. She was averse to marrying me and arranged for her friend to enter my room.”
“And this Miss Adeline went along with such an outrageous plan?”
Sudden amusement curled through him at their antics. “Adeline thought she was climbing into another man’s bed.”
“Good Heavens,” his mother said faintly. “I cannot credit such assertions. And you took her, to be your wife?”
“She would have been ruined otherwise, and I was in need of a wife,” he said blandly.
His mother was silent for the longest time, and he was content to simply stand with his hands on the window frame, watching the glow of the moonlight shimmering over the lake and listening to the crackling in the fireplace. It was startling to realize he now felt calmness inside…one that had been missing for months.