Georgiana turned to look at the Duke of Hellsmere, easily noting the humorous upturn of his chiseled lips as he gazed upon St. Albans’s impatient and irritated visage.

  Lily chuckled. “Your marriage is very new, and Gabriel is still trying to acclimatize himself to the fact he is no longer the most important man in his daughter’s affections.”

  “That really is no excuse for his taciturn moods,” Chloe stated without mercy. “Not when we are displeased with him for sending Georgiana to work here in the first place.”

  Lily smiled at Georgiana. “Having now seen your duke, I understand why, once you arrived here, you were so determined to stay and learn the truth about his marriage.”

  Georgiana really wished Julian was her duke. She wished that more than anything.

  But having Lily and Chloe here, whom she might talk to and confide in, filled her with a warmth of gratitude toward these two kindhearted ladies.

  Even as Julian greeted St. Albans and Hellsmere, he surreptitiously enjoyed watching Georgiana’s interaction with two of her closest friends. She somehow seemed younger in the company of ladies of her own age. Less tense as she smiled often.

  He hardly dared to try to guess what they were talking about when both those other young ladies had glanced in his direction before continuing their whispered conversation with Georgiana.

  “St. Albans’s duchess and my wife are admiring how handsome you are,” Hellsmere observed dryly.

  “I somehow doubt Lily is doing anything of the sort,” St. Albans snapped.

  “That is because you are a jealous and possessive husband, and I am a relaxed gentleman secure in my beloved Chloe’s affections,” Hellsmere taunted.

  St. Albans scowled. “I am totally secure in Lily’s affection. It is the intentions of other gentlemen I do not trust.”

  “You may be assured I have no intention of flirting with or in any other way overstepping boundaries with either of your wives,” Julian quickly assured him.

  “That is because you are in love with Lady Stapleton,” Hellsmere observed with a glance in Georgiana’s direction. “And she is in love with you.”

  Julian frowned. “I do not think⁠—”

  “Falling in love is not about thinking, man,” St. Albans dismissed scathingly. “It is chaos and mayhem, with a dash of insanity. Or, in my case, a lot of insanity,” he allowed ruefully after receiving a knowing glance from Hellsmere.

  “I will agree with you regarding the chaos and mayhem involved,” Hellsmere allowed grudgingly. “But I believe all our ladies to be worth any upheaval that has occurred in our previously ordered existence,” he added with an appreciative glance at the three beautiful women chatting so excitedly together.

  Julian had no doubt as to Georgiana’s worth. Just as he knew the other two gentlemen felt the same way about their duchesses.

  “They are all exceptional women.” St. Albans nodded. “Including your Georgiana.” He gave Julian an approving glance. “I liked her from the first, which is why I arranged for her to come here to work for you.”

  “Matchmaking, St. Albans?” Hellsmere mocked.

  “Georgiana is an exemplary young lady who deserves an equally exemplary gentleman to love and cherish her. You are an exemplary gentleman,” St. Albans informed Julian with his usual arrogance.

  “I am a married gentleman,” Julian reminded.

  “Are you?” Hellsmere taunted.

  Julian gave him a sharp glance. “What do you mean?”

  “I believe we should wait to discuss this any further until we are within the privacy of your home,” St. Albans stated with a pointed glance at the grooms and ostlers milling about the stable yard.

  Julian bit back his impatience, knowing the other man was quite correct in desiring that privacy. “Of course.”

  “If you have finished eating luncheon, can we all be on our way to Moreland Park?” St. Albans prompted briskly. “Because I, for one, would like to soak in a hot bath, and then make love to my wife in a comfortable bed for the rest of the afternoon!”

  Hellsmere smirked. “I might consider doing the same with my own wife.”

  St. Albans’s gaze narrowed in warning. “I wish I had never given my permission for you to marry my daughter.”

  Hellsmere’s chuckle was unconcerned. “Chloe would not have allowed you to do otherwise.”

