Eight
The following day, after their mutual agreement to avoid one another publicly, Jillian found herself grappling with a wholly unexpected and thoroughly vexing emotion: disappointment. It was absurd. Illogical in the extreme. She was not supposed to prefer Miles Fairfax’s company. She was not supposed to notice its absence. And she certainly was not supposed to wonder—quite as often as she had—that perhaps he too felt the same uneasy disquiet she did when forced back into polite indifference.
The realization unsettled her more than anything else that had transpired between them in recent days. Their lives, once comfortably distant in shared disdain, had begun to twist in ways she hardly recognized.
Late-afternoon light slanted through the tall windows of Fairhaven House, turning the great hall gold and rose as preparations for the annual Christmas scavenger hunt unfolded at a pace that felt ominously organized. Footmen hurried with wicker baskets filled with rolled parchment clues tied with red ribbons. Guests clustered in excited groups, speculating loudly about the difficulty of this year’s riddles. Lanterns were already being lit along the corridors—an unusually early step—whichsuggested someone expected participants to need light long before dusk.
Jillian had learned, over the course of this increasingly ridiculous holiday, that premature lantern-lighting at Fairhaven almost always signified meddling. Usually romantic meddling.
She had hoped to escape unnoticed to the library for a few stolen minutes of calm before the chaos began, but she had taken no more than two measured steps in that direction when Arabella Hartington appeared beside her wearing an expression of artificial sweetness so unconvincing it bordered on parody.
“Lady Jillian,” Arabella said, folding her gloved hands with improbable delicacy. “Might I speak with you a moment? Just the two of us?”
The fine hairs at Jillian’s nape lifted instantly. Arabella attempting contrition was a spectacle entirely at odds with nature. Even so, refusing her would likely cause a scene, and Jillian had no intention of granting her that satisfaction.
“Of course,” she replied, though she infused her tone with a polite wariness. “If you intend to apologize for the unfortunate mishap with the biscuits again, I shall try to be gracious about it.”
A laugh bubbled out of Arabella—a strange, strangled thing that bore no resemblance to actual amusement. “Nothing so silly as that. I wished only to apologize for yesterday’s awkwardness.”
Awkwardness was a charitable term. Wildly inaccurate, but charitable.
Jillian nodded, feigning acceptance while mentally preparing for whatever trap Arabella and her mother had conceived. “Then let us put it behind us.”
“How wonderful,” Arabella chirped, relief a little too bright in her eyes. “Will you walk with me for just a short moment? If Mama sees us talking she will become overset, and I do not wish to distress her.”
There was no dignified way to refuse without escalating matters. Jillian inclined her head to signify reluctant agreement and followed as Arabella led her down one of the older, lesser-used wings of Fairhaven.
The temperature dropped perceptibly as they walked, the corridor narrowing, the floorboards creaking in a manner that suggested no one had bothered to maintain this section in years. Portraits of long-dead Fairfaxes lined the walls, their expressions growing more severe with each successive generation.
“I behaved poorly,” Arabella said at last, her voice pitched low as they approached a narrow anteroom at the far end of the passage. “Mama was distressed, and when she is distressed… well, we are all distressed.”
Jillian smothered a sigh and mustered a smile. “I assure you, I understand.”
“I spoke rashly.”
“It is forgotten,” Jillian said, though she could not rid herself of the prickling sense that something was about to go very wrong. “Truly.”
Arabella stopped beside the open doorway, smiling at Jillian with a look that should have been pleasant but succeeded only in looking vaguely predatory.
“Then we may begin again with perfect goodwill,” she declared.
Before Jillian could respond, Arabella stepped backward into the corridor, seized the iron handle?—
—and slammed the door.
The bolt scraped home with dreadful finality.
“Arabella!” Jillian lunged forward, grasping the latch with both hands. “You open this door at once!”
No miracle occurred. Arabella’s footsteps retreated rapidly, her silence more damning than any excuse she might have offered. The little viper had locked her inside.
Jillian pressed her forehead against the ancient wood in a desperate attempt to gather herself. She resisted the powerful urge to employ a word that would have mortified Aunt Gertrude into premature burial. Arabella had evidently decided that removing Jillian from the scavenger hunt was the most efficient way of diverting Miles’s attention toward herself. It was petty. It was foolish.
And it was also, Jillian discovered when she slowly turned around?—
—catastrophically miscalculated.
Miles Fairfax stood several feet away near an old tapestry-covered wall, snow dusted on his shoulders, his hair ruffled from the wind and from what looked suspiciously like long minutes spent pacing. He stared at her with a mixture of incredulity and aggravated resignation.
