“Miss Hale, what were you doing in my study?”
She searched for a reply. Her thoughts were still cloaked in a haze, her heart beating out of her chest. “I was hiding from Lady Sunderland. She was insisting that I play whist, so I told her I was unwell.”
Lord Finchley cast her a suspicious look. “Mr. Ellington was not in the drawing room either.”
“He must have taken his leave.” She held perfectly still, too afraid to even breathe as Lord Finchley stared down the corridor. He took one abrupt step forward, then another, until he reached the study door. He threw it open, casting his sharp gaze into the dim room.
Sophia’s cheeks flamed, and she hung back a step. Had Isaac’s hiding place been enough? She didn’t dare look at Lord Finchley’s face.
After a long moment, she heard the door close again. “Hmm. Well, Mr. Ellington did seem out of sorts all evening. I cannot begin to imagine why he was so discomposed.” He laughed, as if that would excuse his abrupt search of the study, and the accusations it had implied. Little did he know that Isaac was hiding beneath his desk, likely just as awestruck and mortified as Sophia felt.
Her stomach twisted as Lord Finchley led her back toward the drawing room. She tried to sort through her thoughts, but they spun too violently to grasp.
Isaac’s letter had been a forgery.
And he had received one from her.
All of these years, he had been under the impression thatshehad run away from him.
A deep sense of betrayal washed over her as she reclaimed her seat in the drawing room. How could it be true? Who could have forged those letters, and why? She had to find out.
The house was silent when Sophia awoke the next morning. A sliver of light leaked through the edges of her drapes, but when she pulled them back, her eyes stung with the brightness. It had taken her hours to fall asleep the night before, but all her fretting had achieved nothing.
She was still shocked by her conversation with Isaac, terrified of marrying Lord Finchley, and completely at a loss over what to do.
She had returned home well after midnight the night before, and she hadn’t bothered to wake Prudence. But now, she couldn’t wait a moment longer to speak with her sister.
She wrapped a shawl over her nightdress and crept down the corridor. She knocked on her sister’s door. “Prudence?”
There was no reply.
She tried again, with a little more force. “Prudence? Are you awake?”
She was met with prolonged silence. Sophia turned the doorknob and peeked inside. The bed was empty, blankets tucked neatly into place. She wrapped her shawl tighter as she crossed the room.
A folded piece of lavender stationary rested between the two pillows. Sophia picked it up, unfolding it quickly. Her eyes raced across the page.
To whom it may concern,
I could not bear to be away from Flora and Thistle a moment longer. Please do not fret, for I have not taken the journey to Cornwall alone. I am in safe and reputable company. I shall return to London with Mama when the time comes for her to make the journey.
Prudence
Chapter Nineteen
Adjusting the corner of the gold frame, Isaac took a step back from the newest addition to the wall in his drawing room.
Sophia’s painting of the coast.
He had already been staring at it for several minutes, his heart in his throat. To him, the painting represented hope. Until that day, he had kept the painting in its wrapping, too afraid to make a space for it on the wall. Perhaps there would come a time that he didn’t want to be reminded of Sophia, but at the moment, she was all he could think of.
His eyelids were heavy as he finally turned away from the picture of the sea. He hadn’t slept more than an hour or two the night before.
For more reasons than one.
A servant had locked the door of Lord Finchley’s study, so Isaac had spent the night on the floor. He had only managed to escape early that morning, and he was still shaken from the ordeal. To pass the time through his sleepless night, he had been running possibilities through his head, potential answers to the questions that had been haunting him since his conversation with Sophia. If both letters had been forged, then who had doneit? If only Isaac had kept his. In his effort to forget Sophia, he had torn it up and disposed of it. She had likely done the same.
The culprit could have been either of Sophia’s parents. It could have been her sister, or a servant, or even Isaac’s grandfather. He had considered each and every one of them. He recalled what Percy had said to him at the ball:There’s a great deal you don’t know about Grandfather.
