“Likewise, my lady.”
Penelope set aside thoughts of the captain, set back her shoulders and prepared for the battleground disguised as a polite soiree. All that stood between Ithwick and ruin was one woman and an aging housekeeper.
Anything else could wait.
~~~
Thaddeus disappeared into the house and the door to the servants’ entrance clicked closed. Chev moved back until entirely concealed within the shadows of the hedge.
Night had nearly settled. But the terrors of sightlessness were nothing compared to his son’s safe return to Ithwick.
Thaddeus would be back in the schoolroom in no time, and with a little suavity, he might even be able to convince Mrs. Renton that he’d been there for quite some time.
Just as Chev had done more times than he could count.
Silently, he followed the garden path inlaid with stone, moving like a spirit—like a man long-dead.
But when the pathway split, he hesitated.
The stone path turned back toward the courtyard and the tall, lighted windows of the conservatory. The other way—the way he’d intended to go—wasn’t marked but led to the edge of the wood.
He glanced to the heavens.
Evening stars had appeared, and the waxing moon would soon rise from the sea. But for a few hours, darkness would reign. If he chose to linger—the light of the risen moon would ease his way back to the gamekeeper’s cottage. He moved toward the courtyard, not because of the moon but because of the chance he might see her again.
Penelope.
Her feminine silhouette in the duchess’s window had drawn his gaze like a beacon. There’d been a brief, indescribably transcendent moment of recognition, which panic, then pain, had flushed away.
Still, he longed for another look. A closer look.
He scowled. Why entertain such madness? Hadn’t being introduced to his son caused enough bitter-sweetness for one evening?
When Thaddeus sunk his first arrow into the target Chev had fashioned, the boy had whooped and smiled, and Cheverley’s armor had been pierced with an altogether different kind of arrow—a deadlier arrow, an arrow that locked him into place when the only way to survive was to keep moving.
The fist-that-did-not-exist ached, hanging tight and heavy at his side.
Move.He had to move.
One footstep. Then another. Then another. And suddenly, he found himself in the courtyard, hidden just beyond the glow spilling onto the slabs of slate.
The glass separating him from the soiree guests was more than mere sand and ash, melted and then reformed. It was a barrier as uncrossable as the River Styx—the mythical boundary between the living and the dead.
The people inside were alive, glittering. He was nothing more than a wraith—a moving swarm of vengeful anger.
First, he recognized the long-time local magistrate, Sir Jerold—much unchanged but for the color of his hair. The man Jerold spoke with stood with his back facing the window, but his stance claimed authority.
Chev’s gaze moved through the room until he found Lord Thomas, his cousin, in a circle of people too far away to identify. One among them, a woman, was heavily veiled.
Penelope?
No. Though familiar, the veiled woman’s form was all wrong.
Then, the conversation that had filled the night air like the rumble of a distant sea, ceased. Tingling danced up his spine. He turned toward the entrance.
Breath and time ceased.
Pen.HisPen.
