Chapter 28
“Shall I draw the bath, Your Grace?”
Penelope’s hand was already reaching for the lavender oil on the nightstand before she remembered there was no lavender oil on the nightstand.
There was no nightstand—not the one she knew, the dark walnut one at the estate with the small chip in the corner where Rose had flung a silver rattle with startling accuracy.
This nightstand was polished mahogany, pristine and untouched, holding a glass of water she had not drunk and a candle she had not lit.
She pulled her hand back. Pressed it flat against the mattress.
“Yes. Thank you, Mary.”
The maid bobbed and disappeared through the dressing room door.
Penelope lay still, staring at the plaster ceiling medallion above her—an intricate wreath of acanthus leaves, beautifully cast, utterly unfamiliar.
At the estate, the ceiling above her bed had a hairline crack that ran from the cornice to the light fitting.
She had traced it with her gaze every morning while Rose’s cries drifted through the wall, that thin, imperious wail that said I am awake and you should be too, and her feet would find the cold floor before her mind had fully surfaced.
No cry came through this wall. No wail, no snuffle, no Lottie humming tunelessly down the corridor.
Just the muffled clatter of a London morning—hooves on cobblestones, a hawker calling something she could not make out, the distant church bell at St James’s counting seven with mechanical indifference.
She sat up. Swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The carpet was thick beneath her bare feet—Aubusson, probably worth more than her childhood bedroom—and she curled her toes into it and breathed.
In for four. Hold for four. Release for—
She stopped. Stood. Crossed to the dressing room where Mary was pouring steaming water into the copper tub, and the air smelled of rosewater and soap and nothing, nothing at all, like lavender.
* * *
The breakfast room at Blackmere House seated twelve. Penelope occupied one chair.
Mrs. Alcott had laid the table with the precision of a woman conducting a military exercise—silver polished to a mirror finish, linen pressed into geometries that could have been measured with a ruler, the toast rack positioned at the exact midpoint between the butter dish and the marmalade.
Two soft-boiled eggs. A pot of tea. A folded copy of the morning’s gazette.
Penelope sat. Lifted the teapot. Poured.
The tea was excellent. She set the cup down without tasting it.
“Will Your Grace be going out this morning?” Mrs. Alcott stood near the sideboard, hands folded, her posture suggesting she had been waiting for exactly this question to occur naturally in the silence.
“Yes. I shall call on my sister. Lady Barton, in Kensington.”
“Very good, Your Grace. Shall I send word ahead?”
“That won’t be necessary. Caroline does not stand on ceremony.”
Mrs. Alcott nodded. A beat passed. The housekeeper’s gaze drifted, with studied casualness, to the untouched eggs. The untouched toast. The tea growing cold in its cup.
“Mrs. Alcott.”
“Your Grace?”
“The table.” Penelope’s fingers tightened around the handle of the teacup. “Tomorrow, please lay it for one. There is no need for—” She gestured at the expanse of white linen, the second place setting opposite her, the empty chair that faced hers across a distance of polished oak. “All of this.”
The housekeeper’s expression did not change. “Of course, Your Grace. I had assumed, given that the household was established for two—”
“One will be sufficient.”
“Very good.”
Mrs. Alcott retreated. The door closed. Penelope sat alone at the table set for two and stared at the empty chair opposite—the one where he would have sat, one leg crossed over the other, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow despite it being breakfast, his grey eyes tracking her over the rim of his cup with that maddening half-attention that saw everything and admitted nothing.
You look as if you haven’t slept, Duchess.
I slept perfectly well, thank you.
Liar. You’ve been awake since four. I heard you pacing.
You could not possibly have heard me pacing. Your rooms are two floors—
I hear everything in this house, Penelope. It is a talent and a curse.
She reached for the toast. Bit into it. It tasted like sawdust. She chewed, swallowed, and took another bite, because not eating was a luxury she could not afford—Caroline would notice, and Caroline’s noticing led to questions, and questions led to answers Penelope had no intention of giving.
She managed to eat the toast and drink the tea. She left the eggs.
She still did not have an appetite.
Penelope had no idea how long she’d sat like that—refusing to see anyone. All she knew was that it took quite some time before she was willing to go to the drawing room again.
