Chapter 3
As soon as the Duke was gone from the room, Hannah gasped as if she were dying. Phoebe looked over at her sister, who had gone as white as a sheet.
“I can’t do this,” she said, bending at the waist, a hand to her ribs as she gasped for breath. “I—I can’t—Phoebe. Phoebe, I can’t.”
The footman that the Duke had left behind to show the guests the way through the house quickly stepped aside so that he was out of eyeshot in the doorway. It was the most humanity that Phoebe had yet seen from anyone at the Redcliff estate.
Hannah kept gasping as though her stays were too tight.
“Stop this at once, Hannah!” Lord Turner snapped. “Stop it immediately.”
Phoebe couldn’t resist rolling her eyes as she stepped between her sister and their father. Yes, shouting at a person was the best way to get them to calm down. How completely obvious.
“Hannah,” she said softly. “Take a deep breath. Slowly… with me. Come on.”
But Hannah only grew more panicked; she shook her head frantically, as if trying to dispel the vestiges of a bad dream.
“No, Phoebe, I—you don’t understand,” she said, her eyes wide, her pupils practically overtaking the green ring of her eyes that matched that of her elder sister. “I can’t. He’s so—he was so rude. He’s so cold! I can’t—I—”
Her chest started to heave with the force of her breaths. Phoebe reached out a hand, but Hannah batted it away before it could land.
“I have to go,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I just—I need air.”
She staggered back another step, then raced from the room. Phoebe, absolutely flummoxed by this uncharacteristic behavior, stared after her. Hannah had always been prone to the occasional moods and flights of fancy, but this?
“Phoebe!” Lord Turner turned on the daughter who had remained in the room, his eyes flashing with fury. “How could you let this happen?”
Phoebe gaped at him. This whole evening felt like something out of a dream, one of those truly strange dreams that left her waking too abruptly, blinking in confusion to find herself safe in bed.
Gosh, Phoebe would love to be in bed right now. She would accept any place where people wouldn’t try to make her solve their problems, actually.
But she’d never been able to resist fighting for Hannah.
“She’s upset,” she said levelly to her father, even though she felt far from level and he deserved her temper more than her calm. “I’m sure she just needs a moment to gather her thoughts.”
“Unacceptable!” her father hissed through his teeth. “Retrieve her at once, Phoebe!”
There really wasn’t any arguing with him.
There never had been. This was, after all, the man who had made them all attend a funeral the day after Christmas, who had told his daughters that crying for more than a day was unbecoming.
He was a man who had very likely never loved anything except for himself. She didn’t think he knew how.
Besides, she really was worried about her sister.
“Very well,” she said sharply. He’d no doubt have something to say about that later, but Phoebe couldn’t worry about it for now. “I’ll find her.”
Phoebe was the third person to flee from the room in as many minutes, and she doubted that her tenuous grip on her temper could withstand even one minute more of her father’s total lack of care for either of his children.
Phoebe was sufficiently focused on her storming that she managed to turn a corner and plow directly into a wall.
She almost fell directly on her poor bum again, except the wall—reached out and grabbed her?
Phoebe blinked and found herself looking up—again—at the Duke of Redcliff.
And he was scowling.
Again.
History ought not be allowed to repeat itself in such short order, she thought sourly.
“Miss Turner,” the Duke said sternly, “do you need constant supervision? Do you need some sort of aide to follow you and ensure that you don’t go tumbling over every obstacle in your path?”
His hands were still on her arms, even as he insulted her. The audacity.
Phoebe added a small mental note to her previous assessment of the Duke’s appearance.
No, he still wasn’t beautiful, but he was striking.
Looking at him felt almost risky, like she was doing something she oughtn’t.
The mere idea made Phoebe straighten her spine and look even harder.
She didn’t care how many wars he had survived.
She wasn’t going to be cowed by a stern gaze with a title.
“You crashed into me,” Phoebe insisted, even though she was all but certain that this was not at all the case.
Sometimes, bravado was all that was needed in these circumstances, however.
So often, men relied on women just bowing to their dictates.
Phoebe had learned long ago that confidence was a useful tool in dealing with gentlemen.
Or not gentlemen, as the people she encountered on her adventures often were far removed.
Indeed, the Duke reared back his head, as if he’d been struck. This brought him up short against the limits of his reach; he glared at his hands like they belonged to someone else, then dropped Phoebe like she was on fire.
Phoebe pressed her lips together against a smile. It was satisfying to regain the upper hand at last.
“I did not,” he retorted, then shook his head. “And you ought not be roaming around the house. I told you, there was a footman to escort you to the dining room.”
“I’m not going to the dining room,” she said, trying to step around him. He neatly sidestepped, too, blocking her. “Excuse me.”
“You are a guest,” he said. “You aren’t supposed to be wandering wherever you please.”
Phoebe stepped aside again. He blocked her again.
“We are meant to be here for several days, aren’t we?” she countered. “Do you mean to tell me that I’m to be chaperoned for every step?”
“You do seem to need it,” he returned far too easily. Phoebe did not like that he was as adept in verbal sparring as his reputation said he was with real weapons.
She stepped; he stepped.
“Would you—would you stop that?” she snapped. It had been the most trying evening. “I’m trying to find Hannah.”
