‘I am not sure I care for the way in which you are addressing my wife, Rotherham,’ Sir Walter blustered uncomfortably.
Still Griffin’s gaze remained locked with that hard and mocking one of Francesca Latham’s. ‘Your wife, sir, is either a liar or a traitor—and I for one wish to know which it is!’
‘Griffin?’ Bea looked up at him anxiously as he appeared to have forgotten everything the four of them had spoken of this morning, before she had departed for Latham Manor with Christian Seaton. Indeed, Griffin now appeared so coldly angry, as he and her aunt locked gazes, that it seemed the two of them had forgotten they were even in the company of others.
Implying a past rift much deeper than merely that he did not care for his neighbour’s wife.
It appeared so to Bea. And she could think of only one reason why such tension might have arisen between two such handsome people. A past love affair that had not ended well.
The idea of Griffin having been intimately involved with Lady Francesca so sickened Bea that she could raise no further protest regarding the bluntness of his conversation.
‘What on earth are you on about, Rotherham?’ Sir Walter was red-faced with anger. ‘You are either foxed or mad. Either way, you will apologise to my wife forthwith.’
‘I will neither apologise nor retract my statement,’ Griffin bit out harshly. ‘You will answer the accusation, Lady Francesca. And you will do so now.’
‘Remember my grandson, Griffin,’ Lord Maystone cautioned softly.
‘I have not forgotten,’ Griffin assured him gruffly. ‘As I have not forgotten the manner in which I found Bea, following her abduction and days of being held prisoner.’ His voice hardened as he continued to look coldly at Lady Latham.
‘Abducted? Held prisoner?’ Sir Walter looked totally bewildered. ‘But Beatrix has been staying with friends—is that not so, Francesca?’
Throughout the whole of this exchange Francesca Latham had remained strangely silent, a contemptuous smile curving her lips as she continued to meet Griffin’s gaze unflinchingly.
‘Is that so, Lady Francesca?’ Griffin now snapped scathingly.
She remained silent for several more long seconds before she gave a weary sigh as she stepped away from her husband and into the centre of the room. ‘Is there any point in my continuing with the farce?’ she finally taunted in a bored voice.
Griffin’s jaw tightened. ‘None whatsoever.’
‘Very well.’ She gave a disgusted shake of her head as she turned to look at Bea. ‘So you have been warming Rotherham’s bed for this past week.’
‘Do not make this situation any more difficult for yourself than it already is,’ Griffin warned through clenched teeth.
Hard blue eyes swept over him mockingly. ‘I do not in the least begrudge you the warmth, Rotherham,’ she drawled. ‘Why should I, when I had your wife warming my own bed for so many months before she died?’
Bea felt the colour leave her cheeks even as she saw Griffin stumble back a step.
His own face became deathly pale as he now stared at Francesca Latham in horror. ‘You are “darling Frank”?’
She bared her teeth in a humourless smile. ‘So Felicity liked to refer to me as, yes.’
‘The two of you were lovers?’
‘For many months.’ Francesca Latham nodded with satisfaction.
‘Francesca!’
‘Oh, do be quiet, Walter,’ his wife snapped dismissively as she gave him a contemptuous glance. ‘We have not shared a bed for years, and now you know the reason why. I have always preferred my own sex,’ she continued conversationally. ‘Of course, Felicity did become a tad over-possessive and demanding, forcing me to end our association, but whoever would have thought the little ninny would have drowned herself for love of me? Quite tedious, I do assure you.’ She gave an irritated shake of her head.
Bea had not been able to take her eyes off Griffin since her aunt had announced her past intimate relationship with his late wife.
Or to wonder if, as Seaton had implied yesterday, she had been mistaken in believing that the happiness Griffin had known in his marriage was the reason he had never remarried. He might have loved his wife, certainly, but he also seemed to have known that his wife’s love had not belonged to him.
‘But we digress,’ Lady Francesca continued pleasantly. ‘I take it the two other gentlemen here also wish to see justice done? As I thought.’ She nodded at the silence that greeted her question. ‘What happens next? Am I to be dragged away in shackles and tortured until I tell you everything I know?’
Griffin roused himself from the shock of hearing the truth of Felicity’s betrayal, of their marriage bed and of him. Of learning that his wife’s lover, Frank, had not been a man at all, but a woman. Francesca Latham, in truth.