Chapter Two
Georgiana
“It was Sister Agnes!” I cried in shock, clutching my book to my chest and falling back upon a dusty pile of hay, swaddled loosely in a thick wool blanket. “Can you believe it, Mercutio? She was Signora Udolpho all along. She killed the marchioness.”
At my side, Mercutio licked his paws, his dark eyes flicking up to mine as though he’d read The Mysteries of Udolpho a hundred times and was, as usual, bored despite my enthusiastic revelation. Obviously, Georgiana, I imagined him purring.
But it shocked me to my very core. All this time, I’d thought Emily’s father was the killer. Ann Radcliffe had me in her clutches yet again.
A frigid breeze seeped through cracks in my hideout—a little hay shed adjacent to the stables where Mercutio and his many wives often slept—and I tightened my wool blanket around my shoulders as the sunlit air filled with bits of hay and fur and dust. My new ring snagged on a thread, and I braved the cold to untangle it.
Raised diamonds encircled an emerald ring on my right hand. It was heavy, expensive, and absolutely something the marquis would have gifted his lover.
I, however, did not have a lover. Nor a suitor.
Nor any man vying for even a second of my attention.
My ring was a gift from my brother, Peter, who had won it gambling in London.
His new wife was not overly fond of jewelry, especially the gaudy sort, and for that I was grateful, as I was his second choice for its recipient.
I dearly loved the way the gems sparkled on my finger. It must be worth a fortune, but Peter hadn’t once wondered aloud how much. He’d only hoped it would make me happy. And it did, despite it being from my brother and not an eager, lovestruck suitor.
Love! Pish. In the past eight months, I had trained myself well against it.
Romance was no longer something I pined for.
Not in novels, and certainly not in real life.
No, the mystery was for me. Analyzing characters and their human motivations—that was my interest. What makes a person lie?
To what lengths will they keep their secrets, and, what, in the end, causes them to unravel?
In truth, I also loved reading about people whose lives were far worse off than mine. What were scandal and rejection from society compared to being murdered by one’s own family?
I lay back in my spot, huddling close to Mercutio for what bit of warmth his little body offered, and distracted myself from those memories by bringing the book to my nose. “But if Signora Udolpho—Sister Agnes—is still alive, then who is behind that curtain?”
Mercutio paused his licking, his ears twisting keenly, body tensed. He rose up on all fours, his tail swooping as he pounced down from his perch, shoulders gliding smoothly as he stalked toward a Mercutio-sized opening in the wood door.
And just like that, I was alone.
Abandoned by a cat who likely understood only half of what I told him, and that was being generous. He was now my only friend and confidant, and I spoke more to him than I did to any human acquaintance I had left, including my brother and his new bride.
Amelia Moore.
She’d taken his name now. Our name, though I felt less and less of a claim on it.
After Sir Ronald’s house party, and the Grand Mistake I’d made there, Peter had married Amelia, and we were a .
. . family now. I shuddered at the thought.
As the months had passed, it seemed she was his family, and I belonged out here with Mercutio.
Away from their jests and laughter, their late-night rendezvous in his study, their pitying glances were I ever to surface in the middle of an intimate conversation that was likely about me and Oh, what can we do for poor Georgiana?
The answer was nothing. I had paid my dues. I’d offered my apologies, asked for forgiveness from all parties, and even listened to the vicar’s weekly lectures for a month. And, yes, I regretted what I’d done.
I would have never initiated what had surely become the end of my life in more ways than one had I foreseen the repercussions.
That night had cost me my dearest friend, the one man I had ever imagined a future with.
It had cost me every other friend and acquaintance save for the vicar and his patronizing wife.
But most harshly, that one decision cost me the good opinion of the ton.
Society looked down upon me in a way I’d only ever read about in the papers.
Scandal, they called it. Madness.
I had gone mad. Talking to a barn cat. Watching him lure in felines and catch mice and sleep high in the loft in a patch of sunlight, all the while imagining the dramatics of his world, his society. Mercutio was certainly the king of cats.
I feared I would never feel sane again.
“Miss Wood?” a desperate voice called. Jane?
Still bundled, I rolled into a sitting position, my unmanageable hair poking out at every angle. “Yes?”
