Trying to make sense of his words, she stared at him. “What do you mean he’s moved on?”

“He brought me the key to his terrace just before noon. Told me he wouldn’t be staying for the remainder of his lease, had already packed everything up and moved out. Odd thing. He’d paid for two months in advance. Said I was to use his remaining balance to assist anyone struggling to make their monthly rent.”

“What’s this, then?” Marianne asked, clutching her reticule.

“I was just explaining to Miss Trewlove that Mr. Sommersby won’t be helping with the lessons any longer.”

“He doesn’t have to live here to help us,” she said.

Mr. Tittlefitz looked at her sadly. “He told me he wouldn’t be returning to the area.”

She could barely think for the blood rushing between her ears. She’d left him believing she was going to marry Beresford, because at the time she’d thought it was her only alternative. She’d given him no hope, no reason to believe that they had any chance of being together. But she certainly hadn’t expected him to pack up so quickly, to be gone in the span of a couple of hours. Her chest was in danger of caving in on itself. “Did he happen to say where he was going?”

“No, miss.”

Maybe he was going to live with his sister. She didn’t even know the woman’s name. How could she find him to let him know that she wasn’t going to marry Beresford? She knew so much about him, yet so few intricate details. “You two should be off now, making the most of your evening.”

After they left, she wandered through the shop, and everywhere she looked she had memories of Matthew. Waltzing around the shelves, tucking her hair behind her ear, lifting her onto the counter and kissing her senseless.

That night, she sat in her window nook, looking across the way at his darkened residence. Where had he gone? How could she find him? He needed to know that she loved him with every fiber of her being, that she wanted to marry him, wanted to make a life with him.

Waiting in vain for light to spill forth from his window, for him to return to her, she’d never felt lonelier in her entire life.

Chapter 25