Page 42 of A Duke, a Spinster, and her Stolen List (Duchesses of Ice #1)

Chapter Two

“ I … I thought he was dead!” Cordelia blurted as a tidal wave of relief washed over her.

The man in front of her looked still very much kissed, still very much confused, and still very much not expecting to discover a body in the Duke’s own library. “I beg your pardon?”

She nodded too many times and too fast. “Dead, yes… lifeless, utterly corpse-shaped! You mustn’t look at me like that; I truly believed I had done a murder. Albeit just a little one.”

He arched a brow. “ Just a little one?”

“Well, he was running after me!” she cried, gesturing toward Lord Vernon, who was now already upright, groaning into a decorative pillow as though it might end his suffering faster.

Cordelia was still panting slightly when the Duke cleared his throat. “Now… once more with clarity, if that’s at all possible in your current state: why did you strike that man unconscious in the library?”

Cordelia blinked. “Oh. Well. That’s… complicated.”

“Do try,” he said, folding his arms like a man preparing for something outrageous. “The guests are all busy in the ballroom.”

She twisted her fingers together. “I’d gone to powder my nose.”

“An innocent beginning,” the Duke murmured.

Suddenly, something became painfully obvious. After all, how on earth could she admit to a complete stranger what her guardian just did or tried to do? If word got out, the scandal would be utterly massive, and God forbid, she would even have to… marry the villain!

Oh, no, no, no… she kept silently repeating to herself.

“Well, yes, powdering my nose,” she said aloud, forcing herself to focus on the present moment and not be intimidated by potential consequences of her mad actions. “And… a bird struck the window, yes!”

“A bird?” he frowned.

“A bird, indeed.” She nodded, importantly, as if the more strongly she nodded, the more convinced he would be of this utter nonsense.

“And I ran out of the powder room, totally out of my wits with fear, you see. And he… I mean, Lord Vernon, ran after me, to inquire if I were all right, but being in the state I was, I… I struck him.”

He glanced at the man once more then his eyes focused on her. “So, you mean to say it was all an accident?”

“Yes, exactly,” she confirmed. “Just a silly accident, and I am rather prone to those. Anyone who knows me will corroborate this.”

He thought about it for a moment then he spoke. “If it were just an accident, then you won’t mind me calling for help.”

“Oh, no, no,” she blurted out. “Please!”

He tilted his head as if to take a closer, more introspective look at the frightened little bird in front of him. “But you just said it was an accident. What are you afraid of?”

“Misunderstandings,” she explained. “People are all too easy to jump to conclusions.”

“You will explain then.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly explain hitting a gentleman over the head with a poker. They will think me mad, just like you do.”

A part of her wanted to hear him at least try to dissuade her of that, but he kept quiet, and all she could see in his eyes was growing suspicion.

“I can’t stay here,” she finally said, cracking her knuckles. “I need to leave before he wakes up fully.”

“And go where?” he asked, still wearing that frown.

She opened her mouth and promptly closed it again.

“Well,” she said after a moment, “I hadn’t precisely planned to be cast out for bludgeoning, so I’m afraid my options are rather limited.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m sure we can find a solution for this if you stay here, and we call for help.”

“No,” Cordelia said suddenly, blinking rapidly as though the very notion had startled her into coherence.

At that moment, he looked very much the picture of a man accustomed to not being refused. He looked up from where he’d begun to assess Lord Vernon’s condition with the sort of clinical detachment one applied to questionable cheeses and asked a startled question. “I beg your pardon?”

“I must leave… now.” She backed away from him, toward the corridor. “This entire evening has been a terrible mistake. I’ve kissed a stranger, concussed a guardian, and ruined at least one fern. I must disappear at once.”

“Miss—”

But she was already moving.

“No, no, no. I’ve seen this in novels. If I stay here with you, there will be inquiries, and whispering and lace-trimmed accusations, and none of it is good for me.”

He followed her into the hall. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I never think clearly. That’s the problem! I react! I panic! I swing pokers at people and then kiss innocent strangers!”

“I am not that innocent,” he muttered.

But she didn’t hear him, for she was already halfway down the corridor in a blur of black hair and regret.

“Miss!”

She glanced back, and that, as it turned out, was her mistake. For he was standing in the candlelight with his hair tousled, his coat askew, looking maddeningly handsome and far too concerned for her wellbeing. That was why she turned and fled even faster.

“Miss, dammit!”

She didn’t turn around again, but she knew that he was chasing her now. Of course, he was. Dashing dukes had long legs and far too much moral fortitude, but what she had was more motivating: madness.

She bolted through the front doors of Galleon House and into the open night like a wild, disgraced governess fleeing her tragic past. The wind hit her face instantly.

Her slippers slid on the gravel, but she didn’t stop.

The woods at the edge of the estate loomed ahead, black and tangled and absolutely perfect for hiding from responsibility.

“Miss!” the Duke’s voice rang behind her, this time sharp and commanding.

She dodged a hedge, and she tripped over an ornamental urn. Then, she found the gap in the hedgerow, the one she’d seen earlier when the footmen lit the garden torches. She squeezed through with all the dignity of a disoriented squirrel and vanished into the trees.

Behind her, somewhere in the dark, she thought she heard the Duke shout her name again, but the night swallowed it whole.

