She would, however, walk very, very swiftly. Mayhap she would be fast enough to outpace the panic dogging her every step.
Montfort was here . . .hereat Gardencourt Manor. How had he tracked her down so quickly? Except . . . had he?
There had been a flicker in his eye the instant it fell on her. Could it have been surprise? After all, he’d entered the room with his wife. Was it possible he was a guest of the duke, and this was all bad luck, the only luck she’d known these last two years? Was it possible he hadn’t known she was here?
Well, he did now.
And she’d thought herself safe.
It was only when she reached a solid wooden door at the end of a corridor—what long corridors dukes had—that she realized she’d fled the breakfast room through an exit different from the one she’d entered. She twisted its brass handle and pulled the door open, finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings, a tiny gem of a pond sitting complacently in the not-too-far distance.
Accompanied by her pounding heart and heaving breath, she dashed across springy, close-cropped turf toward the water. It occurred to her that she could hie herself to Rosebud Cottage, gather Eva, Ariel, Tilly, and Nell, and flee, yet again.
It wasn’t too late . . . Or was it?
She needed a moment, just one moment, to collect herself and a rational thought. This pond with its elegant willows draped over the water’s edge and its quaint white pavilion on the far side was the perfect spot to amass enough rational thoughts to formulate a plan. A breeze lifted off the water, rippling the placid surface and permeating the wool of her dress. As the sheen of perspiration cooled across her skin, her eyes drifted shut with the pleasing sensation. At last, the space to think.
“Isabel Galante,” she heard at her back.
Her fingernails dug into her palms. On the count of three, she pivoted and found Montfort approaching and wearing a smile, one that could be construed as paternal, if one didn’t know better. Unfortunately, she did.
“Or should I call you Lady Percival and offer my congratulations?”
Isabel’s mouth pressed into a firm line, and her jaw clenched. She was unable to trust herself to speak. Not that he expected her to. Not when he was toying with her.
“My dear, you do look peaked, but if ever a view could cure a megrim, it would be this one.” He knew her excuse to leave the breakfast room had been a lie. “You know,” he continued conversationally, “I doubt there’s a single fish in there.”
Dios mío. Her heart was thundering in her chest and her future flashing before her eyes, and he was talking about a pond? “Then what is its use?” she asked, irritation bleeding into her tone. She wished he’d get to it—whateverithe had planned.
“Funny you should ask,” he replied. Somehow, she’d asked the exact question he wanted to answer. “You’re rather like an ornamental pond.”
Isabel blinked. How did one react to such an outlandish comparison? “Your logic may be too advanced for my feeble brain.”
“Only that there is great value in pure ornamentation. Beauty can distract.”
Was he saying she was of no more value than her face?
“With your beauty,” Montfort went on, “you could have married some sort of landed gentry or a widowed lord. It’s even possible a brash lordling would have overlooked your rather unfortunate lineage. After all, you don’t look like one of them.”
Isabel’s stomach flipped, and annoyance shifted into a rising anger. “One of who?” She knew exactlywho, but she wanted him to speak it plainly, so she could hate him more.
Montfort flicked a dismissive wrist. “Your people.”
She resisted the impulse to touch Mama’s pendant, the hamsa, a symbol of their people that was said to ward off the evil eye. If only it could work its power on one evil man.
“Your mother and father took their responsibility of protecting you from your heritage seriously. It was quite well done of them. I see no evidence that it infects your relationships out in the world. You don’t speak the language, do you?”
Isabel wished she could throw offensive Hebrew syllables at this man. But their parents had refused to teach either her or Eva.
Montfort jutted his chin toward the manor house. “I doubt anyone in that room suspects.” His gaze narrowed, penetrating. “It won’t serve you to take my words hard, Isabel. I’m simply stating the truth of the world in which we live. Eva understands it.”
Anger turned to acid in Isabel’s stomach. “Do not speak to me of Eva.”
“Now, now, no need for all that.” He’d become all paternal placation. “She came with me by choice, as did you.”
“And the laudanum you gave her?” Isabel spat. The question had wrung her insides to rags for too many months.
“Provided by a most reputable physician—”
