Page 7 of A Duchess Worth Stealing (Saved by Scandal #2)
Chapter Five
T he library had been yet another sanctuary of Mason’s for the simple reason that it was an entire room designed for order and solitude, the two principles upon which he had based much of his adult life.
Had been. Now … something was off.
It was the faintest change, almost imperceptible to anyone who had not spent the better part of his life in this precise room, but Mason felt it at once. He narrowed his eyes.
He crossed to the west wall, where a tall glass-fronted cabinet stood tucked between the shelves.
It was not locked. It rarely needed to be.
His mother had never been much interested in this library, preferring, instead, the one in her chamber with its familiar volumes of poetry and the novels she had read too many times to count.
No one else used this room. No one, except apparently someone .
The cabinet door was ajar by less than an inch, but it was enough. He opened it fully, and there they were.
The folder of heavy paper still lay as he had left it, bound in a faded ribbon with fraying edges. He reached out slowly, as though to touch it too quickly might disturb the air or the memory and lifted it into his hands. Then, he sat down in the armchair.
Untying the ribbon felt like opening a wound one had learned to live with.
Inside were sketches, dozens of them. Some were loose while others were bound in thin paper folios, done in pencil and charcoal mostly with a few inked ones.
But they were still all elegant, uneven, impulsive in places, and heartbreakingly familiar.
Here was a drawing of their mother, seated at her harp, the outline gentle and spare but somehow managing to capture the serene sorrow of a woman who always smiled a half-second late.
The next one was a small landscape with the river bend behind the woods, the one Isabelle always said looked like a ribbon tossed by the wind.
And the third one… he took a breath, for it was his own portrait, unfinished.
Only his eyes were fully rendered—and as always, she’d managed to capture the very essence of her object.
He remembered the day she’d begun it.
“You always look like you’re watching the room for a fire,” she’d said not even looking at him because she was too focused on the drawing itself. “Even when it’s calm.”
“Perhaps I’m looking for calm,” he had replied, long before he knew what was going to happen.
“No. You’d be miserable with it. You need just enough chaos for things to stay interesting.”
He exhaled now, long and slow. His fingers moved through the rest of the drawings.
Here was a sketch of Isabelle herself as she had once been: smiling without fear, her hair a wild halo of curls, a book open in her lap, and her feet tucked underneath her as she sat in their father’s old armchair, utterly unbothered by its size or severity.
He touched the edge of the page, almost reverently.
He had kept these hidden, not because they were shameful but because they were his ; because they were a fragile relic of a girl who had vanished from the world but never from his life.
That was when he realized that they were not in the right order. He was absolutely certain of it. And he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that it had not been Hargrave, nor was it his mother.
It was she .
Cordelia.
Of course, it was. She was like wind through an open window, entirely uninterested in whether or not the papers were meant to stay where they were.
The fury did not rise at once. No, it crept like smoke beneath a door, filling the corners first before choking the center. It was not the sort of anger that flared and vanished. Rather, it was the familiar, slow-burning kind, the kind he had inherited.
The kind he despised and could not subdue.
He gritted his teeth and breathed through his nose. But it was no use. She had touched them. She had opened the cabinet, the one no one was supposed to touch, the one that bore no lock and key not because it was common but because it was sacred.
What gave her the right? What gave her the audacity to place her hands on something that was not hers?
It did not matter that she had likely meant no harm, that she had probably wandered through the library like a curious cat and opened the first thing that looked interesting. It was not hers. And Isabelle was not a curiosity to be perused on a whim.
The fury took him then, full and sharp. He left the library as Hargrave opened a door in passing, wise enough to step aside without inquiry.
“Where is Miss Brookes?” he asked coldly, pausing only long enough to make the question carry the weight of a demand.
“I believe she is?—”
But Mason did not wait for the end of the sentence. Instead, he moved through the corridor like a storm in formalwear.
How dare she? How could someone so slight, so absurdly dressed in mismatched silks and unpinned curls, rattle him with so little effort?
He passed the morning salon. She was not there.
He passed the small parlor. It was also empty.
He turned down the gallery toward the east wing where sunlight streamed in unevenly through the tall windows, warming the portraits in a way that always felt slightly unnerving.
She would be here. She would have found her way into some nook she had no business being in, full of whimsy and poor impulse control, poking at heirlooms and family ghosts as if they were pages in one of her beloved novels.
Wherever she was, he would find her. And he would tell her that there were parts of this house, and parts of him , that were not hers to touch.
And heaven help her if she tried to charm her way out of it.
“… and truly,” Cordelia was saying as she gestured with great passion toward the glinting glass on the sideboard, “the clarity is improved immeasurably! You see, Phillipa, when one decants a spirit into a vessel and leaves it to gather dust and spider corpses—which, I assure you, I did not find but could have—the entire experience becomes one of menace rather than merriment. One must respect the process.”
Phillipa, a long-suffering maid with the blank expression unique to servants often cornered by loquacious young ladies, gave a single noncommittal nod and continued dusting the mantel with deliberate concentration.
Cordelia sighed, satisfied with her own domestic ingenuity, when the door opened.
