Then, she reached for the door handle. “I bid you a good evening, Your Grace.”
But instead of storming out, which was what he expected her to do, she stopped in the doorway, almost as if pausing to gather her breath.
Greyson should have let her go. He truly should have.
Instead, the words slipped out. “Have you changed your mind already?”
She didn’t turn around to allow him another look at the blaze in her eyes. And only once he looked past her shoulder, did he realize that they had not checked the corridors. So now, standing directly before her with their mouths parted in identical expressions of delighted horror, were two of the ton’s most infamous gossips: Miss Honoria Greeley and Miss Prudence Dale.
It was as though mischief itself had conjured them. Miss Greeley was clutching a lace handkerchief as though she lived in a state of perpetual swooning, while her friend, Miss Dale, stood by her side, soft and cherub-faced, though no Cherub had ever wielded such lethal curiosity.
Both of them stared at the woman in the doorway, at the duke, and finally, at the bedchamber which loomed like the great beyond, threatening to swallow them whole.
Greyson closed his eyes with the long-suffering air of a man pushed beyond reason.
“For goodness’ sake… not today.”
Chapter Three
“Hazel, will youpleasetell us what’s happening?” Chastity demanded as she wrestled with a bonnet box nearly twice the size of her head.
Hazel did not look up. “Pass me that trunk.”
“It’s heavy,” Patience warned.
“So am I,” Hazel snapped. “Give it here.”
The middle of the night was hardly the ideal time to cram three young ladies’ entire wardrobes into one hired carriage, and Hazel was sweating through her cloak trying to make it work. Every creak of the carriage felt like a judgment.
“Hazel,” Chastity whined, “you still have not told us why we must flee before dawn like criminals.”
“We are not criminals.” Hazel heaved the trunk upward, wedging it between two hatboxes with a grunt. “We are simply… departing early.”
Patience crossed her arms. “In the middle of the night.”
“Yes.”
“Without saying goodbye to anyone.”
“Correct.”
“With the carriage piled like Noah’s ark.”
Hazel glanced up. “The ship that carried Jonah, perhaps. And if you do not hurry I shall sacrifice one of your trunks to the sea.”
“Without a single servant to assist.”
Hazel shut the carriage door with more force than necessary. “Girls, get in.”
Her sisters exchanged glances that were worried, confused, and far too awake for this hour.
“But Hazel,” Chastity insisted, “why must we leave so urgently?”
Hazel adjusted her gloves, refusing to look at either of them. “Because I have made a mistake.”
And that mistake had dark hair, kept in careful order, and framed features that seemed to have been made thoughtful by habit rather than severity. That mistake had a manner about him that sought no attention, yet at the same time, it was difficult not to notice the impression he left.
“You?” Patience gasped. “You never make mistakes.”