Longer still until she was willing to see someone—anyone.
“Aunt Penny! Aunt Penny, look!”
George Barton, aged two and three-quarters, launched himself at Penelope’s knees the moment the drawing room door opened.
He was brandishing a wooden horse with one ear missing and a tail that had been chewed into submission, and his face bore the fierce, uncomplicated pride of a child presenting his most treasured possession to someone whose approval mattered enormously.
“What a magnificent horse.” Penelope crouched—an act that placed her at eye level with her nephew and also, conveniently, hid the way her breath had stuttered when she’d walked through Caroline’s front door and heard the sound of a child’s laughter floating down from the upper floor. “Does he have a name?”
“Captain.” George thrust the horse closer. “He’s brave.”
“He looks very brave.”
“He fights dragons.”
“Naturally.”
“And he eats cake.”
“A horse of excellent taste.” She smoothed George’s hair—dark, like his father’s, thick and unruly despite the nursemaid’s obvious efforts.
Her palm curved over the small skull, and the warmth of it, the solid aliveness of a child’s head beneath her hand, sent something jagged through her ribs that she absorbed without flinching.
“You’ve made a friend.” Caroline stood in the doorway, wiping flour from her hands onto an apron she should not have been wearing and would deny owning if asked.
She was three years older than Penelope, three inches taller, and possessed of the unshakeable confidence of a woman who had married for love and never once regretted it.
“He’s been asking after you since breakfast. Kept pointing at the door and saying Penny come?
until William threatened to ride to Mayfair himself. ”
“Well, here I am.” Penelope straightened. Smiled. The smile felt like lifting something heavy. “I thought I might call this morning. If you’re not occupied.”
“I am covered in flour and George has hidden the cat somewhere in the linen cupboard. I am spectacularly occupied.” Caroline stepped forward and kissed her cheek, then pulled back and held her at arm’s length with the frank, assessing gaze of an elder sister who had changed Penelope’s nappies and was therefore immune to all forms of pretence. “You look thin.”
“I am perfectly—”
“Don’t. Sit. I’m sending for tea and something with cream in it.”
Penelope sat, because arguing with Caroline required energy she did not possess.
George climbed into her lap uninvited, tucked himself against her chest with the boneless confidence of a child who assumed all adults existed primarily for his comfort, and resumed a whispered conversation with Captain the horse that appeared to involve significant military strategy.
The weight of him pressed against her. Warm.
Solid. Smelling of biscuit crumbs and the indefinable sweetness of clean skin and milk.
Her arms closed around him before she could think, and for a moment—one treacherous moment—the weight was right.
The shape was wrong, too big, too heavy, but the weight was right, and her body did not know the difference, and her heart cracked open along the fault line she had been holding shut since the morning she had handed Rose to Marianne and stepped back and felt the absence slam into her like a door.
“Penny sad?” George twisted to look up at her, Captain forgotten.
His brown eyes—Caroline’s eyes, her mother’s eyes, the same warm hazel that looked back from Penelope’s own mirror—searched her face with the artless directness of a child who had not yet learnt that some things should not be said aloud.
“No, sweetheart.” Her voice held. Barely. “Aunt Penny is just very pleased to see you.”
He considered this. Apparently satisfied, he returned to his campaign against the imaginary dragons, and Penelope pressed her chin to the top of his head and breathed.
Caroline returned with tea and a plate of almond cakes arranged with the sort of aggressive generosity that meant she had noticed more than she was saying. She settled into the chair opposite, poured for both of them, and waited.
The silence lasted until Penelope’s second sip. Caroline had always been better at silences than she was—had learnt early that the fastest way to extract a confession from her youngest sister was simply to sit still and let the quiet do its work.
“How is William?” Penelope asked, because she needed to fill the space before Caroline filled it for her.
“Busy. Something about a land dispute in Surrey. He’s been at his solicitor’s all week.” Caroline picked up her cup, her gaze steady. “He saw Alastair, you know.”
The name dropped through the room like a stone into a pond. Penelope’s hand tightened on her cup.
“At the club,” Caroline continued, her voice carefully, terribly neutral. “Three nights ago. William said he looked—” She paused. Chose her next word with the precision of a woman who understood its weight. “Unwell.”