An Affair So Right (Rebel Hearts #4)(27)

Fletcher frowned. “Was it unknown that he had a mistress?”

“It was unknown that he was sleeping with this particular one,” Quinn growled. “This is not his property. It is mine, and he should not be here.”

Fletcher’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “I am not sure moving him is in the best interest of his health.”

“He cannot remain here another hour,” Quinn decided, and then shook his head, attempting to stifle his temper. Fletcher did not deserve to take the brunt of his anger.

“He could be taken out via the mews,” Fletcher suggested as he took a step back, swallowing hard. “I will do my best, but I cannot make promises no one will see, or that he will survive the journey.”

“Do it,” he bit out. “Deliver him to the Rutherford House mews, not the front doors.”

Fletcher swallowed. “As you wish. I’ll make arrangements immediately.”

Quinn nodded. If anyone found out where father had fallen ill tonight, the scandal would be enormous. Quinn would be a laughingstock. Cuckolded by his own sire—a man twice his age and three times as devious as the worst criminal sent to the colonies. How fitting that father had been struck down in the midst of such an act. Was this—seducing his mistress—Father’s punishment because Quinn refused to come to heel like the dog his old man expected him to be?

He allowed Fletcher to leave, and then took a deep breath before heading out to the hall again.

He did not look into the room containing his father. Quinn trudged down the stairs, seething with anger and disgust, but stopped when he heard Adele Blakely call to him.

He clenched his jaw, and then turned slowly, viewing her with fresh eyes as she sat weeping over his father’s condition. Sitting in the parlor Quinn had paid to be refurbished last year to make her happy. Hugging the robe he’d bought tight to her breasts…breasts his father had no doubt groped earlier that night.

He gagged, almost casting up his accounts then and there. The humiliation that he’d been so deceived in Adele’s character rose thick and horrible around him.

She was faithless.

A cunning little actress; ambitious for acclaim and attention, just as his father had claimed all along.

“I should have told you about us long before—” she whispered.

He held up one hand to prevent the flow of words. He did not want to know how long their affair had been going on. He highly doubted that Adele was sorry for deceiving him. “There’s no need. Your actions present the truth I was too blind to see for myself. Was the reason you couldn’t meet with me because you were always seeing him?”

“Quinn, I can explain!” she pleaded, eyes full of tears and sorrow for her situation. “You were gone, and he was kind.”

“My father was not kind. This was entirely his doing, a means to put me in my place. Punishment. He’s been at me for months to break with you. And you helped him do it! Goodbye, Mrs. Blakely. We will never speak again.”

He could not forgive Adele for playing him the fool. She was not the friend he’d imagined her all these years. Not if she’d been keeping company with his father, too.

He strode out and climbed into his carriage, noting with approval that Miss Dalton was two steps behind him and he’d not had to call her. He didn’t look her in the eye; he was too humiliated, too gutted, to be in any way a civil gentleman.

“Newberry House,” he called up to the driver, and the carriage rolled away.

At his side, Miss Dalton allowed him a few minutes of peace, and then stirred. “Who was she to you?”

Bile rose up in his mouth again, almost sending him flying from the carriage. He fought the sensation. As much as it pained him to reveal the truth of his distress, his secretary was too bright not to learn of the connection through her own inquiries. He’d have to tell her.

“We were friends for five years. I shared everything with her. She was my mistress. Apparently, one Ford wasn’t enough for her.”

Theodora’s hand settled over his thigh and squeezed. Something she was prone to do quite often, he suddenly recalled. “The stupid little fool,” Theodora whispered in a disapproving voice.

Quinn gritted his teeth, and as an afterthought, recklessly took her hand in his.

Theodora was kind to say otherwise but he was the real fool here.

He had been faithful to Adele, never suspecting that she wasn’t in return. But Adele had put him off so often, preferring to go her own way rather than meeting him at the halfway point, he should have suspected.

She could have been meeting with his father for years, or someone else entirely while he’d been gone without him knowing. She was crying over Father now, rather than the future she’d thrown away with him.

Why should he fight an attraction to any woman who desired to be with him?

He laced his fingers with Theodora’s, taking every scrap of comfort she offered, readying himself to face his mother and tell her the news about her unfaithful husband’s latest escapade.





Chapter 11





Newberry House intimidated Theodora on first sight as it loomed above her in the light of a half dozen lanterns. The imposing portico flanked by liveried footmen bearing lanterns made her feel very small and very, very much out of place in her drab mourning gown. She hoped no one thought her attire a bad omen for the family. She considered remaining in the carriage, but Lord Maitland held out his arm and drew her against his side as if she were not his secretary, but a close companion.