Chapter 10
Susanna took in a deep breath, set her shoulders, and then knocked on her father’s study door.
He was not a warm gentleman, and he took very little interest in anything that Susanna or even Maude did.
The only reason he was here in London was for his own business affairs rather than having any desire to chaperone Susanna or Maude.
Being a Duke meant that he had excellent standing and did not have to do anything he did not wish to do, which meant he only attended social occasions when he desired to or when there would be some benefit for him.
Susanna was not particularly close to her father, and this made the conversation all the more difficult.
“Come.”
Licking her lips, Susanna steeled herself, closed her eyes, and then walked into the study, trying to smile.
The room smelled of leather and cigar smoke, the heavy curtains drawn half-closed against the afternoon light.
Her father sat behind his great mahogany desk, papers spread before him, a glass of port at his elbow.
He did not rise when she entered, nor did he look up until she had already reached the center of the room.
“Good afternoon, father.”
He wrinkled his nose as if she were a disagreeable scent. “Susanna. What is it? I am expecting Lord Yarmouth this afternoon, so I can only spare you a moment or two.”
“I thank you.” Not quite certain how she ought to bring the matter to her mind into conversation, she hesitated. “Father, I have heard a rumor that has concerned me.”
A lift of his eyebrow was his only response. With a quickening of her heart, she clasped her hands in front of her. “Father, a gentleman informed me that he heard there were some financial concerns and therefore, he could not consider an acquaintance with me.”
A long, pronounced silence came over the room. It was so thick and heavy that Susanna did not think she could find a single word to speak into it, wondering if her father was going to berate her for even suggesting such a thing.
“A gentleman.”
She nodded, pressing her lips flat together.
“Then might I suggest that you inform this gentleman that you, as the daughter of a Duke, do not take kindly to fellows who listen to unsubstantiated rumors and that you will instead seek out the company of gentlemen who know what a privilege it would be to marry into our family.”
The anger in his voice stiffened Susanna’s spine, her throat constricting.
“I do not think such gentlemen are even worth your time, Susanna,” her father said, flicking his fingers in her direction as if he were dismissing her. “Is that all?”
She was about to nod, about to turn away, only to hesitate. This was her one chance to speak to her father about this matter, her only opportunity to find out what it was that Lord Blackwood might have learned about him. “I do not mean to pry, father, but might I ask if everything is… stable?”
The glint in his eye told her that she had overstepped.
“If you are asking me whether or not I am solvent, then I can assure you that I have never had more coin than I do at present,” he said, his voice now a good deal lower than before.
“The gentleman spoke of investments.” Susanna lifted her gaze and held her father’s steadily, doing her best to keep the tiny tremor out of her voice. “And debts.”
“Debts?” The word reverberated around the room, making Susanna shiver. “How dare you suggest such a thing?”
“I – I did not suggest it,” she stammered, taking a step away. “Father, I am only repeating what it is this gentleman said!”
Her father slammed one fist down on his desk, making her jump with fright. “What is the name of this gentleman? Tell me now, and I will speak to him myself! More than that, I will take him to my solicitors and show him all of my investments and the like, if that will satisfy his concern!”
Susanna swallowed thickly. “I – I do not think –”
A rap on the door interrupted her. The Duke’s eyes narrowed, glaring at her, his color heightened.
After a moment, he straightened, cleared his throat, and then dismissed Susanna with a flick of his hand.
At the same time, he called for the butler to enter and, as Susanna left, both the butler and Lord Yarmouth stepped in.
Sweat broke out lightly across her forehead as she hurried out of the room and along the hallway.
Given her father’s response, Susanna had to believe that he was not in any great difficulty financially.
If she was to believe him – and Susanna thought she did – there were no debts and no poor investments.
So what did Lord Blackwood mean by writing to Lord Lancashire? Had he simply been wrong?
“Whatever are you doing, Susanna?”
She blinked, pulled out of her thoughts. “Maude, I –”
“You are not to come to the drawing room this afternoon,” Maude said, with a wave of her hand as if Susanna were something offensive.