The wooden door swung open on a squeaky hinge, and Jane huffed a sigh too bone-weary for so young and small a stature. “There you are, Miss Wood. You must come quickly. Someone is here, and Mr. Wood sent for you straightaway.”
Peter knew I did not wish to be present for callers. Not since that first month, when our little country town was satisfied that the rumors were true, that I had scandalized myself and my family, and that I was, by all accounts, and out of Mrs. Beaumont’s own mouth, a trollop.
For a kiss that had lasted until the count of two with a boy I thought I loved.
I sat back in my spot. “No, thank you, Jane. Tell him I am indisposed.”
Jane’s eyes widened. “Mr. Wood and Mrs. Wood insist you join them. Indeed, they are speaking of you at this moment with the duke himself.”
Mercutio poked his head through the door hole, despite the entire door having been opened for him.
“The . . . duke,” I spoke slowly, confused. An old familiar tug of interest struck a kindling in my thoughts. Who had come? And why?
“Yes.” Jane’s round face was turning as pink as a peony. “You are required in the drawing room at once.”
Well. I would certainly feel more shocked by our visitor were I not still reeling over Signora Udolpho’s true identity.
I could not think of a single duke Peter knew well enough to entertain.
Certainly none that had want of my presence.
Unless there was a problem, and Peter needed me.
We both knew Amelia did not have spine enough to confront a duke.
She hardly managed her late baron stepfather.
What if this man was older, severe, demanding things he did not deserve?
I was the only one of us with a free tongue, who could, at present, get away with murder and no one would be surprised.
I stood, brushing hay from my blanket and thin muslin skirts with my free hand, weary already.
I met Jane outside the shed, which sat a short walk from the house. Instantly, Jane went to work picking straws out of my loose chignon, muttering unmentionable distresses, and prodding me with her cold fingers.
“Leave the blanket,” she directed.
“I haven’t a coat,” I said.
Jane was near to tears with worry. All this over a duke? Was Society really worth the stress? In my worst and loneliest nights, through endless tears and painful regret, I had asked myself that very question, and the answer was always unyielding—
Yes.
Acceptance. Approval. Alliances. I had not realized the importance of social connections not just for marriage but for daily life until I’d lost them.
I would do almost anything to have a second chance. To be once again accepted by those who had ousted me by no fault of their own, but by my giving them no choice in the matter.
Loneliness was an ugly, bitter hag, and I was tired of her.
“Leave it!” Jane insisted, and with a huff of annoyance, I let the blanket fall from my shoulders with a light thud upon the cold earth.
Arms folded, I followed her to the house, up the stairs where so long ago Peter and I had descended from our carriage—him, separated from his new love, and me, freshly heartbroken and wholly unprepared for the social rejection that awaited me in the days and months to come.
How quickly life could change.
Figgs opened the door, and we entered.
Jane immediately rounded upon me, prodding me again and pinching my cheeks.
“Flowers!” she snapped to Figgs, who came alive in his pursuit of the vase just behind me.
He gave Jane a hothouse hibiscus, and she bit off the stem with her teeth before plunging the flower in my hair.
“You smell like stale manure. And this dress?” She shook her head in distaste.
The pink muslin was admittedly a year or so old, but so comfortable, and that was all I’d worried over of late.
Jane pushed me toward the drawing room. “You must go in regardless. Mrs. Marcus said to remind you not to embarrass the family!”
The housekeeper warning me? I snorted, then froze at the sound of voices. Low, strong voices. Peter and someone else. And I remembered what I’d already forgotten—appearances and first impressions were everything.
“I should change,” I said, but it was too late. Jane was pushing me through the doorway and into the bright, airy sitting room of the house I’d grown up in. My father’s house until his death two years ago, and now Peter’s.
It did not feel like mine anymore.
Peter’s worried eyes found mine, and the nerves in my stomach tightened into knots.
Where he was normally relaxed with Amelia at his side, nearly always at ease, my brother sat rigid in his chair.
As I strode over, he stood, and the tall man across from him, his back facing me, slowly stood as well.
Towered, more like. The man was tall and broad, his coat finely tailored to fit his intimidating figure. No doubt the finest wool money could buy.
“Georgiana.” Peter frowned, his gaze darting to the man who refused to turn round and face me. “We have a visitor.”