  “Probably not,” St. Albans allowed with a sigh.

  “And think how much in love I must be with Chloe to suffer having you as my father-in-law,” Hellsmere taunted.

  “I believe the same might be said for my having you as a son-in-law,” St. Albans drawled.

  Until now, listening to the teasing in this back-and-forth conversation—because he knew that St. Albans and Hellsmere respected and liked, even loved each other—Julian had not realized that, by avoiding returning to London these past two years, how much he had missed the company of two of his closest friends.

  For the first time in a very long time, he was starting to see a glimmer of hope for his future.

  A future he wished to share with Georgiana.

  A Georgiana who had now excused herself from her friends and was in earnest conversation with Robert Eames. No doubt reiterating her intention of visiting Meggie tomorrow.

  “Mr. Eames, before we part, I should like to ask you a question.” Georgiana chewed on her bottom lip. “A question that concerns Meggie.”

  “Yes?” he acknowledged warily.

  She placed a reassuring hand on his arm. “It is nothing…negative. I only wondered… You said earlier that Meggie refers to me as the ‘kind, dark-haired lady’?”

  “Yes.” He still sounded cautious.

  “I believe she met the Duchess of Moreland? Once, at least.” After which, Georgiana knew, the duchess had requested that Meggie not be allowed on the beach again when she herself was walking there.

  “Yes.” Eames sounded even more reserved.

  Georgiana gave his arm a comforting squeeze. “I simply wondered if Meggie had her own unique description of the duchess too.”

  She had no idea why she thought this was relevant when so many other people had already expressed their dislike of Annabel Sotherby. She only knew that she believed Meggie’s opinion, as it was usually expressed with childlike candor, would be more bluntly accurate than any other.

  “Ah.” The estate manager’s brow cleared. “She refers to the duchess as ‘the mean, bad lady who went away,’” he confided with a wince and a guilty look in Julian’s direction.

  As Georgiana had thought, Meggie’s opinion of Annabel Sotherby was indeed much more candid than any she had previously heard.

  Georgiana nodded. “Please give Meggie my kind regards and tell her I will visit her tomorrow. If you are still agreeable to that arrangement, of course?”

  “I am,” Eames confirmed.

  “Good.” Georgiana stepped back with a smile. “Until tomorrow, then,” she added warmly before turning away to rejoin her friends.

  Friends who had traveled all the way from London to bring them whatever news they had garnered from their investigations.

  Georgiana continued to inwardly pray that it was good news.

  Although, she wondered what exactly would be good news…

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “So, what, if anything, do you have to tell us?” Julian prompted his visitors as he paced up and down the carpet in the formal salon decorated in green and gold. He was too restless to sit down.

  The six of them had come here to talk while the two guest bedchambers and baths were prepared for the Dukes and Duchesses of St. Albans and Hellsmere. Dalton had brought tea and biscuits, and now that Georgiana had poured and dispensed those, it was time for them to talk.

  He rarely used these formal rooms anymore, having a dislike for the overly ornate gold filigree work on the cream walls and around the painted frescoes of cherubs and angels on the ceiling. All of which Annabel had insisted there should be in a house belonging to a duke.

  To Julian, the room now appeared gaudy and ostentatious.

  Georgiana’s horrified expression when they first entered the salon said she had not been in this room before, and now that she had, she obviously echoed his sentiments toward it. Having carried out the niceties of welcoming their guests with a cup of hot tea, she now sat primly on the edge of one of the three—three!—couches upholstered in a rich gold brocade on a thick green Aubusson carpet.

  St. Albans and his duchess occupied another.

  Hellsmere and his duchess were seated together on the third one.

  “Well, we have looked into all the matters you requested,” St. Albans began. “Our ladies have searched diligently for any word of the whereabouts of the duchess’s maid, with no success. The same has been done in regard to the duchess’s aunt whom you said resided in Bloomsbury. There is no record of the maid, Mary Jones, or the aunt, Clara Mayweather, ever having been born in or having lived in London. Indeed, we could find no evidence that either of those ladies has ever existed anywhere,” he announced happily.

