‘Nonsense. A French lesson is the perfect setting for dashing intrigues. There could have been a spy in the linen cupboard, requiring a spectacular sword fight. Or an inland pirate raid.’ Daisy shrugged, sighing. ‘He was most disappointing. All he did was correct our pronunciation, and look at you every time you were looking at something else.’
Cora looked down at her embroidery, managing to maintain her composure with a tremendous effort of will. ‘There’s no need to invent fancies when you find reality lacking, Daisy.’
‘I’m not inventing fancies. Iris is the one with the imagination, not me.’ Daisy looked at Iris, who nodded. ‘It’s perfectly true.’
‘Perfectly true, and very dull for us.’ Iris rolled her eyes. ‘A duke full of unrequited passion for a pure-hearted maid is terribly nice, especially when said maid is one’s governess, but we had rather hoped he would be looking plaintively at us.’
‘That’s more than enough. Pay attention to your stitching.’ Cora spoke even more severely than she had meant to; the girls bent over their hoops, chastened, but not before exchanging meaningful looks. Cora concentrated doubly hard on the neatly stitched threads in her hands, ignoring the pain in her fingers, making sure each seed pearl was in perfect place as she tried to ignore the joy spreading through her.
Had he really kept looking at her? Good. She hoped it hurt to look at her; hoped that his eyes burned, just has her own had ached whenever she had looked at him. He was so tall, so solid, giving an air of constancy that even his past actions failed to dissolve completely. Cora hoped, with more than a little pettiness, that he suffered; the alternative, the idea that he was looking at her with unrequited passion, was too distressing to contemplate.
Unrequited passion. What a phrase for a girl like Daisy to know—her reading material would need to be closely inspected. An adult phrase, full of a feeling so intense it was almost savage… and, as much as Cora tried to deny it, the phrase that best described what she still felt when she looked at Ashcroft. Passion; raw, frightening passion that filled her body with the force of a midsummer tide.
Ashcroft couldn’t be looking at her in that way. He simply couldn’t. Because if their eyes met one day, their passion finally colliding mid-air, then Cora knew she would throw her dignity aside—cast off everything that had kept her safe and sane in the years since his betrayal. Discard all that, for a single moment of ecstatic union with the man who had hurt her so very dreadfully.
You are a fool. She dug her needle hard into the fabric, deliberately pricking her thumb. Only fools choose to forget.
‘Goodness. Did his Grace leave something behind?’ Iris dropped her hoop onto the desk, pointing excitedly at a neat bundle of fabric left on the window-seat. ‘Might it be a pistol, or a cunning disguise, or an absolute bushel of letters from ladies of the demi-monde?’
‘Iris, that’s enough. We must—Daisy, do not let your hoop fall on the floor! You’ll dirty it!’ Cora snatched up the hoop as Daisy jumped up excitedly, running to retrieve the bundle. ‘And it’s not ladylike in the least to touch things that don’t belong to one.’
‘He left it here. It’s a least a tiny but ours.’ Daisy sat back down, the bundle nestled snugly in her lap. ‘Not quite enough ours to open, though. No doubt you already have an inventive punishment cooked up for me if I choose to disobey, Miss Seabrooke.’
‘Of course I do.’ Cora smiled. ‘I’ll tell Madame Jonquil that you want your newest gown in sea-green. You’ll look drained and colourless for at least three balls in succession.’
‘Intelligent, and horrible.’ Daisy gloomily handed the bundle over to Cora, who put her hoop aside to take it. ‘There’s a note attached to it as well. I think that would deter even the most unrepentant thief.’
‘You have a rather good-hearted view of thieves, Daisy. They’re not normally deterred by a note.’ Cora found the small, folded piece of paper, opening it. ‘And… oh.’
‘Oh?’ Iris leaned forward, embroidery firmly forgotten. ‘Who is the mysterious gift for, Miss Seabrooke?’
‘... Miss Seabrooke, according to the note.’ Cora looked down at the piece of paper, too shocked to invent something convincing. ‘For me.’
For her. He had left something for her. Cora looked at the spidery black handwriting, unable to believe the words written on the paper.
For Miss Cora Seabrooke, and Miss Cora Seabrooke alone.
