Page 41 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

I sabella, who had been lying in wait with ever-increasing impatience, at last spotted the returning carriage from the windows on the galleried landing.

She watched it sweep up the drive and come to a halt close to the front doors.

The rain had died away, but a heavy, threatening sky overhung the park, as though betokening gathering doom.

From where she stood, she couldn’t see Richard descend from the carriage and head indoors, so she abandoned her post and hurried towards the stairs.

Richard was already in the hallway, handing his rain-splattered hat and coat to Atkins, so she slowed to a more decorous pace, mustered all her elegance, and descended, her gown swishing behind her.

She’d been careful with her selection of what to wear, and had settled, after several false starts that had probably exasperated Hawkins, on a pale-cream muslin embroidered with small blue flowers.

It was one of the simplest of her gowns, and in its simplicity lay its allure.

The vision she’d presented in the cheval mirror had met with both her own and Hawkins’s approval.

Although Hawkins would have had no idea of her intentions.

Richard must have noticed her approach out of the corner of his eye, because he looked up, a concerned frown on his face.

Shoving aside any worry at his expression, she bestowed a welcoming smile on him.

It was not, of course, difficult to do as he was so infernally handsome.

At least, as she got to know him, his resemblance to Marcus had begun to diminish. That was one blessing.

The object here was to get him to like her enough to be on her side if a crisis were to arise. Not to fall under his spell. She would have to keep reminding herself not to succumb.

She paused several steps above him so he had to look up at her. “Richard, how happy I am to see you returned and your tedious business completed.” She batted her lashes at him. “At least I hope it is?”

How deliciously dark and smoldering his eyes were, even when anxious.

What would it be like to allow him the liberty of stealing a kiss?

For an instant, the sobering and somewhat melancholy thought that she’d never been kissed out of love reared its head only to be shoved back down where it belonged.

She would not think about the way Marcus had used her.

That look of concern remained on Richard’s face.

“I think it is…” He banished the look with a smile, albeit a forced one, which only served to make him look more handsome and less than ever like Marcus, who had never in his life looked concerned about anything, not even his own death. “But I may have to attend to it later.”

“Is it something I can help you with?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. But thank you for the offer.”

She descended the last few steps and now had to look up to him.

He was so tall—at least a foot taller than she was.

Taller than Marcus had been, and with a look about him of latent strength that Marcus had never possessed, not even when she’d first known him as a twenty-eight-year-old.

For the last few years of his life, her late husband had chosen to wear a gentleman’s corset to hold in his growing paunch.

She wasn’t supposed to know that, but Hawkins, who’d had it from Hopkins, Marcus’s valet, had divulged the secret.

She and Dora had laughed hysterically about it in private.

Not that she’d ever seen it herself. No, she’d not seen him in a state of undress for a long time before he died. Thank goodness.

She frowned. For someone who had set out with the intention of drawing her prey closer to her, she was doing a poor job of it, when all she could think about was how it might feel to press her lips to his. Heat threatened to rise to her cheeks.

She spoke in a hurry, anxious to distract him from her blush.

“I was about to go for a stroll in the gardens, now the rain has stopped. Would you care to accompany me? I have quite missed your company today.” If she was going to firstly win him and secondly keep him on their side, then the sooner she began, the better.

And the sooner she stopped having silly ideas about loving him.

What? Had she really just thought that? She must be addlepated. The blush increased. Drat it.

She looked down at her feet. Was he going to turn her down? No. Manners got the better of him, but she could see he didn’t want to come. Annoying. A little insulting, in fact.

“Of course.” He held his arm out to her, and she slipped her hand into the crook.

Had he even noticed how beguiling she was looking in this gown?

How her maid had done her hair to look artless and a little untidy, with stray auburn curls cascading onto her shoulders?

What kind of a man was he that her charms seemed to be having no effect?

Or was she wrong in her perception of him?

She steered him through the drawing room and out onto the terrace.

