His shoulders visibly sagged when the door closed.
“Come in here, Houghton,” he said. “Have you ever known a more slimy fellow?”
Peter Houghton, closing the music room door behind him as he entered the library, did not seem to think it necessary to reply.
“I was in fear and trembling,” his grace said, “that he would see the obvious route out of all his difficulties. It was glaring him in the face so dazzlingly for a whole minute that I am amazed it did not blind him. You saw it too, I presume? Indeed, doubtless you saw it before I did.”
“He might have explained that all his attempts to get Miss Hamil…er, Miss Bradshaw to marry him were a ruse to get her to go quietly to avoid scandal in the house,” Houghton said. “Yes, your grace, I kept my eyes closed for all of half a minute waiting for him to see it. He will curse himself when he looks back and realizes how he could have wriggled out of your trap.”
“Knowing you, Houghton,” the duke said, “I would guess that the notes you made are beautifully written and meticulously organized. But go over them, if you please. I don’t believe we will ever need them, but I want them to be ready if we do.”
“Yes, your grace,” Peter Houghton said.
“In the meanwhile,” his grace said, smiling, “I believe I shall go upstairs to relieve a lady’s mind of the heavy burden that has weighed it down for all of three months.”
Peter Houghton did not reply as his master left the room, a spring actually in his step. Neither did he smile with amusement or sneer with scorn. He shook his head rather sadly. It was worse than he had thought. She was not his grace’s ladybird after all. She was his love.
But his grace was an honorable man.
Houghton felt a deep pity for his employer.
FLEUR HAD JUST ENOUGHmoney to reach the market town twenty miles from Heron House. Twenty miles seemed a very long way still to go, especially with the weather chilly and unsettled. And a bundle that seemed heavier by the minute and an empty stomach did nothing to improve the prospect of a long walk.
But there was no alternative. She set out to walk the twenty miles. She was fortunate enough to be taken up by a farmer in an uncomfortable and foul-smelling cart for three or four miles. And all of seven miles from home she was recognized by another farmer driving a wagon and was taken right to the door of Heron House. She could only thank him most gratefully and hope that he was not expecting payment.
But then, she thought with a rueful smile as he turned his horses’ heads and made off without delay, perhaps his payment would be in the excitement of being the one to break the news in the village that she was home.
The servants clearly did not know quite what to do when she was admitted to the house. She took a deep breath and decided to take the initiative.
“I am fatigued, Chapman,” she told the butler, as if she had just come in from an afternoon’s walk. “Have hot water for a bath sent to my room, if you please, and send Annie up to me.”
“Yes, Miss Bradshaw,” the butler said, looking at her rather as if she had two heads, Fleur thought. He spoke again as she turned away to climb the stairs. “Annie is not with us any longer, Miss Isabella.”
“She is gone?” she said, turning back to him. “Lord Brocklehurst dismissed her?”
“She had an offer of a place in Norfolk at the house where her sister works, Miss Isabella,” he said. “She was sorry to leave.”
“Send me one of the other maids, then,” Fleur said.
She had been looking forward to seeing Annie again, she thought, climbing the remaining stairs to her room and looking about at all the familiar objects—a part of her identity for so many years. It was almost a surprise to find that nothing had been removed from her room. Even the clothes that had been packed away in her trunk were back there. She need not have brought her new clothes from Willoughby Hall after all.
And she had wanted to talk with Annie, who had apparently been the one to discover the jewels in her trunk. Had the maid been alone when she found them? Had she gone running to Matthew with the news? Had Annie believed her guilty?
She would probably never be able to fill in those blanks in her knowledge now. Annie had gone to Norfolk. Fleur could not recall any mention of a sister in service there. It was probable that Matthew had dismissed her because she was Fleur’s maid and no longer needed in the house.
It was strange to be back, to find everything so normal except that Cousin Caroline and Amelia and Matthew were from home. She had fled for her very life just three months before. And she supposed that soon she would be in fear of her life again. Someone would do something as soon as the shock of seeing her just walk back into her home had worn off. Someone would send for Matthew or do something else to detain her.
Matthew himself would doubtless come, once she was missed from Willoughby Hall. Indeed, perhaps he was not farbehind her. Perhaps she would not have even the night to herself.
But she was in the only place she could be.
She bathed and washed her hair when water was brought, and put on one of her own dresses. She felt almost herself again as she brushed and styled her hair without the services of the maid who had been sent up to her.
She would not think of Matthew coming. She had a few things to do before he came. And she would not think at all of the recent past. She would not think of Lady Pamela and their days together. She would not think of the magnificent home she had come to think of almost as hers.
And she would not think ofhim. No, she would not.
But she thought of his dark hair and strong, harsh features, of the cruel scar that slashed across the left side of his face. She thought of his hands with their long, well-manicured fingers—hands that she had so feared because they had touched her impersonally and intimately and had held her steady for the infliction of pain and degradation. But the same hands had held hers warmly and cupped her face and wiped away her tears.