“I have three gentlemen already coming to call, and I should like their attention to be solely upon me. One of them is already considering courtship… and he is such an excellent gentleman.”
Susanna forced a smile. “Of course.”
“Good.” Maude turned on her heel and, her head held high, began to walk away. “I am certain to make an excellent match very soon, and you should be grateful for that, Susanna. It means that you will then have your opportunity, once I am wed and settled.”
But then something strange happened. At the far end of the hallway, Maude stopped.
She did not turn around — not fully — but her head tilted just slightly, as though some invisible hand had pulled at her shoulder.
For the space of a breath, she stood there, one hand braced against the doorframe, perfectly still.
“Susanna, I…”
The words trailed into nothing. Susanna waited, her pulse quickening, hardly daring to hope.
But whatever Maude had been about to say — whatever crack had threatened to open in her composure — she sealed it shut before it could widen.
Her shoulders squared, her chin lifted, and she stepped through the doorway without looking back.
The click of the latch was small and final.
Susanna stared at the closed door for a long moment.
She could not be certain what she had just witnessed.
Perhaps it had been nothing — a momentary hesitation, a stray thought that dissolved before it could take shape.
But something in her sister’s voice, in that brief, unfinished sentence, had sounded almost like regret.
It made the ache worse, somehow. If Maude felt nothing at all, Susanna could have hardened herself against the cruelty, built a wall, and kept it standing.
But if there was something softer still buried beneath the jealousy and the sharp words — some remnant of the girl who had once crawled into Susanna’s bed during a thunderstorm and whispered, Don’t be frightened, I’m here — then the loss was not simply of a sister’s kindness but of something that had once been real and was now deliberately, carefully destroyed.
Susanna rubbed at her forehead, trying not to allow the pain her sister had brought to torment her.
It was always like this with Maude — the casual assumption that Susanna’s feelings were of no consequence, the bright certainty that she was the center of every room she entered, and the total blindness to how deeply her words could cut.
Susanna had long since stopped expecting kindness from her sister.
But there were moments — like this one, standing alone in the hallway of their father’s townhouse, with the sound of Maude’s laughter already floating back from the drawing room — when the loneliness of it pressed against her chest like a physical weight.
“Miss?”
Sniffing, Susanna composed herself quickly at the arrival of a maid. “Yes?”
“Lady Ellen has come to call. She is waiting for you in the parlor.”
Relief flooded Susanna, and with a nod, she hurried towards the parlor.
But as she passed the drawing room, the door stood slightly ajar, and she could not help but glance through the gap.
The three gentlemen callers had evidently stepped out — perhaps to speak with the butler, or to take a turn in the garden — for Maude sat alone on the settee.
Not posing, not arranging herself, not performing for anyone.
Just sitting. And the expression on her face stopped Susanna mid-step.
It was blank. Not serene, not contemplative — blank, in the way a stage is blank when the audience has gone, and the lamps are guttered.
Maude stared at the empty chair opposite her, and in the wash of afternoon light from the window, she looked younger than her years and infinitely older, all at once.
Her hands lay open in her lap, palms up, as though she had been holding something that had dissolved.
There was no sparkle, no vivacity, no bright defiance — only a woman sitting in the ruins of her own performance, waiting for the curtain to rise again so she could pretend she had never stopped smiling.
Then a footstep sounded in the corridor, and the transformation was so swift it was almost violent.
Maude’s spine straightened, her chin lifted, and the emptiness vanished behind a smile so bright and practiced that it looked as though it had been painted on.
By the time the first gentleman reappeared in the doorway, she was laughing at something no one had said, gesturing with her fan as though she had been mid-conversation all along.
Susanna moved quickly past the door, her throat tight.
She did not know what she had just seen.
She was not even certain she had seen it at all.
But the image stayed with her — Maude’s open hands, Maude’s empty eyes — and it settled beside the unfinished sentence in the hallway like a second piece of a puzzle she did not yet know how to solve.