Cordelia Brookes ran deeper into the woods, heart hammering, slippers ruined, and dignity long gone.

Despite what she had just done, Cordelia had always fancied herself a woman of reasonably sound judgment… until approximately twenty-seven minutes ago.

The forest, it turned out, was much larger than it had seemed from the terrace.

It was darker and colder. It was also filled with birds which she did not appreciate one bit, particularly when they flapped out of the trees like winged goblins sent to punish her for inflicting blunt trauma upon a viscount.

“This is fine,” she muttered aloud, clutching her shawl tighter around her shoulders and stepping delicately over what she dearly hoped was not animal droppings.

“Everything is entirely fine. I’ve read novels.

I’ve seen paintings. Heroines do this sort of thing all the time, this running into the night and escaping the confines of cruel society.

Surely, there’s a rustic inn just over the hill with a kindhearted stable boy and a room with gingham curtains. ”

She paused and stared around her. There was no hill, no inn, and absolutely no gingham. There was, however, mud and lots of it.

“I am going to die in these woods,” she breathed to herself. “And worse, someone’s going to find me, and they’ll say, ‘She perished tragically with half her bodice undone and twigs in her hair like a lunatic hedgehog’.”

She spun slowly, surveying the trees. “Which direction is north? Where is the road? I saw a road, I think. Unless it was a footpath or a decorative trench for rainwater or something equally misleading and unhelpful?—”

Her words were interrupted by the sound of wheels. It immediately made her heart leap. And there, through the trees, she saw blessed, beautiful lights of lanterns swaying left and right.

She bolted toward it. “Stop! Hello! Wait! I am not a highwaywoman!”

While she was so utterly overwhelmed with relief to have seen someone, she realized, albeit too late, that she was running directly into the path of the oncoming carriage.

The carriage driver screamed something unintelligible, which was probably a prayer or an insult, so it was for the better that she didn’t hear him.

The carriage veered, the horses shrieked, and Cordelia, in all her bedraggled glory, stumbled straight into the chaos.

She did not get run over which felt like a miracle. However, the horse seemed to have some unspoken grudge against dramatic women, and it tossed its head in alarm, catching her squarely in the shoulder.

She flew backward with all the grace of a dislodged scarecrow, hit the ground with a thud, and promptly decided to lie there for a moment while she re-evaluated her entire existence.

A face appeared above hers.

“Oh,” she whispered faintly. “Have I died? Are you an angel? Because if you are, I should warn you, I’m not at all dressed for it.”

“Darling,” came a voice both elegant and alarming in its calmness, “are you quite finished attempting to throw yourself under carriages for the evening?”

Cordelia blinked up blearily. It was a woman. She was a tall, stately figure wrapped in a deep green velvet cloak, her silver hair immaculately coiled beneath a small, feathered hat, and her eyes were fixed directly on Cordelia’s mud-splattered form with a peculiar sort of fondness.

“I—” Cordelia opened her mouth and promptly forgot every word she had ever known.

The woman stepped down from the carriage with all the ease of a queen descending from her throne. “I do hope you haven’t completely dislocated your limbs. That would be tremendously painful.”

“I… what… no I don’t think so?” Cordelia stammered, attempting to sit up straighter and brushing wildly at her hair which now contained at least three sticks, one pine needle, and something that may have been a beetle.

The woman gave her a long, assessing look. Then, she turned toward the startled footman, who had clearly not expected the evening to include frantic women emerging from the underbrush.

“James,” she said kindly. “Blanket, please.”

Cordelia blinked again. “Are you… an angel?”

The woman turned back to her. “Hardly, my dear. I’m the Dowager Duchess of Galleon. And you, young lady, are coming with me before you frighten any more horses.”

Cordelia’s stomach dropped. “The Duchess?”

She tried to rise but failed spectacularly.

“Oh no,” she whispered, eyes wide. “I am so sorry; I didn’t mean to?—”

“Come,” the Duchess said gently, offering her gloved hand. “Let’s get some warmth in you before you collapse dramatically and force me to ruin these gloves. They’re from France.”

“But I—I have to get away… there’s a man… he’s unconscious… he’ll wake up, and he’ll?—”

“We shall discuss everything,” the Duchess interrupted smoothly, “once we have a warm fire, a sensible blanket, and tea, possibly a scone. Do you like scones?”

“I… Yes? But?—”

“Then it’s settled.” She turned toward the carriage. “James, help her in… carefully. It is not only her body that has taken quite a battering.”

Cordelia, still blinking, still breathless, allowed herself to be lifted like some sort of helpless governess from a sensation novel into the plush safety of the Duchess’ carriage.

The moment she sat down, her body registered its official protest. Every limb ached.

Her hair was sticking to her forehead. She smelled, faintly, of panic and horse.

And the worst part? She was actually calming down.

The Duchess settled in beside her, pulled the blanket tightly around Cordelia’s shoulders, and gave a brisk nod to the driver.

“We’ll be home shortly,” she said.

Cordelia’s eyes snapped open. “Home?”

The Duchess gave her a small smile. “Yes. Galleon House.”

Cordelia stared at her in mute horror.

“Home,” she repeated faintly.

Cordelia gave a broken, whimpering laugh and promptly buried her face in the borrowed blanket.