Emily fled to a nearby bedchamber and set the tea tray down with shaking fingers. The Earl of Whitmore was back. And he didn’t remember a single moment of their marriage.

Damn him. Hot, choking tears slid down her cheeks, despite her best efforts to keep herself together. It was like having him back from the dead. He’d been away for so long, she’d almost started to believe that he was dead, even though there had been no body.

She’d tried so hard to forget about him. Every single day of the past few months, she’d reminded herself that she’d meant nothing to her husband.

Her hand clenched, and she wept into her palm. Only a week after their wedding, he’d returned to London while she, the naïve little wife, remained tucked away at the country estate. She’d been swept away by his charm. Her fairytale had come true, with the handsome earl offering to marry the impoverished maiden.

But it had been a dream, hadn’t it? He’d used her, wedding her for reasons she didn’t understand, and had all but disappeared from her life. And now, she knew that he’d never cared for her in the way she had for him.

She wiped her tears away, a chastising laugh gathering in her throat. He wasn’t worth the tears. Sooner or later, he would send her away.

Emily forced herself to rise from the chair, suppressing the desire to smash every piece of porcelain on the tea tray. Self-pity wouldn’t get her anywhere. She was married to a stranger, to a man who hadn’t kept his promises.

And if he annulled the marriage, she had nowhere to go.

The sound of a shouting child broke through her reverie. Emily gathered her skirts and rushed toward the bedchamber she’d converted into a temporary nursery. Inside, her nephew Royce sprawled upon the floor, playing with tin soldiers.

“Attack!” he yelled, dashing a row of soldiers to the floor. The tin soldiers and a book of fairy tales were the only things he had brought with him after Daniel had died. She smiled at Royce’s boyish enthusiasm.

When he let out another battle cry, the shrill fussing of an infant interrupted. Royce’s face turned worried. “I didn’t mean to wake her up.”

“It’s all right.” Emily lifted the baby to her cheek. Her niece Victoria was barely nine months old. A soft fuzz of auburn hair covered the baby’s head. Two emerging teeth poked up from Victoria’s lower gums. The baby reached out to grab Emily’s hair.