Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Adeline found the morning too bright. Greystone wore its usual calm.
Mist burning off the lawns, rooks arguing in the elms, the house breathing in its slow, stone way.
Inside, the servants moved with their steady rhythm.
Fires were laid, silver polished, breakfast things cleared. It ought to have been peaceful.
She carried Louisa’s discarded shawl back toward the schoolroom, meaning to leave it on the peg. Louisa had run ahead to show Cordelia a particularly crooked drawing. Adeline had claimed she must see to the accounts to gain a half hour alone. She didn’t reach the schoolroom.
“Lady Adeline.” Lord Duskwood’s voice came from the doorway of the little sitting room that overlooked the rose garden. “Might I have a word?”
He had a knack for making even simple requests sound light. This one was not light. His tone lacked the easy tilt she’d grown used to in London, the careless flirting, the teasing courtesy. He looked tired from the ride and the long talk with Winston the night before. He also looked wary.
“Of course,” she said. “Is something amiss?”
“That’s my question.” He stepped back to let her pass him and shut the door behind them, cutting off the sound of distant laughter.
The sitting room was warm, the fire banked low.
Cordelia had left a book on the side table and a half-worked embroidery hoop by the chair.
The ordinariness of it made Adeline feel disloyal for bringing her secrets into the room.
Lord Duskwood stayed standing. So did she.
“I’ll be frank,” he said. “I rode half of Surrey this week. I asked questions I had no business asking. I came to a conclusion I don’t much like.”
“Then I should sit,” she said, and did. “If you mean to discuss such things with me. Go on.”
He watched her closely, as if noting how she took each word. “Do you mean my friend harm, Miss Wilkinson? Him or his family?”
The question wound her more than any other accusation could have done. “No. Of course not.”
“Promise me that,” he said, and the easy Lord Duskwood was gone. This was a soldier, or a man who’d watched one fall.
“I promise,” she said at once. “On anything you like. On my mother’s memory if you wish.”
“That will do,” he said quietly. “Next, are you truly who you say you are?”
There it was. The thing that had been circling the house since they left London finally spoke in simple words.
“I’m not,” she said. “Not as I said at first, I mean. I’ve told Winston. I am Lord Harston’s daughter.”
He took that without visible surprise. “Lady Adeline Warren.”
“Yes.”
Silence. He moved to the window, looked out, then back at her. When he spoke again, there was no flirtation left in him at all.
“Your father is ruined,” he said. “Drowning in debt. He’s been creative in trying to right himself. Did you know that?”
“I knew he liked the gaming tables more than he liked his family,” she said. “I didn’t know the sums.”
“Did you know he has been approaching gentlemen,” Lord Duskwood went on, “with talk of a pure and private daughter in the country? That he has requested money up front, always with some reason why the daughter can’t yet be seen?”
She stared at him. “No.”
“Viscount Ashby showed me his letter,” Oswald said.
“There are others. The pattern’s clear enough.
The daughter is bait. The money, the catch.
Now your father is near the end of his rope.
Debtors’ prison is close enough he can smell it.
And suddenly his daughter is under a Duke’s roof, using another name. ”
She felt the blood leave her face. “You think I knew of this. That I’m his accomplice.”
“I think,” Lord Duskwood said carefully, “that desperate men use whatever lies nearest to hand. I think it’d be a neat trick to pretend you’d fled him, throw yourself on Winston’s protection, and then turn his honor into a purse.
I think you are clever enough to do it, but that doesn’t mean you have. ”
“Clever enough…” Her throat closed. “Are you asking whether I’m trying to trap Winston into marriage to pay my father’s debts?”
“Yes,” he said.
She hadn’t expected the bluntness. It shook her more than a shout would have.
“No,” she said, and the word tore at her. “No! How can you think…? Is that what Winston believes?”
Oswald’s gaze didn’t soften. “He’d be a fool not to consider it. I’m trying to keep him from being a fool.”
She pressed her hands together until her knuckles hurt. “He knows who I am now. He knows what my father did to my mother. I told him everything.”
“Did you tell him that you walked into his house with a false name at your father’s time of greatest need?” Oswald asked. “That you’ve been living under his roof while your father circulates letters about a daughter in retreat?”