Even before she turned, she could sense his presence.
She was not yet entirely sure how to describe it, but Mason Abernathy, the Duke of Galleon, had a way of entering a room that made it feel as though the room ought to apologize for not being more prepared.
He did not speak at first, but oh, she wished he had. Silence, in his mouth, was somehow louder than any proper shouting.
When she looked up, she saw him in full: tall, thundercloud-tempered, jaw clenched, eyes sharp and golden like coin under firelight. To say that he was angry would have been a dire understatement. It was sheer fury, the kind that simmered beneath the surface, disciplined and dangerous.
“What,” he said, each word crisp as glass underfoot, “do you think you are doing?”
Cordelia blinked, still crouched beside the table. She glanced quickly at Phillipa, who refused to return the gaze, instead dusting even more vigorously.
“I, uhm… we’re cleaning, of course,” Cordelia smiled.
“Not here,” he growled. “In the library.”
It took her a moment to remember. “Oh!” She patted her forehead slightly.
“I was organizing… Isabelle’s drawings, I mean.
They were all jumbled and pressed between books, some bent, some entirely backwards.
And I thought, well, how lovely it would be for your mother to have them displayed in a proper portfolio.
Perhaps by theme. Or, or chronology! You see, her landscapes become bolder over time, and I daresay there’s a love story hidden in the portrait sketches if one pays close enough attention.
So, I just thought, well, I should help. ”
There was a silence, the kind that made her want to crawl into one of the decanters she’d so proudly scrubbed.
Mason turned to Phillipa.
“You may leave us.”
Phillipa did not wait to be told twice.
Cordelia remained kneeling by the table like a child caught attempting to forge her governess’ signature. She stood abruptly, brushing her skirts as though that might restore authority to the moment.
“I wasn’t prying,” she said quickly. “Not really. I mean yes, technically I opened a cabinet, but it was unlocked! And in the library! It’s a room meant for inquisitive minds!”
He took a step forward, and her mouth continued without her permission.
“And I hadn’t the faintest idea it would upset you. I thought it would please you in fact! Or at the very least, please your mother , and truly, if pleasing her is not enough reason to?—”
“Enough,” he said.
It was just one word, but it was said softly. That made it worse.
Cordelia’s smile, that same one she wore like armor, the one that had braved awkward dinners and careless insults and countless stiff introductions, dimmed under the weight of his fury.
“You are not to touch those again,” he ordered her.
She opened her mouth to defend herself again, but he raised one hand, a simple gesture that silenced her more effectively than a dozen declarations.
“I believe,” he continued, “that it might be wise to add another rule to our arrangement.”
She blinked.
“Rule four,” he said. “You are not to snoop.”
Her mouth fell open in affronted disbelief. “I was not—! That is not what I was doing!”
But he was no longer listening. Actually, he was listening but not in a way that mattered. He had already made up his mind. He had cast judgment, closed the book, and passed sentence.
“I wasn’t snooping,” she said again, louder now, stepping toward him. “I was trying to be helpful, something I daresay your household doesn’t see very often, judging by the state of your decanters?—”
“Don’t,” he warned in a low growl.
“Oh, I most certainly will!” she shot back, her fists clenched at her sides.
“You speak to me as though I’m a thief or a gossip or…
or one of those society ladies who pretend to faint just to gain male attention!
I’m not interested in rifling through your secrets, Your Grace, no matter how fascinating you seem to think they are! ”
“Are you quite finished?” he asked, his tone deceptively soft.
“No!” she snapped. “Because let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t care that you’re a duke or that you can glower like a Byronic hero. You cannot tell me what to do!”
He took a step closer. Her breath caught.
“You cannot frighten me,” she said though her voice betrayed a slight tremor. “I am not scared of you.”
His eyes, sharp as flint, locked with hers.
“Perhaps,” he said quietly, “you should be.”
Cordelia stilled. The room suddenly felt too small.
“Perhaps,” he murmured, his voice dropping further still, “an innocent little hare like you should know better than to hop into a fox’s den… and start poking around.”
He was dangerously close now. She could feel the heat of him, the tension coiled beneath his stillness like a drawn bow. Her heart beat unhelpfully fast. Her lungs refused to perform their duties in any consistent rhythm.
And then, his eyes dipped… to her lips which were no doubt trembling in the most humiliatingly obvious manner. Cordelia forgot what she’d been saying. In fact, she forgot what she had meant to say, what language even was.
He was far too tall. Why had she not noticed before how very tall he was? And broad? And why did he smell like pine and cold wind and things she did not trust herself to like?
A treacherous part of herself wanted to kiss him again. But she would rather walk the fiery pits of hell than do that… again. Thankfully, fate appeared in the sound of a knock on the door. Neither of them spoke, but the door opened, nonetheless.
“Your Grace?” Hargrave called out apologetically. “There is a visitor for you.”
Mason’s nostrils flared up. Then, he took a step back and gave her the slightest of bows.
“Until next time, Lady Cordelia.”
When he left, she was able to breathe again, but, she wondered, for how long?