“I often like to take a stroll in the gardens in the afternoons.” A lie, but he wasn’t to know this.

Probably not, at any rate. She liked the gardens well enough, but only when it suited her, and she had nothing else to do.

Or when she fancied working her wiles on someone with a little privacy.

He matched his pace to hers. “I used to play here with Dora when I was a child.”

She pricked her ears. Perhaps it would be a good idea to get him to tell her more about his childhood.

In her experience, men liked to talk about themselves to ladies, and if a lady feigned interest in a man’s tedious conversation, it was a sure way to winning his heart.

As the possessor of a number of men’s hearts, she’d had enough practice at this.

She could do it with Richard. With Diccon.

A sudden overwhelming urge to call him by his nickname swept over her.

She fought it off. “You must have at least a few happy memories of Stourbridge.”

He nodded, and they descended the wide steps into the gardens, where paths opened off to left and right, winding between ornamental bushes and flowerbeds.

Impossible to see far thanks to their intricacies.

The scent of late-flowering roses was strong, and here and there autumn camellias were coming into bud.

She must get one of the servants to pick some of the roses to put in the hallway before it was too late and they were over.

“Of course I had some happy times,” he said, steering her towards the center of the garden where the summerhouse lay. “But I also had some terrible ones.”

Having sufficient of her own, she didn’t want to hear the bad ones. “You and Dora must have been very close.”

Birds were singing in the trees and a patch of blue sky had appeared, hopeful amongst the gray clouds. Perhaps the day was about to improve.

Richard nodded again. “We were. From the moment we met, we were friends.” He sighed. “And nine years later, I cruelly abandoned her without a backward glance. Something for which I feel eternal guilt.” He hesitated. “She is not the girl I used to know. And I feel it’s all my fault.”

Maybe not all his fault, but he wasn’t to know that. Still, she might be able to learn a few things, after all. “What do you mean?”

He stopped beside a statue of a naked cupid, and turned to look down at her, an odd expression in his eyes.

The urge to stand on her tiptoes and plant the kiss she longed for on his lips emerged.

“I mean,” he said, seemingly oblivious to her longing, “that when I took up the commission my grandmother persuaded Marcus’s father to purchase for me, I didn’t for one moment think how Dora would suffer with me gone. ”

“Oh.” It had never before occurred to Isabella that Dora’s life could have been any different to the way it was when she’d first met her. Although she had to admit that right now Dora was far worse than she’d ever been. Understandably.

He gave a shrug of his broad shoulders. “We were friends. One united entity against Marcus. Together, we were strong. She could rise above his treatment, as could I. But I left her. And look what it’s done to her.

All my fault.” He shook his head. “She should be married, with a brood of children, not withering away here at Stourbridge, turning into an old maid. Marcus did that to her. Out of spite.”

Isabella frowned. That Dora was wasting her life away had also never occurred to her.

Dora had always been Dora, the sister of her hated husband, her friend, her ally.

She’d never existed independently. Only she must have.

Once. “She didn’t used to be quite so timid,” she said, feeling her words to be on the inadequate side.

True, but inadequate and making excuses.

“She’s a shadow of her former self.”

This was awkward. Isabella bit her lip. How to imply Dora’s fragile nerves were only recently acquired without making him suspicious? “I think the loss of Marcus has hit her hard.” There, that wasn’t too incriminating. And it was true. The truest thing she’d said so far.

Richard’s stare intensified. “I can see that for myself. She’s a bag of nerves, Isabella, and I fear for her sanity. I really do.”

Good heavens. Fear for Dora’s sanity was a third thing that hadn’t occurred to Isabella, possibly because her own sanity had never been in question.

Now he’d pointed it out, though, she could see it with clarity.

She should have seen this coming. She’d always known Dora was not as strong as she was, despite having had to live with Marcus far longer, or perhaps because of that.

Why had she not seen that Dora’s fragile grip on sanity was what had caused this in the first place?

Or had it? Had it not been her own fault?