Chapter 26 #2
“My father is divorcing your sister. You are not family. I do not recognise you. Retaliate, and you know I will do ten times worse. Only your connection to my family has kept you safe from persecution for the crimes you committed in Portugal and elsewhere. A dishonourable discharge is the best you can hope for, but I’d rather see you hang.
One word is all it would take.” He squeezed the man’s jaw with the hand clamped over his mouth.
“Do you understand?” He gave him a rough shake when no answer came. “Do you?”
His uncle’s shoulders stiffened, a last breath of resistance, then he slumped. He nodded.
Sebastian pushed him away then turned, wiping his palm clean, not even bothering to watch the man’s hasty escape. He deserved no more of his attention.
He nodded his thanks to Frederick, then went to retrieve his hat and gloves. He had another call to make.
Lady Pemberthy’s footman ought to be in a museum, but Sebastian was pathetically glad to see his ancient face and even older wig. Even the smell of mothballs and decrepit wool couldn’t stop the corner of his mouth ticking up.
“Lord Cotereigh for Mrs Ardingly,” he told the man, who stepped aside, ushering him silently into the cluttered hall.
He didn’t know why he was smiling, not when snakes knotted in his gut and the violence of his pulse caused his hands to tremble as he pulled off his gloves.
He took a deep breath that tasted of dust, steadying himself with a disapproving glance at the piled boxes and bags of donations in the hallway, the mismatched and shoddy furniture, and the cobwebs in the corners.
He couldn’t blame the maids. He doubted they could even reach the corners, not with all this chaos in the way.
But as he followed the footman and set his foot on the first stair, he saw the bundles in his own hallway—the items Madelaine had returned—and his step faltered, the writhing snakes giving a bite.
They were all cleared away. All those bundles. His staff had followed his somewhat incoherent and bitten off orders to get them out of his sight but put them somewhere safe.
She would wear them again. Or he would buy her all new dresses. He didn’t really care—whatever she preferred. He just hadn’t been able to order them out of his house.
Wasn’t that pathetic? He held the stair rail as he followed the footman’s slow, rheumatic steps, his hand tight.
His palm was damp. Goddammit. He wished he had a drink.
He ought to have returned home, had a glass to steady himself, changed his shirt, his necktie, made certain he looked exactly as he ought.
For all he knew, he was rumpled from his altercation with his uncle, his coat creased or marked, his skin flushed, and maybe the mad glitter of panic in his brain was visible in his eyes.
Was there a mirror? The footman led him inexorably on to the same study where he’d first spoken to her, here at the back of the house.
He cast around the hallway as he walked.
There were oriental plates on the wall, and a tapestry, and for some reason, an old, lacquered fire screen hung up for display, but there was no damn mirror—
“Lord Cotereigh, my lady.”
Sebastian’s heart thumped all the way to his teeth. He set his jaw, ran a hand down the front of his coat, heart still thumping in a hundred places it shouldn’t be, and walked past the footman through the opened door.
Lady Pemberthy stood up from the desk.
Her niece wasn’t there.
He might have laughed, if he’d been capable of such a thing.
Wasn’t this just the opposite of what had happened on his first visit here?
He’d asked for the aunt and been shown to the niece.
Now it was the other way around. But why did that surprise him?
Wasn’t everything about his life recently the opposite of what he wanted?
“Lord Cotereigh.” Lady Pemberthy curtsied, very polite, very formal, as though she wasn’t a daily visitor to his house and halfway towards becoming his new mother.
But he’d hardly spoken to her since that fateful day, the last time they were here together in this house.
Yes, he had been avoiding her, though he’d told himself it was a kindness to her and not because he was a coward.
“Lady Pemberthy.” He inclined his head, just as politely, just as formal. She was dressed in her old, ragged velvets again. Her new clothes hadn’t been in the piles returned to him, but she was obviously refusing to wear them, a show of loyalty to her niece. “I hope you are well?”
“Perfectly well, my lord, thank you. And you?” The look she gave him was a knowing one. She already knew the answer. No, no he was not at all well.
He smiled, repeating, “Perfectly well. Thank you.”
She held her hands clasped demurely in front.
And yet, for a rotund and shabbily dressed female, past middle age and below average height, there was something suddenly forbidding in her chill stillness.
The small discourtesy of the short silence she allowed to pass might as well have been a queenly cut. She raised her plump, stout chin.
“I presume you are here on society business, my lord?”
For what other reason would he dare show his face?
“No, my lady. I am here to see Mrs Ardingly.”
Her clasped hands tightened, her rounded shoulders stiffening further. “My niece is not here.”
“When will she return?”
There was no kindness in the look she gave him. And kindness was such an essential part of her character that she seemed almost inhuman without it. “Next year. Perhaps.”
“Next…” The floor tipped under him, the tilting deck of a boat. Only an effort of will kept him standing.
“She has returned home to Sussex.”
Without saying goodbye? was the first stupid thought he had. Then the rest crowded in, too loud to hear.
Gone.
She’d gone.
His first instinct was to turn and run to his stables and call for his horse. But something held him still. A spear pinned him, hard and dreadful, realisation pinning him in place.
“She told me not to give you her direction, if you asked,” Lady Pemberthy said.
Her words were dull, remote. A cold wind was blowing, muffling everything.
“Though knowing her father’s profession, you could work it out easily enough.
I only plead, on your honour as a gentleman, that you do not.
Please respect my niece’s wishes, Lord Cotereigh.
She does not want to see you ever again. ”