She closed her eyes against the vicious assault of the words. Even saying it made her feel impossibly powerless.
When the carriage finally stopped, it was not at the Hartwell townhouse. Instead, Penelope found herself staring at an unfamiliar street, her mind so consumed with thought that she had failed to notice the wrong direction.
“Miss?” The coachman’s voice filtered through the window. “Where would you like to go?”
She waited. Perhaps, she should return to the Duke’s house, try to make sense of everything. Perhaps...
No. If she was going to solve this, it would be on her one, she decided and leaned forward firmly.
“Take me home. I have a lot to think about.”
She was not quite certain that she would ever find the truth without doubt. But she was far too exhausted to think logically now. Sooner or later, however, she knew that she had to.
CHAPTER 5
Though a full day passed, Penelope was no nearer to the truth than she had been the previous day. She had fallen asleep with great difficulty and far too soon the sun was rising, light flickering through her curtains.
“Penelope. Dearest. You must wake up.”
The voice filtered through layers of exhausted sleep like water seeping through stone. Penelope’s eyes refused to open properly, weighted by the handful of hours she’d managed after returning home near dawn. Her mother’s hand on her shoulder felt too heavy, too insistent.
“Mama?” The word left her lips, thick with confusion. Sunlight pressed against her closed eyelids, too bright, too demanding. “What time is it?”
“Nearly eleven.” Her mother’s voice was worried. “Your father is downstairs. We need to speak with you. Immediately.”
The last word struck like a hammer against glass.
Penelope forced her eyes open. Her mother stood beside the bed, still in her morning dress, her face arranged into an expression Penelope had rarely seen—the careful blankness that preceded particularly unpleasant news. Behind her, Annie hovered near the doorway, wringing her hands with such violence that Penelope wondered the poor girl hadn’t damaged something vital.
“What’s happened?” Penelope pushed herself upright, her heart beginning a slow, sickening acceleration. The events of the previous night crashed back with brutal clarity—the baby’s cry, the letter, Alastair’s eyes across his study. “Is something wrong?”
Her mother’s lips pursed. “Get dressed. Quickly, please. We shall explain downstairs.”
The journey from bedroom to morning room passed in a blur of hastily fastened buttons and Annie’s trembling fingers. Penelope’s mind raced through possibilities, each more catastrophic than the last. Perhaps someone had died. Perhaps her father’s investments had failed.
Perhaps—
She stopped in the doorway of the morning room.
Her father stood by the window, his back rigid, his hands clasped behind him in a posture she recognized from childhoodas the physical manifestation of barely contained fury. Her mother entered behind her, closing the door with a soft click that somehow felt like the sealing of a tomb.
“Papa?” Penelope’s voice was smaller than she’d intended. “What’s?—”
“Sit down, Penelope.”
She sat.
Her father turned from the window. His face held that terrible controlled expression men employed when they wished to strike something but had been raised never to display such impulses. In his hand, he held several pages of what appeared to be newsprint.
Scandal sheets. Oh Heavens. Scandal sheets.
“I assume,” her father said with devastating calm, “that you can explain this.”
He crossed the room and placed the papers before her on the small table. Penelope looked down.
The words swam before her eyes at first, refusing to coalesce into meaning. Then they sharpened with hideous clarity:
...observed in the early hours entering the residence of His Grace, the Duke of Blackmere... unaccompanied save for a maid... remained within for a considerable duration... one can only imagine what manner of business requires such clandestine nocturnal visits...