Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rain threatened all afternoon.
Low, oppressive gray clouds pressed heavily over Brigrock Hall, while a relentless autumn wind rattled the last skeletal leaves against the tall glass windows.
Penelope sat in the morning room, the cozy fire doing little to ease a strange, hollow restlessness in her chest. A piece of cream linen embroidery lay entirely forgotten in her lap.
Beside her on the carpet, Nicholas was sitting cross-legged next to Hector, attempting to teach the massive white-and-chestnut hound a series of increasingly questionable tricks.
Penelope’s gaze drifted back toward the rain-streaked window. Malcolm had ridden out shortly after breakfast, accompanied by his estate manager, to inspect several tenant cottages that had been severely damaged by the recent northern storms.
He hadn’t left without a word, though. Before stepping out into the chill morning air, he had pressed a warm, lingering kiss to her forehead, his large hand resting briefly but possessively at the curve of her waist. Nicholas had loudly and dramatically turned his back, pretending to be intensely fascinated by a grandfather clock, though his ears had turned bright pink.
The phantom warmth of Malcolm’s touch still lingered on her skin, sending a delicate shudder through her veins.
Three days. Only three short days had passed since their wedding night, since the terrifying, beautiful storm of his touch had completely undone her.
They were in the quiet, domestic phase of learning one another now, a dance of shifting habits and unspoken rhythms.
Penelope was rapidly memorizing every facet of her new husband.
She knew the precise way he impatiently loosened his cravat when a tenant ledger was missing a figure.
She knew the way his heavy footsteps would invariably pause outside Nicholas’s bedchamber door every evening, lingering in the dark corridor to listen to the boy’s rhythmic breathing before he finally retired to his own rooms.
Most of all, she was learning the way he touched her now. It was constant, heavy, and seemingly uncontrollable.
Small, absent gestures filled their hours: the brush of his long fingers against her spine while passing behind her chair at breakfast; his lips pressing softly against her temple when handing her a fresh cup of tea; the intoxicating weight of his bare palm settling warm against her knee beneath the linen tablecloth at dinner, holding her there as if he simply could not bear to let her drift too far away.
The door of the morning room clicked open.
A young footman entered, his posture unusually rigid as he carried a polished silver tray. “For you, Your Grace.”
Penelope looked up from her embroidery. A neatly folded parchment note rested beside the fresh tea service.
Nicholas immediately abandoned his post beside Hector and scrambled eagerly to his feet. “Is it a message from Papa?”
“Possibly, darling.”
Penelope reached for the parchment, but as she did, her eyes flicked to the young footman. The boy kept his chin tucked tight to his chest, his eyes lowered far too carefully, his fingers trembling slightly against the edge of the silver tray.
Something small and sharp pricked faintly at her maternal instincts, a sudden ripple in the room’s atmosphere. But before she could question him, Nicholas had already darted forward excitedly, tugging on her dark green silk sleeve.
“Read it aloud, Mama! What does it say?”
Penelope broke the wax seal and opened the note. The handwriting was thick and hurried, the ink slightly smudged, but it bore the familiar, heavy slants of the Duke’s hand.
Penelope,
Meet me at the old glasshouse near the south gardens. I need to speak with you before I return to the main house. Bring Nicholas.
M
Her elegant brows drew together in slight confusion. “The glasshouse?” she murmured under her breath.
Nicholas brightened instantly, bouncing on his heels. “Can we go, Mama? Can we?”
Penelope looked back toward the dark windows, where the sky was bruising into a deep, ominous purple. “Your papa could simply return indoors if he wished to speak to us, Nicholas. It is freezing outside.”
“Maybe it is a surprise! Maybe he found something in the woods.”
Penelope hesitated. A faint, persistent tug of nerves twisted in her stomach, an old instinct honed by years of surviving cruelty.
But Malcolm a man of action, not poetry.
And the historic glasshouse did overlook the main road leading back toward the courtyard.
It was perfectly reasonable that he might want to intercept them there to show Nicholas a stray puppy or a specimen from the woods.
Nicholas was already reaching eagerly for his small wool coat by the door.
“Very well,” Penelope said at last, suppressing her unease. “But you must put on your heavy riding boots first. It rained heavily this morning, and the gravel paths will be thoroughly soaked.”
Nicholas cheered loudly, throwing his coat over his shoulders.