  “What!” Julian stared at them in disbelief. “Of course they existed. I met them!”

  Georgiana stood to cross the room to his side and lay her hand upon the sleeve of his jacket. “Think further on the matter, my love.”

  The endearment was enough to break Julian out of the circle of chaotic thoughts. Thoughts that seemed to have no beginning and no end. Now that they had, he truly hoped that he was, and would remain, Georgiana’s love.

  “How much further?” he echoed gruffly.

  She smiled at him. “If the aunt and maid did not exist, then it is likely that Annabel did not either.”

  He recoiled. “I married her.”

  “And here we come to the crux of the matter,” St. Albans said with satisfaction.

  “Which is?” Julian could barely contain his impatience, even with Georgiana’s steadying hand still gripping his arm.

  “That if Annabel Mayweather does not exist,” St. Albans stated, “it invalidates the marriage which took place between her and Julian Sotherby at Gretna Green three years ago.”

  “Steady,” Georgiana soothed as Julian staggered slightly. She kept hold of his arm until he was seated on the empty couch before sitting beside him.

  All the while, her thoughts raced, hopped, and skipped, as she hoped that the information the St. Albanses and Hellsmeres related was correct.

  Could it really be true?

  Because if it was, then it meant Julian would be free of the yoke of unhappiness that had held him frozen in time for two years.

  It would leave the way free for them to be together…

  No!

  She must not jump too far ahead in her surmising. They could all still be wrong⁠—

  “We aren’t,” Lily assured her, alerting Georgiana to the fact that she had spoken her words of self-caution out loud. “Dear Georgiana, whoever those three women were, they were not named Annabel Mayweather, Clara Mayweather, or Mary Jones.”

  She was aware of Julian’s increased tension beneath her hand. “Then who were they?”

  “I believe I might have an explanation for that,” St. Albans said softly. “One that will be confirmed when my men return from France.”

  “France?” Julian echoed gruffly.

  St. Albans nodded. “Following Napoleon’s defeat and incarceration, the Prince Regent had several of us looking for any French spies that might still be in England. Their purpose was to garner enough information to assist in their emperor’s escape from Elba,” he explained. “As you all know, this escape was facilitated several months later. But try as we might, we never managed to find the people responsible for passing the necessary information to Napoleon’s loyal followers.”

  “We now firmly believe that Annabel Mayweather, Clara Mayweather, and even Mary Jones were all working for and with those loyal French followers,” Hellsmere interjected. “That the reason they all appeared and then disappeared so abruptly a year later was because they returned to France in order to take up their real identity and welcome Napoleon’s triumphant march back into Paris. That triumph was short-lived, of course, because he is now incarcerated on St. Helena, with no chance of escape,” he added with satisfaction.

  There was an expression of disbelief, followed by one of horror, on Julian’s face. “Are you saying that I aided—married—a French spy and by doing so helped in the effort to free Napoleon from Elba?”

  Georgiana’s heart broke for the look of defeat upon her beloved’s face. “You could not possibly have known she was not at all what she pretended to be.” It seemed that Meggie, with her description of Annabel being “the mean bad lady” had, as Georgiana had suspected might be the case, been the closest to the truth.

  Meggie.

  Meggie’s opinion of the Duchess of Moreland had been totally correct. Was it possible that Meggie knew even more than she had so far revealed?

  “Julian, exactly when did Annabel disappear?” Georgiana prompted.

  “Annabel—or whoever the hell her real name is”—anger was starting to take precedence in Julian’s expression and tone—“had decided that she’d had enough of the Season’s entertainments that year and insisted we remain in Norfolk for the summer.”

  “Yes, but when did she decide that?” Georgiana prompted impatiently.

  “It was only a few weeks before the Season ended…” Julian shrugged. “About two years ago.”

