Meant To Be (Pendleton Manor 1)

“Because you are different,” Adam responded. “You want love and babies and roses around the door. You’re a romantic, Harry, and I’m not. Marrying someone you can’t fool yourself into loving will destroy you, and I for one don’t want to see you old and bitter before your time. You might drag me down with you.”

Harry’s first instinct was to refute his brother’s words.

He loved Evelyn. She was beautiful and clever and she would grace Pendleton Manor as if born to the role.

This niggling doubt that Adam kept digging out of him had to be eradicated. He couldn’t afford to doubt himself. He couldn’t afford to believe that he was making the wrong choice because it was done now, the contracts between his father and Evelyn’s brother were all signed. The wedding date was set. The rest of his life was sealed and agreed upon.

He sipped his coffee and spoke, intending to put the matter to an end. “Whatever was between Sophy and me is over. We were children, Adam, and now we are grown up. George Harcourt stole our money to secure Sophy’s future with a man of her choosing.”

Like maggots in an apple, Sir Arbuthnot had said. Harry repeated it now.

Adam sniggered. “Father does have a charming turn of phrase,” he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee and adding cream and sugar. It was a wonder Adam wasn’t as fat as the Prince of Wales. Instead he was tall, lean and handsome—certainly to the women he bedded on a regular basis.

“Sophy betrayed me. She married someone else without a qualm. Until then I thought…” He tightened his shoulders and forced emotion out of his voice. “That’s when I stopped believing in her.”

Adam looked uncomfortable. “Was the proof in the letter George wrote? I know there was something in it, Harry. Up until then you’d been ranting about father’s lies and swearing you didn’t believe a word of them, and then afterwards you just gave up.”

Harry pushed aside his coffee cup. He had had enough of the conversation, but Adam was waiting. As well as the letter there had been the ring, the one he had placed on Sophy’s finger when he promised to marry her. George had returned it and Harry’s father couldn’t wait to hand it to him, saying smugly how Sophy didn’t want it any more and how she was happily settled in Lambeth. He hadn’t believed that either. He told himself Sophy would never do that. So he had followed the trial that George left him. All the way to Lambeth.

“No, the proof wasn’t in the letter,” he said. The image seemed burned into his brain despite all his efforts to eradicate it with brandy and loose women. “I saw it with my own eyes. Sophy and her husband. There was a baby too.”

Adam looked shocked. “Harry why didn’t you tell me?” he blurted out.

Harry shrugged. “What could you have done? Anyway it’s over.” Yes, he’d been heartbroken in the beginning, stumbling around in a dark cloud, wishing he was dead, but those days were gone. He had made a conscious decision not to allow her actions to keep him from living his life.

Adam was still watching him. “Did you say any of that to Sophy l

ast night?” he asked curiously. “I can understand why you’d be angry.”

“I told her I had put the past behind me and I didn’t want to see her again.”

“And what did she say?” Adam looked up, his fork halfway to his mouth.

Harry stared at the door, wishing he could get up and walk through it. He didn’t want to remember Sophy’s white face and accusing stare. This conversation was tiresome and he had things to do. “She didn’t say anything. She barely spoke at all.”

“While you ranted at her and let her know how little she meant to you?” Adam said dryly, then gave a hollow laugh. “Good work, brother. I’m sure she feels so much better for that.”

Harry glared. “Why should I care how she feels? She shouldn’t have been there. It was … I was uncomfortable.”

Adam filled his mouth with food. “I’ll bet you were.”

“For God’s sake, man, swallow first. Frankly, I’d prefer to concentrate on what’s important.” Harry knew he sounded too much like his father for his own liking, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

Adam swallowed. “I should tell you something.” He sighed, setting down his fork. “Harry, her being there may have been my fault. I didn’t mean it to happen, or at least I don’t think I did. Although when I saw her I remembered how you and she used to be, and I …” He shook his head.

Harry stared at him intently. “What are you saying?” he growled. “What do you mean it was your fault?”

“I saw her in Hyde Park last week. She came up to me. We had a chat. I might have mentioned the ball and that you were in town. That was all, nothing too terrible. How was I to know she’d make an appearance and stare at you across the room as if you were her heart and soul?”

“That’s the second time you’ve used that phase,” Harry said sourly. “Stop it.”

Adam poked at a sliver of sausage. “When I mentioned her father and the rumours she got angry.” He looked up again, and now there was something in his hazel eyes that stilled Harry and made everything else go away. “She said she’d been trying to write to you for years. I got the impression matters are not as we believed them, Harry.”

For a moment he didn’t speak. “And her husband?” he said at last. “This Sir Geoffrey Bell? What of him?” He had hoped, in some secret part of him, when he had asked her last night, that Sophy would say her husband was dead. That she was a widow, and all alone.

Adam shrugged. “No idea. What was she calling herself at the ball last night?”

Harry didn’t know. He hadn’t thought to ask. Because, he reminded himself, he knew the truth. He’d seen it with his own eyes.