Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(99)

“I warned Leila about him every day,” Mrs. Holburn said, a smile flitting across her features. “I said he intended to play the devil with her—Mr. Holburn agreed, but there was nothing we could do to stop her from seeing him. And then he began to charm Mr. Holburn and me as much as he had the rest of the family, and we started to understand that he did carefor Leila. I did not see what good would come of it, though. Leila was a good girl, and I knew that she would probably refuse if he offered to… to keep her. I never expected that he’d ask her to marry him, but he stood here in this exact spot and asked Mr. Holburn for her hand.”

“I never knew that.” Alec cast his mind back for some clue, some sign that Holt might have given about his feelings for Leila… yes, there had been a few weeks of utter contentment and peace… but during the last two months of his life Holt had been wilder than ever before, drinking and capering, immersed in a mood that encompassed extreme highs and lows.

“He did. And he was sincere, Lord Falkner. I believe that he would have married her. But the next day I sent Leila on an errand—she usually went on errands alone, since it was never very far. And she… she…”

“She never came back,” one of the children said simply.

Alec’s gray eyes widened. He listened alertly as Mrs. Holburn cleared her throat and continued. “There was no sign of her. No trace at all. We were all in shock, especially your cousin. He told me that he would find her. If he spent the rest of his…”

“If he spent the rest of his life looking for her,” Alec said impassively, nodding for her to continue. Her eyes became wet with renewed grief.

“We heard from him often. Until a week had gone by without a word… and we sent a message to him, which was not answered. I thought that he had decided to forget about her, or that he had lost interest in her… we kept trying to reach him, and finally received word of what had happened to him.” She sighed softly. “A terrible pity. He was a young and very handsome lad. When I first saw you today, I thought it was him, come back to tell me—”

“I am sorry.““Are you going to try to find out what happened to him?” “Yes.” “Would you—?”

“If I discover what happened to Leila, I will tell you.”

They looked at each other and smiled faintly, saying nothing more. There was no need, no use, for thanks.

Carr met Alec at his London terrace rooms a few hours later, smelling abominably of rum but remaining surprisingly lucid. As Alec’s valet brought a large silver tray loaded with strong coffee and scones, the Falkners exchanged information. “He asked her to marry him?” Carr asked, and shook his head in wonder, raking his hands through rumpled black hair. “Poor Holt—to propose and have her disappear the next day. Think she ran?”

“No reason to. She was nothing but a baker’s daughter. He was rich… he was a Falkner. She would have been a fool to refuse him if he proposed.” Alec stared moodily into the dark, steaming coffee. “No, she didn’t run. In fact, it’s possible that he didn’t ask her to marry him, though I wouldn’t take Mrs. Holburn for a liar.”

“Why do you think he might not have proposed to her?”

“He didn’t tell me about it. And Holt kept few secrets from me.”

“Good God, of course he wouldn’t have told you!” Carr exclaimed tactlessly, biting into a thick scone.

Alec frowned. “About something as important as an engagement, he damn well would have.”

“If I had been Holt, I wouldn’t have! Marrying a baker’s daughter? You would have talked him out of it, Alec—you know you would have. You would have said that he could do better… and that it was a Falkner’s responsibility to marry into a good blood-line, and you would have pointed out all of her faults so accurately that Holt could only have seen her as a flawed creature after that. You would have done your best to split them apart.”

“The devil I would have!” Alec snapped, standing up abruptly and pacing over to the extinct fireplace. Bracing his elbows on the mantel, he rested his forehead on his hands. “Dammit… does the entire world view me as some insensitive snob?” he asked in a muffled voice.

“We all understand that you were brought up that way.”

“Bloody hell,” Alec muttered.

“Wouldn’t you have looked down on her?”

“I don’t know.” Alec refused to admit aloud that a year ago he probably would not have approved oi Holt’s marrying Leila Holburn. He definitely wouldn’t have approved of it. But everything had changed Everything was different now.

Or was it?

He thought of all that he had said to Mira, and her words seemed to catch hold of something in his heart Suddenly he was stunned at the realization of what fa had done… and more important, what he had no; done. There were many things he had not told her. and silently she had begged him to give her the reas surance that he had been too blind, too stubborn to ; provide. It did not matter about her past, and the things that she lacked paled in importance beside

“Well, I talked with Jane this afternoon, and then & no doubt she’s a rum doxy,” Can was saying, at d Alec forced himself to listen. .,“What did you find out?”

“She knows something. I plied her with damned good-quality nantz and got her to talk about Holt. She implied that she had some names that might interest me. But she won’t tell me yet… I’m going to go back and find out tomorrow.”