She paused at the threshold, one hand on the doorframe, and for a moment, Jonathan thought she might turn back and say something more. But she only nodded — once, small, heavy with the weight of an entire belief system crumbling — and then she was gone.
Jonathan, Lady Susanna, Lady Ellen, and Lord Kettering turned their full attention to Lady Maude. She was still on her feet, her face scarlet, her eyes wide, and her hands clenched.
Lady Susanna shook her head. “How could you have done such a thing to me?”
Maude stamped her foot, letting out a scream of frustration. “Why were you going to steal the attention from me? Did you not see just how well I was doing? Did you not think that any interest from a gentleman towards you would detract from my success?” Narrowed eyes settled on Jonathan. “And a Marquess too! I have only Earls and Viscounts considering me, Susanna! I cannot let you achieve more than I might.”
“Whatever is the meaning of this noise?”
The door flew open and, without warning, the Duke strode into the room, his eyes blazing.
“I am attempting to speak with Lord Jedburgh in my study, and all can hear is your loud exclamations, Maude!” he cried, looking around at them all. “Why is everyone on their feet? Whatever is happening here?”
Jonathan looked to Lady Susanna, giving her a slow nod as she swallowed. It would be difficult for her to speak, he was sure, for the pain that would come to her heart as she spoke of her sister’s betrayal would be significantindeed, but it had to be done. The Duke of Somerset had to understand.
“It is nothing, Father.” Lady Maude’s tone settled at once, her face still scarlet. “Susanna and I were just speaking of a difficult matter.”
Lady Susanna drew herself up, turned to face her father, and, with a deep breath, began to speak. “Father, it seems that Maude has been conspiring with a friend to keep Lord Lancashire back from me.”
Shock rippled into the Duke’s expression.
“I think I shall take my leave of you, my dear,” Jonathan murmured, lowering his head so that Susanna could look up into his eyes. “This must be a private conversation between you all.”
She pressed her lips together, then nodded. “You will come to speak with me again soon?”
“Tomorrow?”
With a nod, she pressed his hand and then released it, and Jonathan, seeing the Duke’s gaze on him, inclined his head.
“All that Lady Susanna will tell you is true,” he said, hearing Lady Maude’s screech of upset. “But I will not be separated from Lady Susanna again. My heart belongs solely to her, and even with all of this, I refuse to step back from her again. I want you to be assured of my love for your daughter, Your Grace, just as she is.”
The Duke ran one hand over his chin. “I do not pretend to understand all of this, but I thank you for your words, Lord Lancashire,” he said, as Jonathan stepped away. “Perhaps my daughters might sit down so that this conversation can continue?”
Jonathan hurried out of the room with Lord Kettering and Lady Ellen in front of him. His heart was sorrowful inleaving Susanna behind, but he knew in his heart that this had to be a private conversation between the lady and her father.
“We have the truth now,” Lord Kettering murmured as they walked back towards the carriage. “That must be a relief.”
Jonathan nodded. “It is, certainly,” he agreed, glancing back over his shoulder towards the closed door of the parlor. “I only hope it will not injure her heart too greatly.”
Lord Kettering clapped a hand on his shoulder. “She is stronger than you think, Lancashire. Than any of us thought.”
Jonathan looked at the front door of the townhouse one last time. Through the heavy wood, he could hear no sound — no voices, no crying, nothing. Whatever was happening in the parlor between Susanna, her father, and her sister was happening in silence, and somehow that was worse than any shouting could have been. He had wanted to stay, had wanted to stand beside her through every painful word, but some battles could only be fought by family. All he could do was wait, and hope, and be there when she was ready for him.
“Take me to White’s,” he said, climbing into the carriage. “I find I cannot go home.”
Kettering said nothing, but he stayed in the carriage, and that was enough.
22
The morning after felt like waking from a fever — the world still recognizable but subtly altered, as though someone had shifted every piece of furniture an inch to the left while she slept. Susanna sat in the window seat of her bedchamber, her knees drawn up, watching the light move across the gardens below. The house was quiet. Her mother had not come to see her. Maude’s door, at the far end of the corridor, had been closed when Susanna passed it on her way down to breakfast, and it had still been closed when she returned. The maid said Lady Maude had taken a tray in her room.
It should have felt like victory. They had uncovered the truth, confronted the conspirators, and Lancashire’s love had been proven beyond any remaining doubt. But victory, Susanna was learning, did not always feel the way she had imagined it would. Instead, there was a hollow space behind her ribs where certainty should have been — the kind of emptiness that comes after a storm has passed but the debris has not yet been cleared.
She thought of Maude’s face in the parlor. Not thescreaming, not the stamped foot, not the scarlet fury — those she could have borne. It was the moment before the fury, the half-second when Susanna had seen something else flash through her sister’s eyes: fear. Raw, animal fear, the kind that comes from feeling the ground give way beneath you. In that instant, Maude had not looked like a schemer exposed. She had looked like a child whose only means of survival had just been taken from her.
I am to gain the happiness first!
The words echoed. Susanna pressed her forehead against the cool glass and let them repeat, turning them over, trying to understand. NotI deserve happiness— Maude had not said that. She had saidfirst. As though happiness were a competition, a race, a resource that would run out once Susanna took her share. As though love were finite, and every smile directed at Susanna was a smile stolen from Maude.
