Page 41 of Snowed In with the Jilted Duke

The door behind them opened, and Teasdale cleared his throat. “Mr. Montgomery, your grace.”

“Papa!” Pippa ran and flung herself into her father’s arms, nearly knocking him over as he laughed. “You’re here! You’re safe!”

Her father engulfed her in a hug and she lay her head against his shoulder for a moment, feeling comforted at last. Papa would be able to sort this tangle out.

“A little snow couldn’t stop me, Pippa,” he said, looking around as he set her back on her feet. “Where’s Penny? Not laid up with her joints again, I hope.”

The room froze, all eyes turning to Pippa, and she laughed a nervous laugh. “Don’t be silly, Papa. It’s me. Penny.”

He patted her on the arm, frowning as he sensed the mood in the room. “Do you think I don’t know my own daughter? Of course you’re Pippa. What game are you two playing at now?”

Oliver stepped forward to grasp Pippa’s elbow, but she shook his hand away. She looked around the room at the scandalized faces of the family. The entire family. And the servants, who looked equally shocked.

It would be all over the countryside in no time. Then all over London. Then all over England.

Poor sad Pippa Montgomery. She couldn’t attract a man on her own, so she pretended to be her sister.

Worst of all was her mother’s face, smug and triumphant. The very image of I told you so.

Unable to bear it, unable to bear the weight of all of the eyes on her, she picked up her skirts, turned tail, and fled.

“Pippa, wait!” were the last words she heard from Oliver as she slammed the drawing room door and sprinted up the stairs, eyes filled with tears, gasping and choking as she ran back to the sanctuary of her room.

She burst through the door and Sally turned, her jaw dropped. “Miss Pippa!”

“They know. They all know.”

Unable to stop herself, Pippa flung herself onto the bed and wept, unable to move from the weight of her grief. Vaguely, she heard Sally move to the door and lock it before sitting on the bed to pat her shoulder.

“There, there, miss. It will all be all right. You get it all out, now.”

She curled in on herself, still weeping, clutching her knees to her chest.

“Go… away, Sally.”

The comforting hand withdrew and the other woman’s weight lifted from the bed. Pippa could hear the door of the dressing room close softly as Sally left her to cry it out.

She should have known. She should have known it could never last.

She was not Penny. She never would be.

At Pippa’s precipitous departure all eyes turned to Oliver, when the only thing he wanted to do was run after her and comfort her.

“I must go to Pippa,” he said, but his grandmother’s cane rapped the floor sharply.

“Do you mean to tell me that you knew she was Philippa? You knew the entire time?” she barked.

He hesitated for only the barest moment, knowing the admission would be disastrous for him as well. “Yes.”

A gasp arose from the room, and he turned to the door.

“Do not leave this room, Kendal!”

A hush fell, and he turned to face his grandmother. The woman who had raised him when his parents had failed. The one who had comforted and protected him in her own stern way.

He crossed the room to kiss her on the cheek. “I must go to Pippa.”

Turning away, ignoring the whispers running through the room, avoiding her father’s stern eye, Oliver walked through the door held by an ashen-faced Teasdale and mounted the stairs, his mind racing.