“Yes,” she said, “though not in those exact words. He knows I lied. He knows why.”
“Do you?” Oswald asked.
She flinched. It was too near the bone. Too like her own doubts given a voice.
“I came here to escape my father,” she said. “Not to milk anyone for his sake. I have never sent a letter to him. I have never taken a penny connected to his schemes. If he’s using my name, he does it against my will.”
“Perhaps,” Lord Duskwood said, and the word stung more than a denial.
She stared at him. “You still don’t believe me.”
“I believe,” he said slowly, “that you are dangerous. If Harston falls, he’ll try to pull you down with him. And if you fall, Winston goes after you. My job is to see he doesn’t break his neck on the way.”
“And I’m…in the way.”
“You’re in the center of it,” he said. “Which is worse.”
He pushed off from the window. “He means to stand between you and Harston. It’s his nature. But if this is a game played at his expense, I’ll see it ended before it costs him more than the wound it already has.”
“What wound?” she whispered.
“The one in his face when I asked if he wanted to marry you,” Lord Duskwood said flatly. “He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.” He glowered at her. “Don’t pretend you haven’t seen it.”
She thought of the vicarage hearth, of Winston’s hand on hers in the carriage, of the spring on the hill.
A recollection flew to her mind. So many weeks ago, before they had given themselves one another, she had told Winston she would not simply be his mistress.
She had laid the sentiment bare. And now…
Now, what did she expect to happen next?
Adeline’s cheeks burned. “I never asked for…”
“I know,” Oswald cut in. “That’s what makes it worse. Intentions don’t matter much once the world starts talking.”
He moved toward the door, then paused. “I did not come to condemn you, Lady Adeline. If you mean what you say, then God help you, because Harston won’t. But until this is settled, my first loyalty is to Winston. Remember that.”
He left her there, the little room suddenly too small for breath. She sat down hard on Cordelia’s abandoned chair and pressed her fingers to her temples.
Trap Winston into marriage? Pay my father’s debts?
The words didn’t sound real, but the doubt in Lord Duskwood’s eyes had been.
Is that what Winston believes?
The thought lodged like a splinter. Winston had said he believed her. Had held her, had spoken of Louisa needing a mother, of standing with her when Harston came. But Oswald’s words chafed.
He’d be a fool not to consider it. Winston is no fool.
How long before consideration became conviction?
How long before Harston’s lies, Pike’s whispers, Bow Street’s interest turned suspicion into something harder?
She could sit here, safe under a Duke’s roof, and let Winston fight for her.
Or she could do what she should have done from the day she left Harston House.
Return and face the place where it had begun.
Not him. Not my father. I have no wish to stand in his presence. But the house. There may be someone there who saw what I saw. Who knows what I know. A witness to stand beside me.
If she could persuade one of them to speak, write a statement, put their name to what they’d seen, Harston’s accusations would look like what they were. A man’s revenge.
She stood abruptly. The room swam for a moment and steadied.
She would not wait for the world to decide her fate.
She would not hide behind Winston’s title and let him be bloodied for her.
If she could bring him proof, even a start of it, he could use it with whatever runner Lord Duskwood had found.
Together, they could build something solid.
She took a breath and opened the small drawer in Cordelia’s writing table.
There was paper there, and ink. For a moment, she thought of leaving a note.
Forgive me. I must go. I’m trying to help.
But any note could be found by the wrong hands.
Read in the wrong light. Used against them.
She closed the drawer without writing. Upstairs, in the small chamber off Louisa’s, she packed what she could into her old, scuffed valise.
One spare gown, clean linen, and her small purse with what remained of her wages.
She took the plainest cloak she owned and the bonnet most like a governess’s.
She paused only once, looking at Louisa’s bed. The coverlet was already turned back for the evening with the doll propped in its usual place.
“I will come back,” she whispered. “One way or another.”
Then she slipped out by the service stairs.
The yard was busy enough not to notice one more figure.
A boy was sweeping near the kitchen door while a groom led a horse from the stable.
Adeline kept to the shadows of the wall and went not to the carriage house but to the lane, where local carts sometimes paused to deliver produce.
Luck or providence sent one within minutes.
It was a small farmer’s cart, half-empty of sacks.
The man had the look of someone more inclined to mind his own business than ask questions.