Clutching his hat in his hand, Justin made his way to his rooms. Hollyhead was unusually quiet as the storm raged outside. He made a mental list in his head of what needed to be done before dinner. There was correspondence that he’d been putting off. He needed to write letters to his partners at the firm, informing them of the project at Hollyhead, and he also had been deferring a proper response to his mother’s letters, which were asking for thorough updates of his current situation.
Dear Mother,
I’ve gotten myself into a somewhat compromising position with an infuriatingly beautiful creature…
In spite of himself, he was smiling, remembering the look on Cordelia’s face as she pulled him back down to her. Her brown eyes had darkened and her eyelids were heavy, her full lips parted, ready for him.
“What happened?”
A thick, heavy voice stopped him in his tracks. He was just passing the library as he heard it. There was no question that it belonged to Portia.
“I know it’s difficult, but you’ll need to keep your voice down.” And that one was Cordelia.
“I’m trying,” Portia said. “Tell me what’s going on. The last I saw you, you were riding like the wind.”
“The Lady Prudence article,” Cordelia replied. Her voice was choked. “It has made assumptions that the duke and I…”
“And are you?” Portia’s voice was dripping in acid.
“How could youthinkthat?” Cordelia’s voice was rushed, urgent.
“You spend so much bloody time with him!” Portia replied, louder this time.
“I told you to keep your voice down,” Cordelia said. She sighed heavily. “He’s keeping me close because he is suspecting of us. Speaking of which, have you managed to make any headway?”
“None. I am beginning to think that father was sending us on a wild goose chase for no reason,” Portia replied, sounding frustrated.
Justin leaned closer to the crack in the door to hear better. A floorboard creaked beneath his muddy boot. He retreated as soundlessly as possible but braced himself to be discovered.
“Hush,” Cordelia said. “I think I heard something.”
“Peverill and Wright are still caught in the storm,” Portia said. “Don’t change the subject. Are you sure there’s nothing further? Have we even thought of everything?”
Cordelia paused. “Nothing.”
Justin decided he needed a stiff drink sooner than later. Permitting the carpet to muffle the sound of his heavy footfalls, he allowed the disapproving dukes, hanging in paintings high above him, to stare down at him as he made his way to the office.
Good, he thought to himself,there’s that then. She is not interested in you. Let it go.
Though he agreed with the words that rang in his head, it was difficult to ignore the stab to his gut, like a small paring knife had been twisted between his ribs. It was the truth all along, wasn’t it? Dukes were meant to be highborn, sleek, and without imperfection; and Justin was certainly none of those things.
Better to learn the truth now than draw it out longer than necessary. Behind the hurt, there was another clear thought. He had to be rid of Hollyhead House, and soon.
*
Cordelia felt positivelywicked for boldface lying to her sister earlier that evening, after Portia had pulled her into the library. A pastor had once preached in the little chapel on Hollyhead’s grounds that each lie a person told dripped a small black stain on their heart. Out of all of her sisters, she felt like her heart was the most splattered with lies.
Where to start? Was it the sneaking out of doors dressed like a man to ride? Or perhaps discovering another clue to finding the Hollyhead treasure and not telling another soul these past two weeks? It also could have been leaping into the duke’s arms this past afternoon, without a thought for appearances. And then there was the vehement denying of it all to her closest sister, the very one who had propped her up this past year, helping her care for their dying father and then plan funeral arrangements.
Lying in her bedroom, she stared up at the canopy of her bed. A moth had eaten a hole through a corner of the blue fabric, which had been turned a dull gray in the moonlight.
“You fool,” she admonished herself. Because who else would be there to chastise? The worst part of everything was that theyall considered Cordelia to be the upstanding and steady girl they knew. And if she wasn’t that, which she’d recently proved to herself again and again, then who was she actually?
Turning on her side and fluffing up her pillow, she spun to face the window in her bedroom. The maids drew the curtains every night and then Cordelia would promptly open them. It started when she was a child; seeing the lawn drenched in moonlight, the gravel glowing under the dark sky, made the room not feel so small.
She did her best to close her eyes again and pretend at sleep, but every time her mind grew quiet,hewould appear. And he would be wrapping his arms around her and bringing his warm mouth to hers, his callused hands sliding up her spine, over her breasts, tracing the knobs of her vertebrae up her neck until he was pulling the pins out of her hair.
Cordelia sighed, sitting up and fluffing her pillow again. She really needed to get a grip on her sanity. This had been going on since she first crawled into bed after another tense dinner. Lord save her from this world and its awkward dinner conversations!
