you know?” Nathan repeated, his heart pounding so loudly in his ears he could scarcely hear anything else.
Pippa got up, her pretty face lined with deep concern. “Know what, Gilmore? What is going on?”
“Abigail wrote the letter that told me Montgomery was a bigamist,” he choked out. “Did you know?”
Rhys recoiled in surprise at the news, and Nathan felt it was an honest reaction. Pippa, on the other hand, went pale, but did not seem surprised.
“Pippa,” he said, his tone a warning.
Rhys pivoted to her. “Pippa?”
She folded her arms. “Yes. I knew.”
“Good Lord,” Rhys said, still shocked although he didn’t seem angry. “And you never mentioned it?”
She sighed. “I sometimes wanted to talk to you about it, I promise you. But it was not my secret to tell. Abigail made it clear she never wanted anyone to know.”
That confirmation sucked all the heat from Nathan’s reaction, and he gripped the back of the settee with both hands as he willed himself not to go to his knees.
“She told you at last?” Pippa asked softly.
“No,” Nathan said. “She wrote me a note. The handwriting seemed familiar to both Ophelia and me. We compared the two messages and came to this conclusion.”
“Come sit,” Pippa ordered, pointing to the settee.
As he did so, she marched over to the sideboard. Nathan was going to tell her he didn’t want tea, but to his surprise she poured a whisky instead and brought it back to him.
He drank it in one gulp, welcoming the burn in his chest that briefly erased all the other feelings there. He stared at the empty glass perched in his trembling hands.
“She did this even though it risked herself. It…it destroyed her.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I destroyed her.”
“No,” Pippa snapped. “That is not correct. Erasmus destroyed her. She never wanted that to happen to another person. So when she realized your sister was in danger…yes, she did do this. And she never expected or wanted any credit for it.”
“When I think that I all but accused her of being in league with the man the first time we met.” He bent his head in shame.
Rhys sat down next to him. “But you two resolved that, didn’t you? You knew very quickly that she could not have ever done such a thing.”
“And she is too observant a person not to know that you were in pain when you said that. It was unfair, yes,” Pippa said. “But not unforgiveable.”
“I must talk to her,” Nathan murmured. “I need to understand this. I should just go get her at the Gregorys’ home and we’ll hash it out.”
“Gilmore,” Pippa said, reaching over the back of the settee to catch his hand briefly. “I know you are a man of action, but this situation is more tenuous than that. You know it if you stop to think.”
He stared up at her, desperate for an answer he couldn’t find in his own addled, twisting mind. “Why?”
“Because she isn’t trusting,” Pippa said gently. “Love…scares her.”
He flinched. “Love. So you know?”
Rhys drew back. “That you love her? I think we’ve all guessed. But I’m a little shocked you know, you’ve denied it for so long.”
“I am the last one to realize it, it seems,” Nathan said, and scrubbed a hand over his face. “So what do I do, Pippa? You and Celeste are closest to her. How do I manage to break past that armor?”
She sighed. “I’m not sure even the two of us have fully done it.”
He wrinkled his brow. “But you’re best friends.”
“Her friendship is most important in my life, aside from Rhys’s,” Pippa mused softly. “And I adore her with every fiber of my being. Abigail is wonderfully loving and giving. She accepts others for exactly who they are, with no question. She would strip away her life for the chance to save someone else…just as she did for your sister.”
“But,” he encouraged gently, for he felt the word coming.
“But all that doesn’t change the fact that she has walls. If you dig too deeply, she changes the subject or teases or backs away. And she’ll do that with you, too.”
“She does that with me, regularly,” he huffed out. “She bends just the slightest fraction toward me and then snaps back as far as she can go. She is skittish as a colt.”
“And how would you break a colt?” Rhys asked.
He drew back sharply. “I have no intention of breaking my wife.”
Pippa pursed her lips. “Obviously not, but Rhys makes a good point. Not