Page 106 of Garden of Lies

He studied the collection of relics. “This house will feel... empty when you are not here.”

“We both know that I can’t stay here indefinitely as your houseguest,” she said. “I must go home. The sooner, the better, I think.”

He looked stricken. She told herself she must be strong for both of them.

“I’ll just be a moment,” she said. She went to the doorway.

“Ursula?”

A giddy sense of hope made her pause in the doorway. She turned quickly.

“Yes, Slater?” She tried to inject encouragement into her voice.

He came out from behind his desk. “It occurs to me that, from a certain perspective, there is one person who has come out of this tangle in remarkably good condition.”

Her heart sank. “You refer to Mr. Otford?”

“I am thinking of Lady Fulbrook.”

“Oh, I see what you mean.”

“She has it all now, doesn’t she?” Slater folded his arms and lounged back against the desk. “The Fulbrook money, her freedom and a conservatory crammed with the ambrosia plant. If she were of a mind to do so, she could go into the drug business, herself.”

“Perhaps,” Ursula said, “but I doubt that she will do that. She is a very wealthy woman now. I am glad for her sake that she is free of that dreadful marriage but she did not get what she wanted most. She truly loved Cobb, you see. It’s all there in her letter poems. She dreamed of running off to New York with him. That dream has now been shattered.”

“Perhaps not,” Slater said. “As I’ve said, I am sure Cobb will have an excellent lawyer. He commands wealth and power back in New York. He may yet be able to make Lady Fulbrook’s dreams come true.”

“But it would never be the same as it was in her fantasies. She knows the truth about him now.”

He nodded. “Fantasies are gossamer things, are they not? Reality invariably crushes them.”

Ursula turned swiftly to face him, anger flashing through her. She would not let him crush her fantasies, she vowed. She would fight to preserve them.

“Goodness,” she said. “Will you just look at the time? I don’t believe I have time to walk out with you, after all, Mr. Roxton. I must go upstairs and pack.”

Slater unfolded his arms and straightened abruptly. “But you agreed...”

She gave him a steely smile. “You appear bewildered, perplexed, perhaps even a trifle disoriented. Why don’t you go downstairs and walk your labyrinth. All the answers you seek are there, are they not? Don’t bother seeing me to the door. I’ll ask Webster to have the carriage brought around. I’ll be out of your way within the hour.”

She grasped fistfuls of her skirts and whipped out into the hall. Very deliberately she closed the door on a stunned Slater.

A woman could only do so much. Slater was on his own now. This was about emotions, not logic. He knew where to find her when he finally came to his senses.

... If he came to his senses.

FIFTY-THREE

She had not miscalculated. She walked through the front door of her town house less than an hour later.

As homecomings went, it was not much to speak of. She had forgotten to send word of her impending arrival to Mrs. Dunstan. The silence of the front hall reminded her that the housekeeper was still at her daughter’s house.

The little town house was very still, shadowed and chilled.

“You can put the trunk in the first bedroom on the right, Griffith,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Shouldering the trunk, he climbed the stairs with a slow, heavy tread. Like the Websters, he insisted upon acting as if her departure from Slater’s mansion had once again plunged the household into deep mourning.