His lips moved in what, on a less serious man, might have been a smile.
“So your sister is also roaming my home,” he said. “You do realize, Miss Turner, that your family has already presented an alarming number of irregularities in our arrangement. Wandering women. The younger sister marrying before the elder.”
“You really do seem remarkably worried about that,” she said. “Have you not traveled in Society since, oh, I don’t know, the late sixteenth century? Perhaps my father just thought Hannah would suit you better. Would—For God’s sake, will you…?”
Phoebe had vaguely hoped that she might be able to step around him if she talked at the same time, distracting him enough to get the opportunity to dart past. She recognized that this whole thing was absurd, of course, but such concerns were secondary to worrying about Hannah.
“I will not move,” the Duke said. He did not seem to notice the absurdity of the situation in the least. Or perhaps they trained that out of a man in the Navy.
Maybe staring at the vast expanse of sea taught you to embrace everything with life-or-death seriousness. “I think you are trying to trick me.”
Phoebe threw up her hands.
“Oh, yes, you’ve done it,” she said. “You’ve figured out my devious plan to walk past you. Well done. Now, do you think I could go after my sister?”
“No, that’s not it,” he said, ignoring her main point entirely. Phoebe really was learning so very much about military service. Apparently, sheer bloody-mindedness was the defining characteristic of a naval officer.
“I think,” he said, tilting her head like he was a detective, “that you are hiding some sort of scandal.”
Phoebe didn’t react. Yes, nearly everything she’d done the past few years was prime for scandal. But in those same few years, she’d never been caught by anyone beyond her own father—and, Phoebe supposed, Ariadne Nightingale, now the Duchess of Wilds, but Phoebe trusted her friend implicitly.
Thus, no matter her father’s catastrophizing, Phoebe did not truly believe that ruin was on her horizon.
“The scandal of me trying to find my sister,” she said cheerfully.
The Duke was immune to suggestion.
“No,” he repeated. “I think your sister has been compromised and that you are trying to marry her off before her indiscretion comes to light.”
“Excuse me?” Phoebe cried, utterly outraged.
“It isn’t illogical,” he said, his tone almost contemplative, if not for that unshakeable line of ice that was always there. “People would be less likely to gossip about a duchess than a mere viscount’s daughter.”
That mere was a bit insulting, but it was so much less insulting than everything else that Phoebe decided to let it pass.
“You are being unforgivably rude,” she told him furiously, as she began to suspect that he might not actually know this, caught up in his questions of logic and solving an imaginary mystery as he was. “You do realize that you cannot have it both ways, don’t you?”
Oh, very well, yes. These comments were not entirely for his edification. She was also very, very deeply annoyed.
“You cannot,” she continued, “both fuss about propriety and demand to know personal details about my sister. Details,” she added hotly, before he got any ideas, “that do not even exist. No, my sister has not been ruined. And it is highly, highly improper of you to speak about this!”
“It’s not propriety that I value,” he returned, showing that he had an almost supernatural ability to miss the point of a conversation. They ought to study him at a university somewhere. “It’s order. Clarity. These are the kinds of things that keep you alive in a war.”
“This is not a war!” She was talking far too loudly. She was practically yelling at him. It was extraordinarily indecorous, even for her, but she was at her wits’ end. “This is not the navy!”
“Are you going to be a problem?” he asked her, running his eyes up and down her form, assessing her.
In most men, Phoebe would consider this a liberty.
In the Duke of Redcliff, it seemed almost like a compliment.
As if he considered her a worthy adversary.
“You seem like you’re going to be a problem.
And that is not tolerable. There is an order to things—”
“A wife is not a soldier!”
It was only when she really, fully lost her temper that the quirk of his lips turned into a full smirk. It was an unpracticed expression, as if it had been a while since he had used those muscles. Phoebe was horrified to discover that it took his features from merely striking to actually handsome.
“Ah, but Miss Turner,” he said. He sounded amused. It was dreadful. “You will not be my wife.”
Phoebe felt… something when he said that. She didn’t know how to name it, but she knew with certainty that she oughtn’t be feeling it.
And, even more certainly, she shouldn’t be standing this close to him. She hadn’t even noticed herself stepping closer, but now, somehow, they were practically chest to chest. One more heaving breath, and they’d be touching.
Phoebe stumbled back so abruptly and so far that she hit the wall behind her. She didn’t fall, at least. Her pride couldn’t have survived falling in front of him for a third time this evening.
Her eyes skittered away from him.
“We’ll be family,” she said, trying to sound dismissive and unconcerned. “I’ve never had a brother before.”
The words sounded extremely wrong. Probably because of his coldness. Yes. That was it.
She wished he would say something. Anything. But he was just watching her with those inscrutable eyes.
It was upon this highly uncomfortable scene that a maid stumbled when she entered the hallway. She darted her eyes between Phoebe and her employer, then seemed to decide that whatever this was, it was none of her business.
Phoebe wished she had even an ounce of the maid’s good sense.
The young woman folded her hands neatly in front of herself, then cleared her throat delicately.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace, miss,” she said, bobbing a curtsey. “But Miss Turner—the other Miss Turner—she’s gone.”