CHAPTER 27
“…and the cottage provisions should be increased for winter.”
Alastair’s voice reached her through the gap in the study door—low, measured, conducting business. Penelope’s feet had carried her this far on autopilot, heading for the kitchen because her body insisted on hunger her mind refused to acknowledge. She had not eaten since yesterday. Had spent the morning packing her trunk with the methodical precision of a woman dismantling her own life one folded garment at a time, and now the corridor stretched before her with the study door ajar and his voice filling the space she needed to pass through.
She should keep walking. She knew that. Nothing good had ever come from standing outside closed doors.
“Thomas and Marianne will need firewood, grain, and whatever else you deem necessary. I want no expense spared.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Crawford. Steady, capable Crawford, who probably had no idea he was participating in the systematic dismantling of Penelope’s remaining composure. “And the Whitcombe matter?”
“Send the letter to my solicitor. Whitcombe’s claims have no legal standing now that Marianne has testified. He overplayed his hand.”
Penelope’s feet would not move. She stood in the corridor, one hand against the wall, listening to her husband conduct the final business of a chapter she had been foolish enough to believe was a story rather than a transaction.
Walk away. Walk away now. You have heard nothing that concerns you?—
“And the London household, Your Grace?” Crawford’s voice, careful. “Regarding the Duchess’s return. Shall I write ahead to have her rooms prepared, or?—”
“Yes.”
One word. It landed in the corridor like a stone thrown into still water.
“The child is gone. The scandal will settle in time, now that the Whitcombes have been dealt with.” A pause. The creak of a chair. When he spoke again, his voice sounded different. The polished, distant, carefully emptied tone of the Duke ofBlackmere conducting affairs. “Her Grace will return to London, and the arrangement will be resolved. It was never meant to be anything else.”
It was never meant to be anything else.
The corridor tilted.
Penelope pressed her palm hard against the wall and held herself upright through what felt like the floor dissolving beneath her feet. The plaster was cool against her skin. Solid. The only solid thing left in a world that had just rearranged itself with efficiency of a man settling his accounts.
An arrangement. A convenience. A scandal contained, a crisis managed, a wife installed and utilised and now, with the crisis resolved, surplus to requirements. He was discussing her departure with his steward in the same tone he’d used for firewood provisions and legal correspondence. She occupied the same category as cottage repairs and solicitor’s letters—a matter to be handled, dispatched, filed away.
Crawford was speaking again. Something about staffing at Blackmere House, about which rooms should be aired. The words reached her muffled and formless, because nothing Crawford said could possibly matter more than the words that had just gutted her where she stood.
She peeled her hand from the wall and turned slowly. She took a deep breath, then climbed the stairs with steps so controlled, so measured, so exquisitely precise that the banister never oncebore her weight, because bearing her own weight was the last act of defiance available to her and she would not surrender it.
She reached her chamber. Closed the door. Stood in the centre of the stripped room with her packed trunk at her feet and her breath coming in short, sharp pulls that she refused—absolutely, completely, with every fibre of will she possessed—to let become sobs.
She had cried enough. Had wept on this floor last night until there was nothing left. Had mourned the nursery, the rocking chair, the midnight corridor, the look on his face when he’d saidit was never a burdenin a voice scraped raw with something she’d been naive enough to mistake for feeling.
No more. She was finished weeping for a man who had summarised their marriage as a matter to be resolved.
The bell pull hung beside the fireplace. Penelope crossed to it and yanked with a force that made the mechanism rattle.
The housemaid appeared in under a minute—young, wide-eyed, already sensing that the careful order of the household had shifted in some fundamental way she could not yet name.
“I need a carriage prepared within the hour.”
The girl blinked. “Within the—Your Grace, the Duke mentioned tomorrow?—”
“I am leaving today. Now. Within the hour, if possible. If His Grace’s carriage is unavailable, I shall hire one from the village. It makes no difference.”
“But, Your Grace…”
“That will be all.”
The maid retreated at speed. Penelope stood alone in the bare room and breathed. In for four. Hold for four. Release for four. The same count Alastair had taught her during Rose’s fever, kneeling beside her in the nursery with his hands on her shoulders and his voice low and sure and?—