She would not think of him. Or if she must, she would remember him telling her to remove her clothes and sitting down to watch the show. Or bent over her, watching as he took her virginity. Or telling her that she was a whore and was enjoying what he did to her—but had he really said either of those things? Or had they been merely part of her nightmares?
She would not think of him. Or if she must, she would remember that he was a married man, that he had a beautiful wife and a daughter whom he dearly loved.
She would not think of him.
“Come in,” she called when someone knocked on the door of her dressing room.
It was a maid to inform her that she had visitors belowstairs.
Well, she thought, getting to her feet and squaring her shoulders. It seemed that she was not to have even that one night of peace. It was beginning already. Perhaps coming home had been the most foolish thing she had done in her life.
But she had had to come. She had had no choice short of losing herself.
The butler opened the door into the visitors’ salon for her and she stepped inside.
“Isabella!” Miriam Booth, small, rather plump, fair heavy hair in its usual rather untidy knot on top of her head, hurried toward her, both hands outstretched. “Oh, Isabella, my dear, we just heard that you were home.”
Tears blurred Fleur’s vision as she was enfolded in her friend’s arms—but not before she had seen Daniel standing quietly before the fireplace, tall and blond and handsome in his black clerical garb.
“Miriam,” she said, her voice quite breaking out of control. “Oh, how I have missed you.”
THE DUKE OF RIDGEWAY KISSED HIS DAUGHTER and the puppy too when it was lifted up to him.
“No classes this morning, Pamela?” he asked. “Is it a holiday because it is raining, perhaps?”
She chuckled. “I am going to tell Miss Hamilton to take me down to the long gallery to skip with the ropes again,” she said, “and to look at the dark lady in the picture who is like me.”
“Try asking,” his grace suggested. “You are more likely to get what you want.”
“Miss Hamilton must have had a very late night,” Mrs. Clement said disapprovingly. “She has not appeared from her room yet this morning, your grace.”
He frowned. “And no one had been to wake her?” he asked.
“I tapped on her door half an hour ago, your grace,” she said. “But it is not my job to wake the governess.”
“Do so now as a favor to me, if you will, Nanny,” he said. “Pamela, is Tiny supposed to be dragging that blanket across the floor?”
His daughter chuckled again. “Nanny said she could because it is old,” she said. “Look, Papa.” And she pulled at one end of the blanket while the puppy tugged and strained at the other, growling with excitement. Lady Pamela giggled.
Mrs. Clement came bustling back into the nursery a coupleof minutes later. “Miss Hamilton is not in her room, your grace,” she said. “And the bed is made up, though I know no maid has been in there this morning.”
The duke glanced at the window and the rain beyond. “She must have been delayed belowstairs,” he said.
There was consternation in the kitchen a few minutes later when the duke himself strode in from the direction of the servants’ stairs. Mrs. Laycock, he was informed, was busy with the household accounts in the office beside her sitting room.
“But Miss Hamilton was not down for breakfast this morning, your grace,” she said in answer to his question. She had stood on his entrance. “I assumed she was eating in the nursery with Lady Pamela. She does so sometimes.”
“Come with me, Mrs. Laycock, if you will,” the duke said, and led the way up the servants’ stairs to thepiano nobileand on up to the nursery floor.
He knocked at Fleur’s door before opening it and stepping inside.
“No chambermaid has been in here this morning?” he asked.
“I very much doubt it, your grace,” the housekeeper said.
There were no combs on the dressing table. No hairpins or perfumes or any of the paraphernalia that always cluttered his wife’s dressing room. He crossed the room to the wardrobe and opened the door. There was a new jade-green velvet riding habit hanging inside, and a faded and crumpled blue silk gown. He touched the latter briefly.
“She has gone,” he said.
