A strange carriage was parked in the spot right across from her door, the spot Thad had come to think of as his.
“Carriage” was not the right term.
This was a gorgeous coal-black cabriolet, pulled by the most stunning pure white Arabian. Thad had never seen such a lovely animal, or a carriage so clean and sharp it looked as though it had sprung from a picture book rather than out of London’s dirty streets.
Indeed, it was the sort of horse and carriage Thad always imagined himself riding in on, when he came to whisk his lady fair away to their happy ending.
He pulled his gig to a stop behind the cabriolet.
No footmen rushed out to greet him.
Thad leapt from his carriage, muddying his painstakingly shined boots in the process, and tied his horse to the closest post.
Still no footmen.
He collected the flowers from the gig and trudged up the walk to the front door.
It remained closed.
He shifted his flowers into his other hand and gave the knocker a sharp rap. And another. And one more for good measure.
The butler did not swing open the door with his usual alacrity.
The butler did not answer the door at all.
Thad glanced over his shoulder, certain everyone on the square was watching him, flowers in hand, as his knocks went unanswered.
Didn’t both owners of the Wicked Duke live on this square? Thad’s chest tightened. He was never going to hear the end of this humiliation.
He gave the knocker another go, perhaps a touch more frantic than before.
This time, after the most interminable of pauses, the butler opened the door.
“Yes?” he said abstractedly, without even looking at Thad.
It did not signify. Thad was not here to see the butler. He straightened his spine.
“Miss Weatherby, if you please,” he said crisply.
“Oh,” the butler said. “I am sure she is not receiving.”
Not receiving because she did not wish to see Thad? Or not receiving for some other reason? The sort of reason that rode up on a white horse with a fairy book cabriolet?
“Could you perhaps enquire whether she is receiving?” Thad asked politely.
“Oh,” the butler said again. “I really think I couldn’t. Her father has come, and it’s put the house in a bit of a tizzy. Could you call another day?”
No, Thad realized. He really couldn’t.
“Her father came for her?” he repeated blankly. Her father, the grand adventurer. The flowers in Thad’s hands felt impossibly heavy.
Of all the scenarios he had played out in his mind between yesterday and this morning, Priscilla’s father returning to whisk her away to adventure was not one of them.
It hadn’t even crossed Thad’s mind. How could it?
There was the trust to consider, the question of whether either of them could wait until her twenty-fifth birthday for the inheritance—and whether it was ethical to do so, even if every penny went to Priscilla—and of course the sort of cold feet anyone might get when her life’s dream was to go on adventures with her father, and all she got instead was Thad and a rented townhouse and a cat named Wednesday.
He had thought Priscilla was deciding between him and some nebulous future adventure that she may or may not take, because even if she remained a spinster and inherited a million coffers of gold coin, a secret part of Thad had thought—had wished—had hoped she wouldn’t do it. Had hoped she couldn’t do it.
