Free Honor by Lindsay Chase Page B

you wish to go to Lowell and talk to these people yourself—”
    “That won’t be necessary.” Honor rubbed her forehead. “Robert never said anything about this.”
    “He obviously wanted to keep his unsavory past hidden.” Theo rose and put her arm around her niece’s shoulders. “Perhaps I am condemning him unfairly. He may have a good explanation.”
    “In life as in the law, there are two sides to every story. I can’t condemn Robert without hearing his side.”
    “I hope for your sake that he can explain himself satisfactorily.” Theo’s arm fell away. “I know I’ve caused you pain, but I had to, for your own good.”
    Honor’s eyes shone with sadness. “If this report is true, then he has betrayed my trust and played me for a fool.”
    “You mustn’t blame yourself.” She thought of Wes. “Love can blind us all.”
    “If you’ll excuse me, I have to be alone to think about this.” She walked toward the door, her footsteps heavy.
    “What do you intend to do?”
    She paused and turned. “I’ve invited Robert to dinner tonight. We shall see what he has to say for himself.”
     
     
    Walking down Commonwealth Avenue toward Honor’s house, Robert couldn’t stop smiling. She was going to marry him. He could feel the certainty in his bones.
    His proposal today had taken her aback. She hadn’t been expecting it. She struggled to be rational and logical, weighing the pros and cons of accepting it like a lawyer deciding whether to take a case, but he could tell that deep down inside, she wanted him.
    When he arrived, he found Honor sitting on the sofa in the library and poring over her notes. She hadn’t dressed for dinner but was still wearing the same flattering, pale blue shirtwaist and dark blue skirt that she had worn to the park today. She smiled when he walked in, rose, and kissed him on the cheek.
    “Does this mean you’ll marry me?”
    “I haven’t decided yet. I still have some questions to ask you.”
    He rolled his eyes. “Do you ever stop being a lawyer?”
    “Never. Would you like some sherry before dinner?” She poured him a glass, brought it over, and sat across from him in the wing chair instead of beside him on the sofa. That should have warned him. “Now tell me about your life in Lowell.”
    He shrugged. “I’ve already told you.”
    “Overseeing the whole mill must have been a great deal of responsibility for so young a man.”
    “It was, but I was good at it. I liked being the boss.”
    Honor sipped her own sherry. “An ambitious young man with so much responsibility…the ladies must have flocked to you in droves.”
    He studied her for a moment, but she had put on her inscrutable lawyer’s face. “No, not in droves.”
    “But there were women who sought you out.”
    An annoying suspicion niggled at the back of his mind. “Yes, but as I told you this morning, they meant nothing to me.” He set down his glass, rose, and stuffed his hands in his pockets, where he balled them into fists. “Why do you keep harping on this?”
    She smiled disarmingly. “Oh, all women like to know about the other women in a man’s past.”
    “Do I want to know about the men in yours?”
    “There were none.”
    Many a time he had seen her take this tack in a mock trial, her manner guileless, making casual comments that lulled a witness into a false sense of security. He knew full well that she was leading up to something. But what? And why?
    He looked at her. “I’m told a gentleman never discusses his…amours with a lady.”
    Honor set down her sherry, rose, and walked over to the desk as if deliberately seeking to create a gulf between them. She toyed with her locket and asked conversationally, “Who was Priscilla Shanks?”
    The way she said that name sounded like the jaws of a trap snapping shut. The blood drained from his face, and a thin film of sweat rose on his skin. He tried to speak, but the words caught in his dry throat.
    Honor’s eyes never left his face.