  “It was not about two years ago,” St. Albans corrected. “It was exactly two years ago that this woman went for a walk on the beach and then disappeared without a trace.”

  Georgiana lifted her chin, having now realized that there might be a different explanation for Meggie’s description of Annabel having gone away.

  “Or she simply sailed across the ocean to France,” she suggested. “Think, Julian,” she added when he looked confused. “This mystery woman went for a walk along the beach and has never been seen again since. The easiest way for that to happen would be if she boarded a ship and was transported back to France.”

  “Yarmouth harbor⁠—”

  “No, not Yarmouth, but from the bay right here.”

  “But how⁠—”

  “I now suspect Meggie knows exactly what happened to the duchess,” Georgiana stated emphatically. “And the only reason she has not said as much is because no one has known to specifically ask her. She fell and broke her arm two years ago—coincidentally at the same time as Annabel disappeared,” she realized. “Since then, she has had nightmares for several nights at this same time of year. I suspect that the broken arm and Meggie’s nightmares are all the work of this false duchess.”

  “I have no idea who Meggie is, but do you think that dreadful woman could have attacked her before boarding a boat and sailing away to France?” Chloe looked horrified at the suggestion.

  “I believe that to be a distinct possibility, yes.” Georgiana nodded. “This woman was vindictive and spiteful, and it was well known that she disliked Meggie intensely. We will need to speak to Meggie to confirm it, of course. But I believe this to be the explanation we have all been searching for. Annabel is not dead or buried on the fenland, but has been alive and living safely in France for this past two years.”

  “Where she is no doubt finding great amusement in thinking of the cloud of suspicion she left me to suffer under here in England.” Julian stood abruptly. “I— This— I am— I need to get out of here!” he bit out before striding from the room.

  “I believe that is your cue to follow him,” St. Albans told Georgiana. “He is not angry with you, or with us, but with himself. He feels…humiliated.”

  “Three years ago, he was an emotionally wounded man, returning from years of battle, presented with what he has admitted appeared to him to be a golden-haired angel,” Georgiana defended.

  “We are not the ones who need convincing of that,” St. Albans reminded. “We will know more once my men return from France.”

  She nodded. “In the meantime, I will talk to Meggie.” The matter was now too urgent for her to leave until tomorrow.

  “Take Julian with you.” St. Albans rose to his booted feet as Dalton appeared in the open doorway. “The four of us are going up to our bedchambers, where hopefully, a bath is waiting for us?”

  “One in each bedchamber, Your Grace,” the butler confirmed.

  “Good man,” he appreciated, waiting until Lily was standing beside him before turning to Georgiana. “I believe you may rest assured that Julian is not, nor was he ever, a married man.”

  Georgiana felt as if a weight had been lifted from her chest.

  She did not care one way or the other for herself. She loved Julian anyway and wanted to be with him. No, this search for what had really happened to Julian’s “wife” was only for him. Georgiana would continue to love and adore him no matter what.

  Could Julian feel any more humiliated than he now did?

  Doubtful.

  “What a bloody fool I was,” he shouted up to the sky as he paced the golden sand of Moreland Bay. “I was a naïve, infatuated fool ever to have fallen for the seduction and manipulation of what now appears to have been a French spy.”

  God in heaven. He had been so stupid. So very, very stupid⁠—

  “You were just being human, my love,” Georgiana’s beloved voice soothed from behind him. “Not foolish, not naïve, but simply human.” She was smiling when Julian turned to look at her. “I have heard it said that one should feel angry and vengeful, not sad or self-blaming, after being dealt this sort of blow to one’s pride. Because that’s all it amounts to.”

  Julian had stepped outside without his cloak or hat, but he was pleased to see Georgiana had had the foresight to don a pelisse and bonnet to ward off the worst of the cool easterly wind. “I should have seen. Should have known.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair.

  Georgiana chuckled. “You are dwelling too much on a past that is now unimportant, instead of realizing what this means for our future.”