The glasshouse sat at the isolated, neglected edge of the estate grounds, deep beyond the formal south gardens. Built by a previous generation of Balfours, it was an imposing labyrinth of weathered ironwork and hundreds of towering panes of glass.
Most of the Duke’s exotic summer plants had long since been moved into the indoor conservatories for the winter, leaving the vast structure half-empty, echoing, and shadows-drenched beneath the gray sky.
Nicholas ran wildly ahead down the gravel path, his small boots crunching loudly while Hector tore after him in a chaotic blur of white-and-chestnut fur.
A biting autumn wind stirred her skirts as she approached the heavy double doors of the glasshouse.
Overhead, the massive iron frame creaked softly in the gale.
Long, dead vines curled like skeletal fingers along the outer walls, their brittle leaves scratching rhythmically against the glass panes like someone begging to be let in.
Nicholas pushed the heavy iron-framed doors open first, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. “Papa?”
There was no answer. Only the hollow, metallic sound of the rain beginning to tap softly against the glass roof overhead.
Penelope stepped inside, her slippers clicking against the stone floor. The air inside smelled strongly of damp earth, stagnant water, and decaying winter moss. Rows upon rows of empty terracotta planters lined the long central path, stretching into the dim recesses of the greenhouse.
“Malcolm?” she called out, her voice tight.
Still, nothing but the escalating drumming of the rain.
Nicholas frowned, his excitement instantly dimming as he looked around the desolate space. “Perhaps he is playing a game. Perhaps he is hiding from us.”
“Hector would have found him by now if he were here,” Penelope reasoned, her voice dropping an octave.
The hound was sniffing around the base of an empty iron table enthusiastically, before becoming thoroughly distracted by a discarded, rotting gardening glove.
The faint tug of unease in Penelope’s stomach suddenly sharpened into a terrifying, icy blade. It was too quiet.
“Nicholas,” Penelope said softly, her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs. “We are leaving. Right now.”
She turned sharply back toward the entrance and the heavy iron doors slammed shut with a deafening, violent crash.
Nicholas jumped, letting out a small gasp. Penelope spun around, her breath completely catching in her throat, her blood turning to pure ice in her veins.
Charles stood there.
Rain dotted the shoulders of his dark wool coat, making the fabric look black.
The wide brim of his damp hat cast deep, sinister shadows across his aristocratic features, but it was not enough to hide the ugly, triumphant satisfaction burning in his dark eyes.
He looked unhinged, his lips parted in a cruel, jagged smile.
Every single ounce of warmth drained from Penelope’s body. The nightmare she thought she had escaped had followed her into the dark.
Nicholas moved instantly to her side, his small hand gripping her skirts. “Uncle Charles,” her son said, his voice wary.
Charles didn’t answer. Slow and deliberate, he reached out and slid the iron bolt completely across the double doors. The harsh, metallic scrape of metal against metal echoed through the hollow glasshouse like the locking of a tomb.
Penelope’s pulse lurched violently, a cold sweat breaking out across the nape of her neck. “What are you doing here, Charles?”
Charles ignored her question, taking his time as he peeled his leather gloves off his fingers, one by one. “You truly thought Malcolm summoned you for a romantic little tryst in a rotting greenhouse, Penelope?”
Her stomach turned violently, a wave of profound nausea washing over her. The note. The hurried handwriting that looked just close enough to the Duke’s.
“You forged it,” she whispered, her voice trembling with rising horror.
“Very good,” Charles purred, stepping forward. “I always did admire your intellect. I always knew my brother was too simple to have a wife like you.”
Nicholas grabbed her hand with a terrifyingly tight grip. Penelope instinctively shifted her weight, pulling her son subtly but firmly behind the protective barrier of her green silk skirts.
“You bribed a servant,” she spat.
Charles smiled faintly, a hollow, mocking sound leaving his throat. “Everyone has a price, dear Duchess. A few gold sovereigns can buy an immense amount of loyalty from a frightened stable boy.”
“Leave,” Penelope said, forcing her voice to remain steady, though her knees felt like water. “Malcolm will be back from the tenant cottages at any moment. If he finds you here, he will tear you apart.”
“I do not think I shall leave just yet,” Charles said smoothly.
Above them, the rain intensified into a deafening roar, hammering against the glass roof like thousands of frantic knuckles.