‘Oh, la! There’s looking plaintive, and then there’s presents. That’s exciting, even if the present isn’t yours.’ Daisy looked at her as appealingly as possible, Iris soon following suit. ‘Come now, tell us what it is, or—or we’ll be perfect devils to the music master, and set fire to Amelia Benson’s awful ringlets—’
‘Daisy, stop.’ Iris looked severely at her sister. ‘Unrequited passion must be treated very seriously. We will need to treat the poor duke as if he is an invalid, and poor Miss Seabrooke as the clear-eyed, soft-hearted maiden who nevertheless has the power to dash the poor man’s hopes asunder—’
‘—Stop. Now.’ The faint edge of desperation in Cora’s voice silenced the girls as effectively as a hand over the mouth. ‘His Grace clearly meant to leave this… item with your mother. It will contain books to aid your French instruction, no doubt—and given that the hour for French lessons is long past, there is no need to open it. Or look at it. Or think about it at all.’
In determined, glowering silence, she ignored the bundle for the next half-hour. Every pleading look or murmured question on the part of the girls was met with either a cold look, or harsh correction of their stitching technique. By the end of embroidery hour, after such torment, both Daisy and Iris ran gratefully from the room without so much as a glance at the mysterious bundle.
Placing her neatly rolled threads down with a sigh of relief, Cora picked up the bundle. Whatever the contents were, Ashcroft had neatly packed them in a bolt of prettily patterned cotton—as if he remembered the colours she liked best, or had at least given some thought to the question.
With trembling fingers, she opened the bundle… and gasped.
Warm, childhood smells of butter and sugar washed over her. Twelve perfect rounds of Innsee butter biscuits sat nestled in the bundle; the fruit of Ashcroft’s secret labours, lightly dusted with sparkling grains of sugar, each biscuit looking more delectable than the last.
He had given them to her. A secret, shared thing; something that could never be adequately explained to anyone else. Sweetness, such aching sweetness… but how could they every break through the bitterness she tasted, such atrocious bitterness, whenever she thought of how their closeness had ended?
Oh, but how divine they smelled. And how hungry she was; not bodily, but famished in a deeper way she couldn’t quite explain, even to herself.
‘Perhaps,’ she murmured to herself, pressing a finger to one of the biscuits, ‘a little taste would do no harm.’
Furtively, as if doing something both secretive and shameful, she waited until dark. Sitting on her bed in her clean but sparse little bedroom, her nightgown failing to keep her from the chill in the air, Cora opened the bundle again as Chiltern House sank into sleep. Her hands ached horribly from a day of small movements; needlework, writing, the hooking of buttons… but as she unwrapped the fabric, the pain seemed to dim.
They were only biscuits. She knew she was treating the gift as if it were something far more meaningful… but he had made them. That imbued them with a significance far greater than the sum of their parts.
She realised, with a flash of embarrassment, that she was holding her breath. Shaking her head, briskly telling herself not to be so silly, she bit down into one of the biscuits without a second thought.
Flavour exploded on her tongue. Fireworks of pure, sensual memory shot through her mind; she was a child again, when everything was simple, James Ashcroft’s hand placed shyly in hers as they watched the cook work. A pure time, an innocent time… it was all there in a single mouthful. Hers.
She swall
owed slowly, staring at the biscuits as if they were a snake. They were dangerous. Under absolutely no circumstances should her fingers already be creeping back into the bundle, searching for another.
Her fingertips brushed against something thin and cold. Repressing the urge to jump, Cora gently hooked the unseen object into her palm, holding it up to the candlelight.
A bracelet. A small, intricately worked bracelet of what was unmistakeably gold. Cora looked at it for some moments, her eyes widening, before dropping it onto her bedclothes as if it were an insect.
How dare he! The underhanded, ludicrous audacity of the man! It wasn’t enough to see her under false pretences, working his way into her life without even acknowledging his past actions. To think that he believed she could be charmed so easily—enchanted by a bag of biscuits and a bracelet too small for any adult woman to wear!
Picking the hated object up with curled fingers and pursed lips, she dropped it back into the bag. She had half a mind to go to Ashcroft House, night and distance be damned, and demand an explanation—but alas, as always, decorum had to be respected. A morning visit would be at the limits of acceptability, but acceptable all the same.
