Page 37 of A Legacy of Lies

Her throat caught. “Not every truth is yours to keep, Your Grace.”

“Perhaps. But if someone means you harm, I will not stop until I know who.”

She turned sharply, unwilling to let him see her crack. Each step away left her lighter in body, heavier in heart. The fog closed around her as if eager to swallow her whole.

Nathaniel watched her vanish into gray. This was no lover’s meeting. This was coercion. She was afraid and protecting someone.

He stood rooted for a long moment, every instinct at war. Patience and pressure broke walls; force only built them higher. And yet her voice clung to him. Not the words, brittle, desperate, but the tremor beneath them.

He strode back to the Hall, boots striking hard. The doors thudded shut behind him. Silence pressed.

Eleanor would know. She had taken Clara in, shielded her, never without reason.

He reached the corridor as Percival approached. “Her Grace?” Nathaniel demanded.

Percival bowed. “She has gone walking, sir.”

“Alone?”

“No, sir. With Miss Whitmore. They took the east rose walk some minutes past.”

Nathaniel stilled. “How long has Miss Whitmore been with her?”

“Her Grace returned from London with her five years ago. Surprised us all.”

London. Eleanor never acted without purpose.

He turned to the window. Mist clung to the lawns, two cloaked figures already swallowed by it.

“They’re protecting her,” he murmured. His jaw set. “And the answers lie in London.”

Chapter Fifteen

Clara shook the rain from her bonnet as the maid hurried forward to take it. Drops clung to the ribbon and spattered on the tiles, dark against pale stone. Her gown clung damp at the hem, gravel grit still caught in the fabric. She winced as the wet sleeve brushed her bandaged wrist, the sting sharp enough to steal her breath. Eleanor dismissed her own cloak with a regal flick, water dripping steadily from the hem.

“Go and change, my dear,” Eleanor said, calm despite the rain. “I will have the fire laid in the morning room.”

Clara hesitated at the foot of the stairs. The air carried a stillness she knew too well, his absence. Yet even in that quiet, she could almost feel the echo of him, the way a room holds warmth after the fire is gone. She climbed the stairs, her soaked gown dragging her down with every step. The corridor smelled of damp wool and smoke, a scent that belonged to Hartleigh’s winters. In her chamber, she let the maid unfasten the ruined gown, the lavender muslin waiting beside it like a promise of calm she didn’t yet possess.

She set her palm on the dressing table to steady herself. Her reflection stared back from the mirror, pale skin, eyes ringed in shadow, and the curve of her mouth still marked by memory.

She had told herself their kiss meant nothing, a mistake born of rain and fear. But the lie trembled in her throat every time she remembered how he had steadied her, how his breath had brushed her cheek. There were places inside her that had never known warmth. Now they burned for it.

The bruise at her wrist looked darker in the lamplight, the cut angrier for the rain. She turned the sleeve down quickly. Pain was simpler than longing. Secrets could be hidden in muslin as easily as in silence. Yet she felt Nathaniel’s gaze even here, as though he lingered beyond the door, his patience pressing against the edges of her control. Once dressed, she smoothed the lavender skirts and drew a breath before descending.

The dowager sat with her usual grace, posture unbent, the silver of her hair gleaming against the dark wood. Clara perched nearby, trying for lightness as she spoke of roses that refused to die and a bird that sang through the rain. Her voice sounded far away to her own ears, brittle with effort, each word chosen like a thread meant to hold something fragile together.

The fire hissed. A draft slipped under the sill and lifted the lace curtains an inch before they fell. Shadows deepened in the corners where lamplight dared not reach. She thought of that other silence, the one that came after their kiss, when the world had seemed to still between heartbeats, and she’d known, without reason or permission, that something irrevocable had begun.

*

Nathaniel stood at the window, shoulders squared, hands clasped behind his back. He had searched for them earlier and found the hall empty. The knowledge had sat ill with him since. Eleanor’s explanations were measured as ever, but Clara’s silence when they returned carried something different, not fear, but control drawn too tight.

Now, in the firelight, he studied her more closely than he ever had. He had thought her quietness a shield, a young woman’s caution in a house not her own. But the way she kept her arm drawn close, the slight turn of her body to hide it, those were not the gestures of shyness. They were defenses honed by necessity.

Her laughter reached him, soft and brittle. When she smoothed her skirts, he saw not vanity but the effort to keep her hands still. He remembered how those same fingers had pressed against his chest, uncertain, trembling, and the answering ache that had undone him. The memory struck like heat beneath his ribs. He drew a slow breath and forced his thoughts back to the present.

He had expected innocence. Instead, he found strength shaped by secrecy. A woman who bore pain as if she had learned early there would be no one to share it. And if she could mask it now, before his eyes, how many times had she done so before?