Five steps, six, seven, twelve to her chamber door. She lifted the latch and stepped into the hall. Centuries of Carlisle ancestors gazed at her with censure in their eyes as she swept past their portraits. More silent, damning reminders she did not belong here within these walls.
Impostor, they said.
Liar, those paintings whispered.
Thief, they charged after her.
Yes, she was all of those things, and she could not deny it as she descended the magnificent stairway. Each step brought her closer to her reckoning.
Why was it she felt as if she were the one facing a grim death on the gallows?
Hargrove, the butler, approached her as she alighted from the last stair. He was dignified and stiff in bearing at all times, but with his grandfatherly shock of white hair and his propensity for kind smiles when she least expected them of him, he had fast become a favorite.
“Your Grace,” he greeted her. “His Grace wished me to convey to you he had an unexpected matter to attend to this afternoon. He will join you for dinner.”
Relief washed over her.
She would not have to lie to Leo. Not yet. “Very good, Hargrove, and quite timely, as I have a need to go shopping this afternoon. Would you please see to it that a carriage is readied for my use?”
“Of course, Your Grace. Would you like to review the dinner menu for this evening?”
How she wished she belonged to a world in which such a triviality was commonplace. Where she hailed from, one was merely content for sustenance. Far too many had starved during famine, losing their lives at the hands of Englishmen like Leo. It had never occurred to her to ask if he was a landowner, and the realization filled her with shame.
She clung to that shame now, needing it, needing the reminder of all the empty bellies and dead tenant farmers left behind by English landlords in times of scarcity. “I am certain it will be lovely, Hargrove. The carriage is all I require, if you please.”
Chapter Nineteen
Leo watched fromthe window of an unmarked carriage as Bridget emerged from Blayton House. The sight of her, dressed as elegantly as a duchess ought to be, regal in her jaunty hat and blue afternoon gown, wearing only a wrap loosely hooked over each elbow, was enough to make nausea churn inside him.
He had spent the days since enlisting Griffin’s aid in his plan alternately doing everything in his power to show his wife how deep his feelings for her ran, and waiting for some form of communication to arrive for her, sent by one of her Fenian connections. It arrived within mere days, an innocent enough missive from Mrs. Eudora Templeton. An invitation to tea at half past two.
And he had waited some more for Bridget to bring him the missive. To confess to him. To tell him she trusted him enough to give him the truth at last. To ask him for his aid.
He was still bloody waiting.
Her defection was akin to a kick to the gut, or a cudgel to the head. This was not the outcome he had envisioned when he had developed his plan, when he had involved Strathmore. He had imagined Bridget would believe in him and love him enough to trust him. That she would unburden herself and ask for his help.
He had been wrong.
Deadly, stupidly,horrificallywrong.
Oh, he had realized as much when she had not mentioned her unusual correspondence to him at dinner the previous evening. When he had gone to her bedchamber and kissed her and fucked her senseless, she had not spoken a word of the supposed invitation to tea she had received. When he had joined her for breakfast this morning, he had remained stupidly hopeful she would unburden herself.
But she had not.
And instead of taking her in his arms and promising her they would solve this problem together, he was watching her from afar as she climbed into his carriage. She was meeting a Fenian, alone, in secret. There was only one reason why she would be doing such a thing, and it made him want to retch.
She had chosen the Fenians over Leo. Of course she had, and he had been the biggest fool for believing in her. For listening to her when those deep blue eyes met his and she told him she loved him. For falling in love with her himself. For thinking his love could ever be enough.
The carriage containing his faithless wife jostled into motion, and he knocked on the wall of his carriage three times in sharp succession, the sign to begin following. He had chased her down before, and it would seem he would need to do so once more.
Bridget stopped thecarriage at the millinery where she had once worked. It was near enough to the rooms John kept she felt comfortable finding her way from there. She gave the driver instructions to return for her in an hour’s time and pretended to enter the millinery until the conveyance lumbered out of sight. Then she walked as hastily as she could to her true destination.
Taking care to make certain she was not being watched, she skirted the building—an apothecary’s shop—to the rear where she could find the entrance to the simple lodgings John had been renting for the last year using the alias Reginald Palliser. Jane Palliser was a shop girl who could come and go without notice, visiting her brother.
Everything had been carefully plotted and planned, and how easy it was now to return to the life she had lived before going to Harlton Hall. Up one narrow flight of stairs, past a door with a faulty latch, her fist raised to rap on the last door five times in quick succession. It was as if no time had ever passed. As if she had never become the Duchess of Carlisle. As if she had not lost her heart to Leo.
Except for the pain in her heart and the aching bitterness in her soul.
