Page 14 of A Duchess Worth Stealing (Saved by Scandal #2)
Chapter Twelve
C ordelia Brookes was not the sort of woman who took kindly to being dismissed… especially not quietly and especially not by a man who never said what he meant.
So, when three days prior, the Duke of Galleon had gently suggested that the Dowager’s companion might soon be missed in London, Cordelia had smiled, nodded graciously… and promptly set about making herself as difficult to remove as possible.
That was exactly why she now sat cross-legged on the floor of the east library, surrounded by teetering towers of books that resembled a battlefield after some deeply intellectual war.
She had flung open windows and tugged dustcloths from shelves with wild abandon.
But that was not all. She had dispatched three volumes to be rebound in town with a note to the bookbinder she refused to show the Duke on the grounds that it was absolutely not his concern, and anyway, isn’t surprise a necessary component of life?
In short, she had declared war on disorder with the full knowledge that Mason Abernathy would never dream of interrupting a lady halfway through a large project involving his prized books, if only because it would offend some dark, bibliophilic corner of his soul.
He wouldn’t throw her out while she was elbow-deep in Aristotle and naval charts. He had principles.
That was her hope, at least, and now, she had been at it for hours.
Her gown was smudged with dust at the hem. Her hair, pinned up too hastily, had begun to curl in damp black wisps around her temples. Her hands were ink-stained, and she looked altogether delightedly unfit for polite society. A stack of books wobbled beside her, threatening collapse.
Cordelia narrowed her eyes at it. “You stay right there, sir. You’re between me and the Ottoman Empire, and I refuse to be thwarted again.”
The tower, to its credit, remained upright.
She turned back to the open volume in her lap, which was a curious tome titled Cartographic Principles and Global Proportions . Its spine was cracked, and its pages lined with maps and diagrams in faded ink. She hadn’t meant to pause here.
This wasn’t part of the plan. This genre had simply been part of the “M” section. Maps. Minerals. Military Strategy. Those were books that were not novels or poetry; certainly not the kind of things ladies were expected to skim by candlelight with idle fingers and dramatic sighs.
And yet, Cordelia could not look away.
The page before her showed the curvature of the globe and the way early explorers had once mapped it: imperfectly, clumsily, yet with such hope. The ink was faded, but she could still trace the edge of the continent with one finger, as though she too might discover something.
Africa. India. The archipelagos of the South Seas. Entire oceans, vast and empty and unnamed in earlier maps, nothing more than blue ink and faith. Whole worlds beyond her reach and yet here, flattened and contained, made almost understandable.
She leaned closer. She had known, of course, that the world was vast. Everyone knew that.
But there was something altogether different about seeing it like this, laid out in scale, proportion, distance.
It was startling to realize how far London sat from Constantinople, to comprehend that the sun rose hours earlier in Java, that there were islands so small, so remote, that one might never find them again if they drifted a little too far to one side.
Cordelia’s throat tightened.
She had spent most of her life in the same ten rooms, hearing the same dull refrains: A lady doesn’t need to understand geography. A lady needs to understand how to sit quietly.
But this… this was the language of those who went beyond drawing rooms and dinner tables. These were the people who stepped off ships not knowing what waited for them, who believed the world could be measured, studied, drawn and then understood. She wanted that .
Her fingers moved reverently over the pages, brushing mountain ranges and rivers like they were secrets.
All around her, books were in scattered piles, volumes on trade winds, on topography, on sea routes and the politics of colonial ports.
She had pulled everything out, rearranged them by author, then by subject, then briefly by spine color before abandoning the entire scheme in a fit of disorganized enthusiasm.
She was determined to finish it all, but unexpectedly, an angry voice cut though the silence of the library.
“Why are you keeping my books hostage, Miss Cordelia?”
She had expected his rage. In fact, she was counting on it, for the library was utter devastation. So, she blinked at the page a moment longer then slowly, ever so delicately, raised her gaze to meet his.
Mason Abernathy stood in the doorway with the golden light from the hall at his back and one brow lifted in that infuriating, perfectly sculpted way that suggested fury tempered with just a dash of deeply exhausted amusement.
Her heart thumped like a small, startled rabbit in her chest.
“Hostage is a strong word,” she said lightly, attempting to tuck a stray curl behind her ear and failing miserably. “They were quite willing participants… Some even volunteered.”
