Lady Bridget's Diary (Keeping Up with the Cavendishes #1)(61)

The silence had gone from awkward to stunned with this revelation. This was the first Amelia had spoken of her great escape since she returned.

“He’s not the only reason but he did find me, and reminded me what I was missing, should I not return soon. He did not speak of what the ton would say or what a lady ought to do. He spoke of love, Bridget. You all ought to thank him.”

“Do you mean to say you would not have come home?” James said, sounding bewildered and possibly heartbroken.

“The possibility crossed my mind,” she admitted. “But I won’t be leaving you anytime soon. I shall plague the lot of you for years to come.”

Then she turned to look out the window.

So Darcy had gone to rescue her sister. He had done a great service to her family to bring her home safely and not breathed a word of her disappearance. And he hadn’t mentioned it. If he were really the man she thought him, he would not have tried to salvage Amelia’s reputation; he would have left her to the consequences of her actions.

“It sounds like he is quite the hero,” the duchess remarked.

He had saved her sister for no reason other than they had asked for his assistance. He kissed her like he was a drowning man and she was air. And he liked her, just the way she was. In fact, he loved her.

If he was not the man she thought, then perhaps she was not the woman she believed herself to be. She had clung to her own stubborn view of him, warped by her insecurities. She had not tried to understand him, but dismissed him as another judgmental English lord and simply rejected him out of her wounded pride. Bridget choked on a sob. She had been such a fool.





Chapter 21


The dinner party was horrible, save for the part where Darcy nearly ravished me in the butler’s pantry. After he declared that he likes me just the way I am. What does this mean? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Lady Bridget’s Diary

The revelations about Darcy continued the next morning, making it impossible for Bridget to ignore how very wrong she’d been about him. She’d been alone in the drawing room, writing in her diary, when Pendleton interrupted.

“You have a caller, Lady Bridget.”

“Who is it?”

Darcy? Her heart leapt at the possibility. Or did it lurch? She was expecting to see him this morning. After what had happened last night . . . there were things to be said. Questions to be asked. Honor demanded it. But so did love.

Love?

“Mr. Rupert Wright.”

“Please show him in.”

The butler returned with her guest a moment later, and then stepped away, leaving the door to the drawing room ajar.

“Rupert! It’s so good to see you. It has been so long.”

It had been a fortnight, in fact.

She crossed the room and clasped his hands. It was so good to see her friend. But it was also . . . strange. She and Rupert shared something and yet she had indulged in all sorts of liberties with his brother, just last night. And in a butler’s pantry, no less.

“It has indeed. I have been traveling. With Darcy.”

“Oh.” She faltered at the mention of his name. “Yes, I saw that he is back in town. I saw him at dinner last night.”

I felt him at dinner last night.

“Well, that explains his dark mood,” Rupert said.

Oh God, what does that mean? She wanted to grab Rupert by the lapels and demand he tell her everything about Darcy’s dark mood, and how dark was it, and did he happen to say anything about her? But then again, perhaps it was all nothing. Darcy was always dark and brooding.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said, joking. But Rupert didn’t catch her meaning.

“I know you don’t,” he said, utterly serious. She suddenly became aware of the beat of her heart and the temperature in the room. She had never seen Rupert serious. “And that is why I’m here. There are some truths you must be made aware of, Bridget.”

“I’ll just sit down then,” she said in a small voice, and sat on the settee.

Rupert paced.

“For the past few months, I have been blackmailed.”

She gasped dramatically because the news shocked her and the situation seemed to call for it. Rupert continued to pace back and forth, taking long strides across the carpet.

“Someone possessed knowledge about me that would have ruined me,” Rupert said. She immediately thought of murders or robberies or other heinous crimes. But she could not picture Rupert engaged in such nefarious activities. It was . . . Rupert. “I would have had to leave the country. Indefinitely. I would have had to leave behind my friends, my beloved brother, my life here.”

“Is this what you needed the money for? I thought it was for gaming debts.”

“Yes.”

“But Darcy wouldn’t give it to you.”

“Oh, he did. For most of the year, he gave me the funds I required, no questions asked.” Oh. Bridget clasped a handful of fabric from her skirts, needing to hold on to something. She had wrongly accused him of refusing to help his own brother, saying it was the worst thing she could imagine. She felt, in that moment, quite awful. “I had to let him believe that it was for gaming debts. But eventually, he cut me off and I cannot blame him. He wanted me to be responsible for my own actions. But once he learned the truth, he did the Darcy thing.”