They were just far enough away she could only catch a word here and there, but she’d caught enough of it to know one thing for certain.
Something was terribly amiss at Darlington Castle.
The two conversed for another minute or so, but aside from a stray word here or there she couldn’t make sense of, none of what they said reached Cecilia’s ears until Lord Darlington said, “We need to search the grounds.”
Cecilia stared at Lord Haslemere’s back as he hurried down the corridor toward his own rooms, then she ducked back into her bedchamber and slid her door closed. Lord Darlington’s footsteps echoed down the hallway, passed her room, and then she heard him moving about inhis bedchamber.
She crept toward the connecting door. She didn’t dare open it even a crack, but she could hear rustling on the other side, then the thud of boots across the floor. His bedchamber door creaked open, footsteps strode down the hallway, and then…
Silence.
Cecilia took a stumbling step back from the door, her thoughts in turmoil.
She, they’d said.She, over and over again, but the only “she” Cecilia knew of who was in any way involved in this mystery was…
The Marchionessof Darlington.
ThedeadMarchionessof Darlington.
Was this a mystery, a ghost story, or a nightmare? Cecilia no longer knew, and there was only one way to findout the truth.
Follow Lord Darlington and Lord Haslemere. Not tonight—she couldn’t leave Isabella alone—but she’d seize her chance when it presented itself. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the night after.
Until then…
She glanced over her shoulder at Isabella, who was still curled up on her side, fast asleep in her bed. Cecilia started toward her, but she paused when her gaze fell on the connecting door between her room and Lady Darlington’s forbidden bedchamber.
Her heart took up a dizzying, pounding rhythm inside her chest. She pressed her palms flat against the wall at her back, as if that one small act of retreat might be enough to keep her from moving toward Lady Darlington’s door.
What did she think she’d find on the other side of it?
Some mystery Lord Darlington was hiding? Some lie he’d told? A White Lady, or a missing marchioness? A pile of bones secreted away inside the stone walls, or Lady Cassandra, alive and well and tucked under her coverlet as if she’d been there all this time, simply waiting for someone to discover she wasn’t dead, after all?
It was madness. Utter madness, and yet…
Even as everything inside her rebelled at it, Cecilia’s feet were moving across the floor, every step taking her closer to the bedchamber she hadn’t entered since the night Lord Darlington had caught her there.
She’d promised never to enter it again, but it seemed she was every bit the liar he’d accused her of being, because despite that promise she grasped the latch, the cold iron burning an imprint into her hand, and then she was turning it, and pushing the door open, and it was too late to pray it would be locked as it was meant to be, and too late to change her mind, and keep her promise.
She’d already broken it.
Without knowing what she was searching for, without knowing whether she hoped or dreaded she’d find it, she crept forward until she passed over the threshold and into Lady Darlington’s bedchamber.
She paused at the door, pulling her shawl tighter around her against the sudden cold, and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once they did, her breath left her lungs in apainful whoosh.
Nothing had been touched. There wasn’t a single itemout of place.
It looked precisely as it had the last time she’d been in here. The drapes were pulled across the windows, the silk bed hangings arranged against the posts, the coverlet undisturbed by a single wrinkle, and the dressing table with a few jeweled hairpins scattered across the polished surface—
Hairpins? Had those been here the last time? Cecilia didn’t remember there being anything on thedressing table.
She crossed the room, plucked up one of the pins and turned it between her fingers. They were a delicate, silver filigree with tiny, winking sapphires at the end. No, she didn’t remember these, but she might have overlooked them. The room had been dark, and she’d been distracted by Seraphina at the time.
Seraphina, and then shortly after that, Lord Darlington.
She set the pin down on the dressing table where she’d found it, but as she turned back toward the door, the tip of her bare toe nudged up against something. At first, she thought it was the chair leg, but when she leaned down and peeked under the dressing table she saw a pair of richly embroidered blue satin slippers there, lined up neatly side by side, as if their owner would return at any moment and slip herfeet into them.
Their owner being Lady Darlington. ThelateLady Darlington.
