Chapter 24
The morning sun offered no comfort as it cut through the tall windows of the Mayfair townhouse. Corinna stood near the base of the staircase, her fingers loosely clutching the folds of her skirt, watching her sister descend.
Vivienne was dressed in her absolute finest visiting attire, a structured pelisse of deep sapphire wool, her blonde hair arranged with a precision that suggested hours of agonizing work by the maids. She adjusted her kid-leather gloves, snapping the buttons into place with sharp, decisive clicks.
“I am going to call on Lady Cecily,” Vivienne announced, her voice ringing off the high ceiling with an unnatural, defensive brightness.
Corinna did not move. She kept her eyes fixed on her sister. “You should not go there, Vivienne.”
Vivienne stopped halfway down the stairs, her chin lifting with an instant, prickly defensiveness. “And why on earth not?”
“Because she is not your friend,” Corinna said quietly.
Vivienne turned, fixing Corinna with that particular brand of cold, blistering contempt she reserved exclusively for moments when her younger sister spoke truths she refused to face.
She descended the remaining steps and stalked over until she stood inches away, towering over Corinna by a fraction of an inch.
“She has been kinder to me this week than my own sister has been all Season,” Vivienne snapped, her blue eyes flashing with vindictive heat.
“Cecily actually sees me clearly. She understands what I am facing, and she respects it. The only jealous, difficult, miserable person in this house is you, Corinna. You cannot bear that I have won, and that you have been left with nothing.”
Corinna did not blink. She looked into her sister’s face, seeing the blinding vanity that had made Vivienne an easy mark. “She is using you, Vivienne.”
“She is a lady of quality,” Vivienne spat back, turning on her heel with a rustle of heavy wool. “Unlike some people who prefer the company of servants.”
The front door swung open, and the footman stood waiting. Vivienne marched past him into the gray London morning, the door slamming shut behind her with an echoing crack that rattled the glass in the transom.
Corinna stood alone in the hallway.
With a chilling precision, the pieces fell into place in her mind.
Cecily was not offering comfort to a grieving debutante.
She was building something intricate and destructive, using Vivienne’s boundless vanity and raw fury as raw materials.
It was a calculated maneuver, the kind of opening move on a chessboard that looked entirely harmless, even generous, until four turns later when the entire board collapsed under a trap door.
A soft rustle of silk sounded behind her. Corinna turned to find Aunt Phoebe standing in the archway of the sitting room.
Phoebe said nothing at all. She did not offer a clever deduction or a sharp witticism. She simply crossed the short distance, placed her hand briefly and firmly upon Corinna’s shoulder in a gesture of quiet, unyielding solidarity, and turned back toward the warmth of the room.
The hours crawled by like an eternity. Corinna remained in the townhouse, trapped in a state of suspended animation, her mind racing through every possible consequence of the broadsheet, of Vivienne’s foolish alliance, of the looming arrival of her father.
By mid-afternoon, the heavy brass knocker sounded against the front door.
Corinna was sitting on the bench near the console table when the door opened. It was not a formal morning call. It was him.
He arrived alone. There was no Julian standing two steps behind him, no borrowed coat, no performance of a humble secretary playing a part. He wore a dark, impeccably tailored riding coat, his broad shoulders filling the narrow hallway the moment he stepped across the threshold.
The footman looked bewildered, clearly unsure whether he should announce him or throw him out, but Corinna stood up immediately, cutting the tension before it could snap.
He saw her in the hallway before anyone else could intercept them. His blue eyes locked onto hers with a hungry intensity that made her breath hitch in her throat.
“Corinna,” he said. He crossed the marble floor in three long strides, stopping just a hair’s breadth away. “We need to talk. All of it. What passed between us in the garden, at the fair, it was real. Every single second of it. And I will not pretend otherwise, regardless of what comes next.”
Corinna stared up at him. She looked at the hard line of his jaw, the raw honesty burning in his eyes, and the agonizing ache of everything she had wanted to believe. She opened her mouth, the words trembling on her tongue, ready to demand the full, unfiltered truth.
“Corinna.”
The exhausted voice dropped from the top of the stairs like a falling stone.
Corinna flinched, her head snapping up toward the landing.
Sir Gerald Ashwell stood at the head of the grand staircase.
Her father looked older than he had when they parted in the country.
His silvering hair was slightly disheveled, his traveling coat dusted with the soot of a frantic journey from the estate.
His eyes were bloodshot and hollowed out, the exhausted eyes of a man who had traveled since dawn, arriving only to find that his world had caught fire while he was away.
Sir Gerald descended the stairs slowly, his boots striking the wood one step at a time. He looked between Corinna and the man standing beside her, taking in the proximity, the tension, and the absolute ruin hanging thick in the air.
He stopped two steps from the bottom, fixing his gaze squarely on Corinna.
“That is enough,” Sir Gerald said, his flat voice utterly heartbreaking in its disappointment. “You will please go upstairs, Corinna.”
Corinna’s throat tightened. “Father, I—”
“I said, go upstairs,” he repeated, brooking no argument.
She swallowed hard, her eyes darting once to the man beside her.
He was watching her father with a grim, resigned acceptance, his hands balled into tight fists at his sides.
Corinna turned, her skirts brushing against the banister as she slowly forced her feet to climb the stairs, passing her father without looking him in the eye.
When she reached the landing, she paused, gripping the mahogany rail.
Below her, Sir Gerald turned his full, towering presence toward the man who had stolen his daughter’s heart under false pretenses.
“I will see you in the study,” Sir Gerald commanded, his voice ringing with the authority of an injured father.
The door of the study swung open, and then clicked shut, sealing them inside.
Corinna walked slowly down the corridor, but she did not go to her room.
She descended the stairs just far enough to reach the bottom landing, sank down onto the cold wooden step, and stared fixedly at the grain of the floorboards.
She sat there in the stillness, and she did not move for a very long time.