Page 13 of A Duchess Worth Stealing (Saved by Scandal #2)

Chapter Eleven

T he cottage was the kind of place that made one ache without understanding why.

There was warmth here and peace and the quiet chaos of real life: flour smudges on aprons, sticky-fingered children climbing under chairs, half-finished embroidery draped over the arm of a chair like a forgotten thought.

This was a home built from love, not inheritance. It smelled of bread and babies and the kind of laughter that grew in the cracks left by sorrow, and Cordelia couldn’t help but think of her own mother’s seamless, satin-lined jewel box which suffocated her.

And now, Cordelia was somehow inside this home that was built by love.

She watched Isabelle with silent fascination. There was something almost rebelliously alive about her, an energy she wore like a crown, as if she had once been extinguished and refused to stay that way.

Isabelle laughed again as Thalia knocked over a cup of jam and attempted to mop it up with a bit of curtain. “We don’t do that with upholstery, darling,” she said, scooping the child into her arms, “even if we’re feeling helpful.”

Then Isabelle turned to Cordelia with a charmingly crooked smile. “So, you must have questions.”

Cordelia startled slightly. “Oh. I wouldn’t… Well, I do, but I don’t mean to pry.”

“It’s not prying if I hand you the door.”

Isabelle settled into the chair across from her, brushing crumbs from her skirts. “I used to be someone else. Lady Isabelle Abernathy. You may have read the name in some dusty society paper from ten years ago.”

Cordelia nodded, slowly. “You… you were said to have died.”

“I did,” Isabelle said simply. “Or rather, I was murdered… with ink in the announcement column.”

Cordelia’s breath caught.

Isabelle gave her a look of soft amusement.

“My father couldn’t abide the thought of a viscount’s daughter marrying a man who worked with his hands.

Robert is a carpenter, you see. He builds homes.

He built this one, actually, for us.” She gestured toward the walls like she was showing off a castle.

Mason sat beside the hearth with one leg crossed, his gaze on the fire.

He hadn’t spoken much since they entered.

He didn’t even speak when Thalia had tried to feed him a strawberry with fingers still sticky from jam.

He had just accepted it with a fond nod and then returned to watching the flames. He was too quiet.

“In order to choose my own happiness, I had to elope with Robert,” Isabelle continued, “and after that, I was never to attend a ball, never to send a letter, never to show my face in London, lest it reflect poorly on the family name.”

Cordelia’s fingers tightened around the teacup.

“They wanted everyone to believe I was dead,” Isabelle added, eyes softening. “But Mason wanted to tear it all down brick by brick.”

Cordelia’s eyes flicked to Mason again. He hadn’t moved.

“But instead,” Isabelle said gently, “he made a deal. For me, for Mama. He kept our secret as long as Papa let us live in peace.”

Live in peace.

Cordelia felt the memory of that afternoon crash back into her, days ago, in the library when she had attempted to organize Isabelle’s sketches. She had thought she was being helpful.

A tidy stack of drawings on the side table: watercolors of a cottage in different seasons, a pair of children playing in a garden, a dark-haired man lifting a baby in the air while a fair-haired woman laughed in the background.

One drawing in particular had caught her attention: it showed the same cottage, unmistakably but with a date written in delicate ink at the bottom…

a date after Isabelle had supposedly died.

She had begun to group them chronologically, unaware that she was rearranging a testament, not a portfolio.

Now, she understood. They weren’t just drawings.

They were defiance, a rebellion in brushstrokes.

And Mason had been trying to protect that rebellion for over a decade, not by wielding it like a sword, but by shielding it like a flame in the wind.

Cordelia looked at him again, needing to see him, but his expression was unreadable as always.

It was carved from stone and firelight. She hated that about him.

She hated that he never gave away what he was thinking unless he wanted to.

And right now, she desperately wanted to know what he was thinking.

Did he hate that she knew now? Was he angry she’d stumbled into this private world? That he hadn’t gotten the chance to prepare her or keep it safely his? Or… was he just afraid?

The idea of Mason Abernathy being afraid made something ache in her chest.

She turned back to Isabelle and offered sincere gratitude. “Thank you for trusting me.”

Isabelle reached across the table and took her hand.

“I think,” she said with a knowing smile, “Mason has always had a good instinct for people, even when he pretends he doesn’t.”

That was when Mason stood abruptly as the worn floorboards announced his movement.

“It’s time,” he said, smoothing a hand down his coat. His voice was quiet but final. “We need to return.”

Cordelia set down her empty teacup, though it had long been forgotten, and nodded, rising to her feet.

She glanced once more at the fire, the scattered toys, the sleeping infant in the cradle near the hearth.

It was hard to believe this place had ever been a secret and harder still to believe it could remain one.

But the Duke had kept it hidden for years, and now… she was part of it. She didn’t know what that meant.

Isabelle walked them to the door with Thalia clinging to her skirts and Henry waving a jam-covered hand with a soldier’s solemnity.

“Don’t wait too long to visit again,” Isabelle said, her eyes lingering warmly on Cordelia as she passed. “You’re welcome any time.”