She settled into her blankets, glowering. Dislike was easier; less complicated than the feelings filling her before she had discovered the bracelet. She could keep this annoyance, feed it, until she could put it to use… but such work required nourishment.
Her hand crept back into the bundle, pulling out another biscuit. Wasting food was practically a sin, after all.
Just as Cora was opening the biscuit bundle, Ashcroft sat despondently in his study. He looked out of the window at the dark of a warm spring night, a pile of papers in front of him that all required his most immediate attention.
Pity, then, that his attention was trained entirely on thoughts of Cora Seabrooke. Cora, sitting in the light-filled schoolroom, the delicate scent of narcissus in the air… Cora, deliberately not looking at him, frowning at her needlework as if it had wronged her personally.
He wondered if she’d managed to keep the biscuits away from the girls. As soon as he’d seen her in the kitchen, he’d known that he would give them to her. Almost as good as feeding them to her, watching her delighted face—but he couldn’t imagine doing that. Not if he wanted to finish his paperwork, instead of finishing himself off in his bedroom.
He just wanted to please her. Give her every kind of bodily pleasure. Ashcroft leaned back in his chair, torn between hunger and shame.
‘James? Still up?’ The door opened; Edward Ashcroft came bustling into the room, carrying a pile of documents that Ashcroft winced to look at. ‘Yes, brother, I know. Papers are painful. But now that you’ve decided to be duke, you need to perform a duke’s duties.’
‘I know. What do you think I’ve been doing for the last three hours?’ Ashcroft gestured to the pile, suddenly irritated. ‘I am more than aware of my duties.’
‘Yes. I know.’ His brother’s blank, deliberately calm face was almost more annoying than rage. ‘But for a long time, you weren’t. And I swept up the mess.’
Ashcroft sighed. He held Edward’s gaze for a moment, the air thick with things left unsaid, before looking back at his papers.
Despite his constant, fervent efforts to redeem himself since the years of scandalous debauchery, Ashcroft knew his debt to his brother could never be fully repaid. Even after the service he had performed for him—arguably greater than any normal favour between brothers—he knew that when it came to Edward, there was still much to be done. Edward had pulled him out of innumerable brothels, saved him from any number of ill-advised duels... why, he had even run large parts of the estates in Ashcroft's absence. No younger brother could have been kinder.
Still. A tiny seed of doubt had lodged in his heart, flowering there in darkness. Looking at Edward's kind, patient face, he found himself saying words that he never thought he'd say again.
‘Edward... Cora Seabrooke. When you gave her my letter... how did she take it?’
Edward’s brow furrowed with concern; Ashcroft immediately felt worse than a flea. ‘James, we have already spoken at length of this. What good is it going to do you to hear it again?’
‘I know it seems like putting oneself in the path of suffering. Believe me.’ Ashcroft sat down, one hand to his head. ‘But... But I’m teaching the Chiltern girls a little French, before their first season, and she’s there. Their new chaperone.’
‘Yes. I had heard about the family misfortune.’ Edward spoke primly. ‘A very foolish thing of her father to do, speculating in that fashion. Bad judgement.’
‘Bad judgement for him, and bad luck for Co—for Miss Seabrooke.’ Ashcroft stammered, noting his brother’s frown. ‘But she has taken well to her new station in life. She’s bearing it magnificently, in fact.’
‘Magnificently.’ Edward’s faint repetition of the word made it sound exaggerated. ‘I see. You wish to avoid frightening the poor girl with some... buried sentiment.’
‘Yes.’ Ashcroft hung his head. ‘Exactly.’
‘Oh, James.’ Edward sat opposite him, his face grave. ‘As I said before... she read every word, her face as white as a sheet, and then threw it in the fire before I could stop her. She never shed a tear. With impeccable manners, as usual, she thanked me for the news—and then said, very firmly, that she wished to treat you as if you were dead.’
Dead. The word sat cold in Ashcroft’s stomach. ‘Pretty clear, then.’
‘Clear indeed. Clear enough for me to question his sudden mood of despondency, brother.’ Edward’s eyes narrowed. ‘Has something happened?’
‘No. Goodness, no.’ Ashcroft looked down at his papers, wondering why he felt the need to lie. ‘I was simply wondering, as I have often done, whether a letter was the best way of telling her what needed to be done.’
