Hardly a Husband (Free Fellows League 3)

Lady Dunbridge turned around and looked at the man with whom she had once fallen deeply in love. She hadn't seen him except at a distance for years, yet he hadn't changed. Oh, there were a few wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, a network of fine lines surrounding his blue eyes, and a sprinkling of gray at his temples, but he was every bit as handsome as he had been twenty years earlier. He was still the man she loved. "I wanted to," she answered. "So many times. I struggled to keep from begging you to come to me in every letter I wrote you."

"You wrote to me?" That came as a surprise to him, for the only note he'd ever received from her was the one she'd written that morning asking for his help. "After your husband died?"

"And before," she admitted in a whisper. "I knew it was wrong. We were both still married, but I wrote to you anyway. I poured out my heart and soul to you. But you never answered my letters, and eventually I stopped sending them." She hadn't quit writing letters to him, but she had stopped posting them. "I thought you'd forgotten about me or that you'd reconciled with your wife. Before I knew it, one year faded into the next and twenty years had gone by."

"There was no possibility of reconciliation, Henrietta," he replied. "My wife didn't want it." Lord Mayhew ran his hands over her bare shoulders and down her arms.

Lady Dunbridge shivered at his touch as her nerve endings suddenly remembered the gentle caress of a lover's hand. "I'm sorry," she said. "I had hoped that you could persuade her to reconsider…"

Lord Mayhew managed a smile. "I didn't want her to reconsider," he admitted. "Not after I met you."

Lady Dunbridge looked up at him. "But… " She had spent years trying to forget him, years praying for forgiveness for loving a married man — especially during the years that she remained married, but estranged, from her husband. In the nineteen years she'd lived with her niece and brother-in-law at the rectory in Helford Green, Henrietta Dunbridge had remembered Robert Mayhew in every prayer. And her prayer for him had never varied. "I prayed for you," she confided. "I prayed for us both."

"For what did you pray, Henrietta?"

"I prayed that we would both know love once again."

Lord Mayhew stared down at her. "Your prayers were answered, Henrietta," he whispered. "When I look in your eyes I know that I am loved. That I have been loved for a very long time."

"Oh, Robert… " Lady Dunbridge trembled on the brink of tears.

"Look into my eyes," he instructed, "and you'll see the love I have for you. It's been there from the start." He pressed his finger against her lips when she would have spoken, then tenderly traced the contour of her bottom lip. "I looked at you twenty years ago and suddenly, I knew love."

"What happened?" she asked. "If we love each other so much, why haven't we been together? Why didn't you answer my letters?"

"I never rec

eived your letters," he said simply. "And I'm quite certain you never received mine."

Lady Dunbridge frowned. "You wrote me?" she asked, in an echo of his earlier question.

"Nearly every day after you left London and returned to Somerset," Lord Mayhew told her. "But my letters were returned unopened."

Henrietta's eyes widened as suspicion dawned. "Calvin?" The house in Somerset was the Dunbridge county seat. It had been in the family for generations and staffed entirely by loyal family retainers who collected and sorted the mail.

Lord Mayhew shook his head. "His butler or secretary, most likely." He sighed. "I should have used my wife's name on the outside of the first letters instead of my own so there would have been less chance of them being returned to me. But I never dreamed your husband would object… " He shrugged his shoulders. "Still, I should have known better. A gentleman doesn't correspond with another gentleman's wife without permission and, apparently, Lord Dunbridge withheld his permission."

"Why?" she asked. "He didn't want me. He was living in London with his mistress."

"But you were Caesar's wife," Lord Mayhew said softly.

"And Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," Lady Dunbridge quoted bitterly.

"I didn't give up," Lord Mayhew continued. "I tried again when I learned that you were living in Helford Green taking care of your sister's family." He smiled down at her. "You inspire great loyalty in the men who care about you, Henrietta."

Lady Dunbridge closed her eyes and pictured her brother-in-law's face. "He didn't."

"He did," Lord Mayhew answered. "The letters I wrote you at the rectory in Helford Green were returned opened, along with a note advising me of the wages of sin — particularly the sin of adultery."

"We never…" she began.

"Literary adultery," he clarified. "For want of a better term. Although we had never physically consummated our 'adulterous' union, we had committed adultery in our hearts because our letters spoke of our passionate feelings for one another. And Reverend Eckersley warned me that by writing you and encouraging you to write me, I was putting your immortal soul at risk. For it was simply a matter of time before we sinned in the flesh." He stared down at her. "He knew my feelings, since he'd read my letters, and I think we can safely assume that he knew your feelings as well."

"I inspire something in the men who care about me," Lady Dunbridge remarked. "But I'm not certain I would call it loyalty."

"What would you call it?"

Lady Dunbridge thought for a moment before she replied. "Fear. My husband feared I would besmirch his name. My brother-in-law feared I would leave him to care for himself and his daughter alone." Lady Dunbridge glared up at the ceiling and stamped her foot. "Simon Eckersley, how could you?"