Cordelia flushed, dipping her head. “Thank you. I… thank you.”

He exchanged only a look with his sister. There were no words, but whatever passed between them had weight.

And then they stepped outside with the door closing behind them with a soft click , and the forest wrapped around them once again.

For a while, neither of them spoke. The sun had begun its descent beyond the treetops, casting long ribbons of light across the mossy ground.

Their footsteps fell in tandem, quiet over earth and roots and scattered leaves.

The birds had returned, chirping overhead in that indifferent way of creatures who cared nothing for human revelations.

Cordelia tried not to wring her hands. She failed.

She cleared her throat. “Your sister is remarkable.”

A pause, but he still replied. “She is.”

Cordelia pressed her lips together then tried again. “It… explains a great deal.”

There was another pause, longer this time. His eyes didn’t stray from the path ahead.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she added quickly. “Only, I didn’t understand before. But I do now… about the drawings, about the silence. Why you were so, uhm… furious with me.”

The Duke didn’t look at her. His voice, when it came, was clipped and firm. “Not here.”

Cordelia blinked. “What?”

“Not here,” he repeated, his amber eyes cutting briefly toward hers. “The trees have ears. And so do servants who take long walks under the pretense of mushroom hunting.”

Cordelia huffed. “That’s very specific.”

“Experience has made me specific.”

She narrowed her eyes, but there was no invitation for further argument. The forest was lovely, but it was also not safe for revealing secrets.

So, she adjusted her pace, folded her arms tightly across her chest, and after a moment, realized she couldn’t walk with him in silence.

“Well. If I am forbidden to speak of things that matter, then I suppose I shall have to speak of things that don’t.”

She peeked up at him, watching for the edge of a smile, but none came.

Fine.

She kept going. “Did you know that my guardian once tried to marry me off to a man who couldn’t spell the word orchestra ?

He pronounced it orch-est-ra , like a drunk with a mouth full of walnuts.

This was, of course, while my father was still alive, and my guardian couldn’t show his true intentions yet. ”

That earned her a grunt, possibly of amusement. She took it as encouragement.

“He also believed that women should never read novels unless they were… what did he call them? Ah, yes. Instructive. He gave me A Sermon on Domestic Order for Christmas.”

“Delightful,” the Duke said flatly.

Cordelia smiled despite herself. “Yes. Nothing says festive cheer like sermons on submission and starching one’s husband’s cravat.”

He didn’t smile, but his comment was meaningful. “You’ll be free soon.”

She sobered a little. “Yes. Less than a month. I’ll have freedom to make decisions like an actual adult.”

“And what will you do with it?” His tone was indifferent again, but at least he was asking questions and keeping the conversation going.

Cordelia realized she had been caught off guard because no one had ever asked her that. They all assumed the usual: she would find a quiet country house, perhaps sponsor a cousin’s season, maybe open a school for girls too plain for the marriage mart.

“I want a house,” she said slowly. “One with too many rooms. I don’t want any servants whispering in the halls. I want a house where I can make noise and spill ink and hang up all the awful paintings I love without someone telling me it clashes with the wallpaper.”

The Duke glanced at her sidelong.

“I want a studio,” she added. “I want to start something new every week and abandon half of it and not feel guilty about it. I want to live somewhere where I don’t have to prove that I’m useful in order to be wanted.”

The last words slipped out uninvited, and she bit her tongue.

The silence that followed was different.

He didn’t say anything although she would have given anything for him to have done so.

She hated that she could not decipher him, that his quiet was a fortress she could never breach, no matter how open she made herself. She looked away and said nothing more.

By the time they reached the edge of the estate, the grand facade of Galleon Estate rising like some ancient, unyielding fortress out of the mist-dusted hills, Cordelia realized that she had forgotten to ask the most important question: why had he shown her the cottage and what it meant… if it meant anything at all.

But now, the moment for it had disappeared, lost in the wake of his silence and her babbling, like a letter dropped into a stream. Her steps slowed although her thoughts raced. Had he meant for that to happen?

Had his sudden, brooding quiet been designed to throw her off, to make her speak of herself instead?

To see what she would do with freedom? Whether she’d flee to the coast and waste away in poetry, or build something that mattered?

Had he been… assessing her? The way one might a piece of land or a horse or a possible duchess?

Cordelia’s cheeks flamed. She was being ridiculous, surely.

And yet…

There had been a sharpness in his question, and she, like a fool, had answered honestly, as if she owed him her truths just because he walked beside her with the moonlight caught in his eyes.

The wind tugged lightly at her shawl. Distantly, a bell rang somewhere from the stable yard, and the muffled clatter of servants in the kitchens below stairs signaled the return to a household settling into its evening rhythm. She looked up at the manor and felt the ache return, quiet and familiar.

She didn’t want to leave.

It was the first time in years she had felt as though she belonged somewhere, and people wanted her there.

She liked the cook’s daughters, who slipped her extra biscuits.

And she was also liked by the Dowager Duchess, who in turn relished their conversations, even when Cordelia rambled.

Now, there was also Isabelle, who had smiled at her like an equal, not a guest.

Everyone welcomed her… everyone but the Master of the house.