“I didn’t,” he said coolly. In fact, if he had, he never would have come here.
Nanette seemed to be assessing Audrey and then cast a glance at Henry.
“Mother—” Della said softly.
Henry’s eyes followed the two women as they went across the room. He remembered it as if it were yesterday. Her letter. He had been thrilled to receive it with his name written in her small cramped handwriting. The letter that once opened had revealed all. He had never realized before that moment how fleeting happiness was. In one minute, he had gone from being blissfully in love to losing her completely. Seeing Della in the cafe brought it all back. All that she had meant to him and how she had thrown it all away for a cheap thrill.
“You were engaged?” Audrey wondered out loud, but Henry said nothing. She shook her head. “It’s none of my business.”
“Then you’re the only one.” He grimaced.
“What does that mean?”
“Everyone in Norwich knows.” He sighed. “Della and I were to be married. I purchased the land and thought to build a house on the river, where inside I would build a life with her. She went away for the summer to broaden her horizons,” he said coldly.
“Yes.”
“She broadened them more than I hoped.”
Audrey frowned. “Hmmm?”
He exhaled. “Not long after, I received a letter that she had fallen in love with a French marquis.”
“Oh.”
“But apparently it wasn’t a love meant to last,” he said bitterly. “She wrote me a month later. She had made a mistake, she said. She wanted our engagement and us reconciled. She wanted to marry me.”
“And you love her still,” Audrey said softly.
Henry grimaced but didn’t answer. “I need a drink.”
Audrey fiddled with her teacup. “I’ve never been, but Levi and Joseph have invited me to the Adam and Eve. I could keep you company if you wish.”
He looked up to meet her eyes. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts and his past, but he also wanted to drink and sit with this elusive woman who he found himself intrigued by.
“Would you really?” he asked.
“Why not?” She shrugged her slim shoulders.
They sat in the back of the pub together. There was a woman dressed in all black, pale and lovely, and a handsome man nursing a whiskey. Audrey looked at the first and only ale she had ever ordered and then back to Henry’s face. He did not say much, but she could tell he must have loved Della very much before she had broken his heart.
She didn’t speak either, and when they ordered cod and chips, she ate most of it while he drank one whiskey after another.
“We grew up together,” Henry told her, staring into his amber-colored drink. “It was an understanding between the two of us that we would marry when she came of age. I agreed with it, or I should say I never disagreed with it, but what was there not to like? She had fine manners, a good family name, so that was that.”
She let him speak and took another chip.
“She was pretty and feminine. I liked that,” he admitted.
“She’s very pretty,” Audrey agreed.
Henry looked up at her and then back down. “I wanted a short engagement, but she wanted to travel. I told her we could travel on our honeymoon, but her mother urged her to leave before, and so off they went.”
She frowned. “They?”
“Nanette and Della. I heard from her often, and then the letters stopped. When she did write, they were cold and distant. I should have guessed something was off, but I was busy with work.” He took a swig of his drink.
Audrey put her hand lightly on his arm in comfort. “You couldn’t know.”