He knew he could not push her with her choice, make her believe him, he'd tried that enough already and had come up against a brick wall each time. She had to know the truth for them to have any chance of a future together. Any chance of getting her down the aisle a second time to ensure their marriage was legitimate.
Hugh shut the door and walked over to the fire, leaning against the marble mantle. He glanced about the room, his brother's office, not that he'd been taking care of the estates very well since Hugh had lived in Rome. His brother had turned to gambling if the many IOUs in his desk drawer were any indication.
Within a few days of being back in London, Hugh had settled his brother's debts and paid off any accounts he had outstanding around town. Had his brother been trying to ruin the family? That he could never know, but it certainly seemed fiscally that way.
He slumped into a nearby chair and rested his head in his hands. If Laura's diary was never found, Hugh would have to set out to win Molly's trust and love. He could not live without her. To not see her smiling face at him every morning on the pillow next to him. Watch as her cheeks blossomed into a delightful, rosy hue whenever he said anything inappropriate. He couldn't live separately from the one person that was the sole reason his heart kept beating.
And soon they would have a child. A son or daughter that was part of both of them. He did not want to raise the child without her, nor did he wish to only see the child when Molly bade him access. To be a family meant he needed her here with him, sharing their lives and everything else that came their way.
His stomach roiled with the idea that she would come up empty-handed when she searched her aunt and uncle's home. If Laura had burned her diary before she passed, there was no one left to know the truth.
A chill ran down his spine at the possibility that they could be severed from each other forever for a crime he had not committed. But would she trust him even if there was no one to tell her different to what she believed? If she loved him, she would trust his word, for God knows, he was not a liar. He would swear even on his own child's life, that it was not him who had ruined Miss Laura Cox, but his brother, St. Albans.
Chapter 16
Molly slumped back on her heels, staring at her cousin's bedroom, the bedding pulled off, scattered about the floor, and thoroughly searched. The few loose floorboards that she had found had been lifted, and with nothing to show for her efforts beneath them. She glanced down at her arm, blackened from the soot that had tarnished her clothing as she reached up and searched the chimney. With the assistance of a maid, Molly had moved furniture, emptied drawers, and padded the garments still occupying those cupboards, and nothing. Not a trace of this supposed diary.
It was not here, at least not in this room. Laura's chance to tell the truth, to declare once and for all who had wronged her, was not to be found. Perhaps she had burned it, for reasons only Laura herself could fathom. Molly did not blame her. To read the pages of a diary, one that would have initially been filled with love and adoration, of secrets and trysts would be a cause of despair if those moments of affection were no longer hers to have.
Molly would have burned her memories as well.
A little flutter caught her by surprise, and she reached for her stomach, her breath catching. She waited with bated breath to feel the movement again. She lent a half-laugh, half-sob when the little fluttering happened again.
Her baby. Their baby. The love of her life's child and the very man over whom she had to make a choice.
To trust and love him, or leave.
Molly pulled herself up and started for the door. She could not make a choice here, in her cousin's bedroom and where she passed. She needed to go to the one place she had always felt safe at home and at peace.
Within an hour, she was sitting in her best friend's drawing room, waiting for Evie to make an appearance. Her friend bustled into the room, her hair haphazardly pinned atop her head, as if she'd just risen from her bed.
Molly kissed her cheek, pushing down the pang of jealously of no longer having such afternoons abed with her husband. Of scurrying away to make love for as long as they wished. "I do apologize, Evie. I hope I have not imposed."
"Never, my darling." Evie rang for tea and sat across from her, taking in her rumpled gown and fixing the fishcu. "I was merely upstairs with Finn."
Heat bloomed on Evie's cheeks just as a footman knocked on the door, entering with the silver tea tray. Molly bit back her grin as she pulled off her gloves, setting them aside. "I do not know what to do, and I need your guidance."
"Anything, dearest."
"I saw my aunt and uncle, and they have confirmed what I imagined the worst. They do indeed believe the gentleman who seduced my cousin to her downfall was Hugh. He, of course, is adamant that he was not to blame. I do not know whom to believe."
"Does knowing that perhaps Hugh made a mistake in his youth change the way you feel about him? I know what he is accused of is very bad, the ton talk of nothing but his downfall and flee from England, but that will be nothing if you love him."
Evie's face swam as the tears Molly had been so stoically holding at bay, burst free. She sniffed. "I love him still. So much that it hurts to think of not being with him, but Laura was my cousin. I was sent away to France because of my family's fear of future rogues taking advantage of me, as poor as I was."
"You are very beautiful, Molly. I can understand your family being worried after such an event."
"I want Hugh, but to love him, despite what he has done means I lose my family. It would mean that all I've ever thought about the situation, my ideals and morals are worthless because I have chosen the very man who created the whole mess." An impossible choice and one she did not wish to make. "I know that Laura was not innocent in all this, she chose to give herself to him, but he could have married her, instead of taking the easy way out and fleeing the country. Hugh could have shouted from the rooftops that his brother had wronged an innocent young woman and be damned the consequences."
Evie stared at her, her eyes full of pity and concern. "I think you just made your decision, my dear," she said, clasping her hand. "But before you do, remember that Hugh was young, a boy of twenty. To go up against one's family, his brother a duke no less, would indeed be very hard. He fled, but that may have been because there was little left for him to do. No other option given to him."
Molly stared at her friend for a long moment, thinking over her words. His choice had he been innocent of the crime would not have been easy, that was true. But if Hugh was the gentleman who had ruined Laura, there was no forgiving of that fact. She would be lying to herself, going against everything she ever believed if she forgave such a sin.
The lump in her throat burned, and as much as she tried to swallow past it, it would not shift. However, was she to leave the man she loved behind? Commence a life where it was only ever half-lived?
"Remember, we're always here for you, my dear."
Molly nodded. She would need her friends more than ever in the coming months. Oh, who was she fooling? Years to come.
Hugh looked up from his desk, the many letters to staff at St. Albans Abby before his brother's death scattered before him. He would chase down every last servant in England who worked here and the many estates he owned if it meant that he could find a single one of them who knew of his brother's liaison with Miss Cox. His life, his ability to keep his wife, depended on it. He could not fail her in this as well.