He stepped further into the room, ignoring her comment. His eyes surveyed the chaos with a dark, simmering disbelief.
“I had a system,” he muttered. “A rational, clear-headed, alphabetical system, Miss Cordelia.”
Cordelia gestured vaguely to one of the piles. “Yes, and now they’re arranged by genre, and then mood, and then, well, my own instinctual logic which I admit is a touch more interpretive.”
“You’ve turned my library into a madwoman’s sketchbook,” he squeezed through clenched teeth.
She smiled nervously. “Yes, but a functional one.”
He stared at her. For one terrible moment, she thought he might actually ask her to leave, that he would summon the butler or worse, the Dowager, that he would demand the library restored and the madwoman removed and her short, accidental dream of belonging in this house would shatter like a dropped porcelain cup.
But he said nothing. He just crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes in that maddening, unreadable way of his.
Which, curse him, only made her panic more.
“I thought you might send me away!” she blurted out without meaning to.
His eyes widened as she spoke. She winced, and more words came tumbling out.
“After I saw your sister… after you realized I knew… I thought—well, it was your secret, not mine, and I had no right to be part of it. So, I thought you’d want me gone, that you’d have to protect them, that you’d need me to disappear.”
He didn’t move, nor did he interrupt her.
“I just wanted to prove I could still be… useful,” she said, quieter now, more broken than she’d intended. “That I could still have value, even if I knew something you didn’t want me to, that maybe you’d let me stay a little longer. At least until I’d finished something.”
Her cheeks burned. She looked down, the weight of the book in her lap suddenly too much to bear.
The silence stretched between them like the pause before thunder. When he finally spoke, his voice was nothing like it had been before.
“Cordelia…” It was the first time he’d ever said her name without the armor of distance or politeness. “I would not have left you to the wolves… not then and not now.”
He looked at her as if she were something worth being protected. His eyes were fierce it their restraint. And suddenly, it seemed to her as if he wished to say more, as if he ached to say more, but something in him held him back.
Instead, he bent and picked up the volume she’d been reading, flipping it open with his usual precision. His gaze focused on the page.
“Geography?” he asked.
Cordelia swallowed and nodded. “I’ve read about the world before, of course, but this,” she gestured around at the piles, helpless, “this shows me how large it truly is, how lost someone can become in it. And I?—”
She hesitated.
“I know what it is to be lost,” she said finally, feeling vulnerable and exposed. “I’ve felt it. And I don’t ever want to feel that way again.”
He looked at her then, and she hated how her heart reacted, how a single glance from him could make her feel both naked and cherished.
“I understand,” he said.
He closed the book carefully, as though it were something sacred.
“You may read as much as you wish,” he said at last. “Any book in this room. And when you leave, you may borrow whichever ones you like. I’ll have them sent wherever you are.”
“So…” she asked quietly, as her hands fussed with a stack of titles on colonial agriculture that she had no actual intention of reading, “you wish to be rid of me, then?”
He stilled. The pause was not long, but it was enough.
“Not quite,” came the reply.
He must have seen something flicker across her face then, something brittle and also something she hadn’t meant to show because he looked up sharply and added in a rush. “My mother would be inconsolable.”
She blinked.
“What?”
He reached for a volume of nautical charts and gave a slight, wry smile. “You’ve become her favorite topic of conversation, I’m afraid. If I were to send you away, she’d invent a reason to see you again by the following Tuesday.”
Cordelia stared at him, uncertain whether to laugh or cry.
“So…” she said slowly, her throat tight, “you’d let me return… on account of your mother’s affections.”
He placed a book in a fresh pile and looked at her sidelong. “I would need a decent excuse to explain it.”
Cordelia pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. A foolish part of her wanted to ask if he would miss her, but she was too afraid of the answer, too afraid of hearing something measured and polite and not-quite-true.
So, she merely nodded and turned back to the nearest pile. They worked in silence after that. What mattered was that he stayed.
Book by book, pile by pile… he stayed.
And when, at last, the final book from the unsorted pile was laid into its new place and the floor finally cleared, Cordelia sat back on her heels and let out a slow, aching breath.
They had finished one third of the room.
Two walls of shelves still loomed over them, books still stacked high and order still begging to be made.
And yet, she had done something. She had made a dent. She had created shape from chaos. She had not run from the discomfort, nor hidden behind wit or self-deprecation.
She had stayed, and so had he.