Cordelia decided to leave the two of them to it. Backing out of the duke’s chambers, she began the long walk back to the otherwing of the house and her featherbed, which she did not want to rise out of for approximately thirty years.
“Lady Cordelia?”
The accent was twinged with a cockney edge, quite similar to Justin’s. Turning around, she saw Mrs. Nichols was standing in front of her, hat in her hands. She’d forgotten to remove it in her haste.
The two women curtsied.
“Thank you,” she said, hurriedly, “for looking after my son. I will forever be in your debt.”
“Oh,” she began, “please, it was our duty to care for him. I was not about to allow anyone else to die under this roof.” Cordelia wanted to cringe after she’d spoken the words. They sounded insensitive. Justin must have had a more profound effect than she realized; she was having a difficult time not speaking her mind.
Mrs. Nichols smiled and blew out a heavy breath. “I know the feeling, my lady.”
“Please do not hesitate to fetch me if there is anything else that needs doing,” she added, curtsying once more before turning on her heel, preparing to stride away.
“There is one thing,” Mrs. Nichols said, her voice strained.
Cordelia craned her neck over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“My son… he asked me to bring these to him. Would you deposit these somewhere discreet? Perhaps the duke’s study?” she asked, her voice low as she handed Cordelia a stack of letters, wrapped in a red ribbon.
Furrowing her brow, Cordelia took the papers out of Mrs. Nichols’s hands, fighting the urge to leaf through them.
“I was going to deliver them to his bedside, but I am worried… well, I won’t want to upset him. And he seems to trust you,” she said, the corner of her mouth turning up.
“Yes, well,” Cordelia replied, her curiosity piqued. “I will do so with the utmost discretion.”
“Thank you, my lady,” Mrs. Nichols said, curtsying once more.
Once the woman had left, Cordelia looked down at the letters. She recognized her own father’s handwriting immediately. Justin must have asked his adoptive mother to bring the evidence of the late duke’s patronage. Cordelia snorted as she dragged herself to the duke’s offices; Justin always needed to have proof.
The office was in such a state of disarray that she, for a moment, could not think where to put them. Pushing away a few loose papers, she placed the stack of letters carefully on the desk. As she did so, one of the sketches fluttered to the ground.
Sighing, she reached for it, amused when she noticed Buttercup’s sweet face reflected in the light pencil strokes. Cordelia bit her lip. Strange to think that Justin (unrefined, proletariat Justin!) could draw better than she and all of her sisters combined. Holding the sheet of paper up to the light, she noticed that there were pencil marks on the other side. Flipping over the sheet, she gasped.
It was a portrait of her, hair unbound, knees drawn to her chest, puddled in sheets. Cordelia’s cheeks warmed as she recognized the scene as shortly after making love to him, when he’d told her of his childhood.
Is that what he thinks I look like?The thought disturbed her, not because she wasn’t beautiful, but because it was so… so unlike her. The drawing showed her as lovely and unbound, more wild than she ever would have thought herself. Her heart seized and she felt more tears sting the backs of her eyes.
Without thinking, Cordelia crumpled the sheet in her hand. Dabbing at the corners of her eyes, she rushed from the office and to her bedroom, luckily encountering no one.
Collapsing into bed, Cordelia tried to close her eyes but found herself drained and staring at the canopy above her instead. Rhys’s words were tracking through her mind, leaving their muddy footprints everywhere.I need you to accept me.
He’d been so desperate at the time. In fact, he still was. He had called on her the next day, but Cordelia had managed to beg him off, telling the footmen that until the duke was better, she would not be receiving any visitors.
And what was she going to tell Rhys when the time came? That thought caused a flutter in her belly, making her feel unsure of everything. Which was absurd. This had been the plan since their infancy, and it was a logical choice. Couples hardly ever married for love; instead, they found ways to make the best of their arrangements. And Rhys knew how to sweeten the deal, dangling Hollyhead in front of her.
Thinking of these things was making a headache pulse insistently. Turning on her side, Cordelia allowed herself to drift off to sleep, the doubts becoming nothing more than quiet whispers at the back of her mind.
The sheet of paper, still balled up in her palm, fell to the floor.
*
Justin felt asthough he’d been hit by a mail coach.
“How long was I gone for?” he asked Henry Peverill, who was standing at the window to the duke’s chambers, surveying the Hollyhead parklands.
“Three days, I think. You’ve given everyone quite the fright. For the sake of the duchy, you’ve been asked to no longer put yourself in any more heroic situations.”
