Nothing.
His longing did not even raise his pulse.
It had taken years, but he’d choked himself into obedience.Love had caught him out like a bumbling fool the day he’d met her, when William had brought her home to the estate with futile hope in her eyes.And as her light faded over the years, he’d taken a hold of himself.Had kept conversation narrow and focused on the fields and the farm.He’d stopped himself from hurting, from wanting what he could never have.
Still…
She looked lovely like that, forehead against the glass, watching the road go by and resting.
Chapter three
Tap,tap,tap.
Lorelei shrugged herself out of the corner she had slumped into as she slept.Ouch.There was a crick in her neck.
Tap, tap, tap, again.‘Your Grace?We’ve avoided the busier streets as much as we could, but we’re almost at the townhouse.People are out and about.’
Even gently delivered, Tillman’s warning rang clear.People are about.They will notice you.Recognise the crest on the door.Don’t give them something to talk about.
Lorelei stretched as she straightened, blinking fast to waking.She checked her hair, her sash, her collar buttons, then smoothed her skirts.Wiped her eyes and shifted into the centre of the seat, where shadows crossed from both sides and she’d be harder to see.But after a few turns of the wheels, Lorelei slid back to the window.
Early-morning mist smothered the street.Men, labourers, and children shouting newspaper headlines dotted the sidewalk alongside street sellers and flower girls.Lorelei dug under their caps and hats with her eyes, squinted into shadows, and scanned bodies for a blonde curl, a tall but slight stature, any hint that one of the figures out there might be Arley.
Her chest always carried a small ache for her son, but today, worry gnawed holes through her entire being.Before, she’d always been able to dismiss it as unnecessary mother’s fretting.He was at school.He was in the same place where William had boarded and studied.It was what her husband would have wanted for his successor, wasn’t it?A school with the right sort of reputation, with other boys who would help him succeed in life and grant him the connections he’d need in the future.Beyond that, she’d hoped he might know the companionship of other children, for she was not able to give him siblings or even cousins for play.
Her own childhood had been so regimented.It had been her father’s deepest wish that royalty would grace his line, so he’d raised Lorelei and her sisters to be princesses.The lack of available princes had never dampened his ambitions, and their childhoods had been filled with lessons.Governesses ruled their days, only relieved by tutors for painting, dance, and elocution, along with experts who taught them how to dress and how to eat.As her sisters got married—one to a viscount, the other, to a marquess—her father’s royal hopes had sharpened on her.When Lorelei finally debuted, she had been the most accomplished of the three—but none of those achievements had helped her as a mother to a child as curious as Arley.She could paint a flower, but when he asked, she could not name its parts.She could sing a song, but she could not tell him what it meant.Her son, hungry for learning, had outstripped her own knowledge at such a pace that, when her father suggested it was time he went to boarding school, she’d agreed and bid him goodbye.Not to be rid of him, but in the hopes that he might find better teachers and friends than she could provide.
Lorelei’s gaze tracked a young man walking on the street.She knocked the roof, and Tillman’s upside-down face appeared.‘Is that him?’she shouted, her eyes blurring with fatigue.‘It might have been…’
Tillman turned, still upside down, following her gesture.He called, and the boy looked up.Tillman shook his head, his hair swaying as he hung, suspended.‘No, Your Grace.That’s not him.’
With a bump, the carriage turned off the wider road and onto a narrower street.Children ran across the grass between two of the older workers’ cottages, now leased, one to an old woman, the other to a family.In the opposite window, houses appeared, then fled from view.The carriage paused.Metal squeaked on metal as the gate opened, and they rolled onto the drive that led the way to the Osborne townhouse.
The grounds were starker than she remembered.In her memory, the Honeysuckle Street villa had been a place of bright blue skies and crisp green buds, but today, copper and umber leaves scattered the grounds, and barren branches prodded the sky.She’d only stayed here once—for her wedding night.That afternoon, as they’d rolled down the same drive, she’d peeked out the window with naïve excitement and told her new husband how lovely the grounds were and how pretty the house was.He’d smiled, accepted her compliments, and told her he was pleased she liked it.He’d shown her the parlour, library, and the ballroom on the lower levels, and then the guest rooms and their quarters upstairs.
And on that short afternoon, she’d fallen in love with her husband.How could she not?She was eighteen to his thirty-one years, he was handsome and well-spoken, and he had plucked her from the endless training in how to be the perfect princess to become something almost as good.A royal duke would have been better, but William was still a duke,andshe was his first wife.She may not have enchanted royalty, but unlike her sisters, she had held the line.
They pulled up underneath the portico, right before the entrance.As Tillman helped her descend, the front door opened.Far from working a miracle, Cecilwasthe miracle.The butler who ran the manor with perfect efficiency greeted them, as unruffled as if he’d transported himself from the estate to the foyer with a single step.
‘I have water warmed and fresh towels prepared.And your lady’s maid has sent a change of clothes ahead,’ he responded to her unasked questions.‘She’ll arrive this afternoon with a full trunk.But before you wash, you will want to speak with the caretaker, Mr Jones.’
Lorelei had barely crossed the threshold when an older man with wiry hair and wearing a faded blue coat stepped forwards.‘He was here, Your Grace.His Grace, that is.The duke.’
‘He’s here?’The confluence of worry and relief battered against her fatigue.‘Arley!’she called through the doorway that led down the hall and into the centre of the house.
‘He went out,’ the caretaker continued.‘He turned up yesterday.No, not yesterday, the day before.Said he’d be staying at the house for a time.He set up in the library and has been sleeping in there.’He shook his head and chuckled.‘I told him Mrs Jones could make up the big room, but he wasn’t interested.Said it wasn’t his room and he’d be happier downstairs.’
‘You didn’t think to send a message to tell me he was here?’Lorelei snapped through her exhaustion, then took a steadying breath.Calm, Lorelei.Don’t let them see you weak.
‘Not my place to tell him he can’t come into his own house, is it?’Mr Jones shot back.He bowed again.‘Apologies.I don’t deal much with…’ he waved a hand at her, ‘people.I mean, no, I am sorry that I did not send a message.But telling dukes what to do is not my lot in life, is it?’
Lorelei pushed past the man and hurried down the hall, chasing confirmation that Arley had been here, that this was not some terrible joke.In the library, one curtain had been pulled aside, and grey light tumbled over the floor.The air hung heavy, acrid with sweat and old laundry, not pleasant but so familiar.It smelt like his room during those stretches when he came home, and Lorelei pressed her fingers to her forehead to suppress the tears that threatened to spill.He’d been here.He was safe.They’d find him soon enough.
‘He left just after breakfast,’ Mr Jones offered from the door.‘He’s always back before dark.’
Ruffled clothes spilled from a knapsack, and Lorelei circled them, searching for some kind of clue about where Arley had gone, or why.He’d lined up a small collection of things on the mantle.She inspected each object, but the stack of books, their spines in French or Latin, the notebook and pencil, the razor blade and shaving brush, its bristles still clumped with damp… none of them gave her any clues.
‘He’s shaving?’she asked the caretaker.
