Page 6 of Snowed In with the Jilted Duke

The only way for Pippa to expiate her guilt was for them to marry. It was the only way to make things right after Penny had nearly died.

She turned as Penny limped over to the bed and flopped down with a sigh. “Is it your joints?”

“Always.” Penny winced as she shifted her body into a more comfortable position. “I ought to have known the cold weather would be a problem.”

“You should have Kendal take you to Italy now that the war is over. You’ve said you wanted to go, and they say it is always warm there.”

“Italy would be lovely.”

Now that she had said it, Pippa could not stop imagining Italy. The food. The museums. The statues. The opera. She could imagine it all, so much to see and do.

If there was a companion to share it with, she refused to picture him.

Penny tossed off the covers and began to do the series of gentle stretches their physician had recommended when her joints swelled. “Perhaps Mama would allow you to accompany us.”

The dream shattered. Because, of course, Penny would be traveling as Oliver’s wife. Pippa would be forced to watch him dance attendance on her. To know they were together at night. Nausea rose at the back of her throat. “Oh, I would not want to intrude on you and your new husband. I should be quite content at home.”

Penny nodded as she slid back under the covers, her eyes already drifting closed. “Sally, wake me in time to dress for dinner, please."

"Of course, Miss Penny.”

Sally looked inquiringly at Pippa. She nodded and rose to follow the maid to the dressing room, where she washed and changed into her own dressing gown.

“Did you not bring the new one, miss?”

“I didn’t need a new one.” Pippa smoothed down the worn velvet of the dressing gown, a little shiny with age and washed to a dull grey. She would not wear the clothing that had been purchased for her with Penny’s trousseau money. It seemed… wrong, somehow, for her to be expected to share in Penny’s and Oliver’s nuptials that way.

Moving quietly, she returned to her seat by the window, watching winter darkness fall around the house, creeping across the gardens, shadows sliding towards her. Shivering, she huddled into her worn dressing gown for comfort, listening for any hitch in Penny’s soft breathing, any return of the rasp that still echoed in Pippa’s nightmares.

2

This was a devil of a coil.

Oliver frowned into his brandy. He rarely drank before supper, but seeing Penelope and Pippa Montgomery side-by-side once again after nearly two years had only increased his misgivings.

When he and Penelope had stood in front of the crowd at their betrothal ball as her father made the announcement and raised a glass to the officially engaged couple, Oliver had felt a strange feeling of disconnection from the moment. As though the woman standing beside him, blushing at the attention, was not the woman he had kissed only an hour before. He had not seen her well in the darkness—surely her dress had been green? It was insanity to think it had been a different color. Like blue. The color of her twin sister Pippa’s dress. Her identical twin sister.

When Penelope had taken ill only a few days later, Oliver had seen no reason to bring up the matter. Her family was in daily fear of her dying, and the last thing on anyone’s mind was a wedding. It had not seemed right to question her whilst she recovered, either, and Pippa had avoided him so assiduously that he scarcely saw her face at all during the year of Penelope’s recovery, even when they were in the same room.

Had he had been the victim of a prank by the sisters? Had it been Penelope all along, and they had somehow traded dresses? It seemed impossible given the short amount of time, but perhaps that had been the case. There was no way for him to know since Pippa refused to speak to him and Penelope was too weak for long conversation.

After Penelope’s recovery, the betrothal had been assumed by all. And, like a coward, he allowed the assumption to continue. Everything was arranged. The settlements had been negotiated. He needed a rich wife, and Penelope was beautiful and charming, born to be a duchess despite her low origins on her father’s side.

If his eyes strayed to Pippa more often during his visits, surely it was only his desire to solve the mystery. It could not be that he found himself missing the way she had used to join in the conversation with her own observations instead of sitting in silence with only the repeated poking of her embroidery needle through linen punctuating the stilted conversation between himself and Penelope. At even the slightest sign of fatigue from Penelope, Pippa would immediately rise and summon a footman to take her sister back upstairs, following behind them without so much as a backwards glance at Oliver.

Now that they were only days away from the wedding, the discrepancies had begun to nag at him once again. Even after her recovery, Penelope had never shown any signs of being interested in kissing him. He had only been willing to test his luck once, but her surprise and quick rejection had only made him wonder again if it had been Pippa, not Penelope, he had kissed.

But why? Pippa seemed to dislike him. Perhaps even to blame him for her sister’s illness.

Could it be her guilty conscience troubling her for playing such a trick on both him and her sister?

Oliver set his glass down with a thump. He must discover the truth as soon as possible.

A light tap on the door, and Hugo strolled through, nodding to Oliver as he entered. “Drinking already?”

Oliver scowled at his brother. “I needed to think.”

“About what?”