‘James, I told you then and will repeat it now. Far better to send a letter, explaining the situation with a modicum of sense and decorum, than running to her house like a crazed wretch in the middle of the night. I can hardly bear to imagine how you would have been, if Miss Seabrooke had treated you with the same disdain as she did your letter.’ James sighed. ‘I did it for you, brother. Much as I did everything else, in that period of our lives.’
‘Well… that’s not quite true.’ Ashcroft wondered for a moment why on earth he was bringing it up, before deciding that his brother’s sanctimonious tone was even more annoying than usual. ‘Is it?’
They had never discussed that night. They had never discussed Sabine LaCourt. Better to bury it under the accumulated weight of days—and better to have left it unsaid, Ashcroft realised, as he saw the pain in his brother’s eyes.
‘No. It isn’t true. But then, so many lies were told—and mine was very small, compared to your pile of falsehoods.’ Edward smiled bitterly. ‘Aren’t we even, James?’
‘Of course. I’m sorry that I ever mentioned it.’ Ashcroft inclined his head, feeling with a stab of pain the depth of the gulf that had grown between he and Edward. Why could they not simply discuss, as brothers were meant to do? ‘I suppose you wish me to cease teaching French to the Chiltern girls.’
‘Brother, I have long ceased trying to remonstrate with you as to what is best. It has always been a losing battle.’ Edward sighed, his face weary in the candlelight. ‘Do what you must. I know you would not do something ruinous to Miss Seabrooke’s reputation, like spending uninterrupted time alone with her.’
‘Quite.’ Ashcroft thought guiltily of their meeting in the old kitchen. ‘No time alone.’
‘No time alone with Miss Seabrooke—but plenty of time alone with papers.’ Edward tapped the pile he had placed on Ashcroft’s desk. ‘But for now, I think sleep is a fine idea.’
Ashcroft tried to smile, but it became a yawn. ‘I thought you had ceased telling me what is best.’
‘I know.’ Edward looked profoundly tired; more tired than Ashcroft had ever seen him. ‘But old habits die hard.’
Co
ra had never stolen away from Chiltern Manor before dawn. There’s a first time for everything, her mind whispered, as she quietly lifted the latch and began to walk to Ashcroft House. Thirty minutes on foot, normally—but she was angry, very angry, which meant she would walk much faster than usual.
The bracelet burned in her reticule, half-buried in her skirts. It would have been more correct to wait—to invent an excuse for Lady Chiltern, or even take Daisy and Iris under the pretence of exploring the Ashcroft grounds. But it had been incorrect, most incorrect, to leave that bracelet in the bundle—and when an indelicate act occurred, sometimes indelicacy was the only possible response.
By the time she stood in front of Ashcroft House, her anger was shot through with fear. Possible reasons for being there rushed through her mind, all of them suddenly ridiculous; how was she going to convince the harried butler, or superior housekeeper, that she had a good reason to see the Duke of Innsee alone?
The door opened. Cora realised, to her unwelcome shock, that she was standing in front of Edward Ashcroft.
‘Miss Seabrooke.’ Edward bowed gravely, his eyes showing only a flash of surprise as he took in her bedraggled state. ‘Is… is something the matter? The hour is rather early.’
‘Yes.’ Cora curtseyed low, assailed by sudden, unwelcome memories. ‘I... yes. A small matter for Lord Ashcroft, my lord, that nevertheless needs immediate attention. Forgive me, I—I was rather expecting the butler to open the door.’
‘He normally does, when he’s awake. No visitor normally calls at such an unusual hour.’ Edward looked closely at Cora, his face showing a note of what looked like suspicion. ‘Miss Seabrooke. I do not presume to know the reason for your coming here, or why it was expedient to come so very early, but I really must—’
‘My lord, I am now responsible for two very healthy, very active young women. They rise early, as do I. If I can resolve small matters pertaining to their French lessons quickly and alone, through a direct meeting rather than endless exchanges of letters, then I am disposed to do so—excuse me if I have disturbed you.’ Cora looked into Edward’s eyes, wondering if she had the bravery to say what should come next. ‘Or perhaps it is my new station in life that displeases you? Should I have used the servants’ entrance?’
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