Page 5 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

She yawned behind her hand as she beat her escape, wondering at how much sleep she’d actually gotten last night.

She checked in quickly with the governess, who was keeping Oliver safely sequestered in the library for the day, away from his father, relieved to see that nothing had gone amiss with this portion of her carefully laid plan, at the very least.

She had told Oliver last night, actually, about Freddy.

“Do you remember what I told you about your papa?” she’d asked, combing her fingers through his damp hair, still a burnished bronze from the bathwater. “About how he is away?”

“On an adventure,” Oliver recited, nodding, “like a knight.”

“Yes, sweeting. What if I told you he is coming to visit for a while? For Grandmama’s wedding?”

And Oliver had reacted with all the heartbreaking enthusiasm a little boy could muster, his blue eyes dazzling with light and his voice climbing several octaves in hopeful glee.

“Is he like Uncle Abe?” he had asked. “Or like Uncle Silas? Or like Papa Raul?”

“No, my love,” Claire had said with a sigh, pulling him close into her embrace. “He isn’t like any of them.”

She bit her lip, deciding that a nice, doomed-to-fail nap would suit her very well just about now. Even if she couldn’t sleep, she could at least rest, couldn't she? Or, alternatively, she could fling herself around in the sheets until she felt she’d had a good wallow in her inconvenient emotions.

Yes, a nap was just the thing. She wouldn’t mind being out of her stays, at the very least. It had been quite hard enough to breathe even without their restriction.

She pushed her door open and stepped into the room only to halt not half a step inside.

There was a pile of luggage on the floor, half unpacked, men’s shirts dangling on hangers from her canopy. She floated nearer, not quite believing it, reaching out to steady herself against the carved foot of the bed.

She recognized one of the valises, a stamped leather affair emblazoned with birds and flowers, that Freddy had used on the Continent during their year together. It was leaning precariously against a large, lumpy sack made of some sort of silver leather.

That thing wasn’t Freddy’s, surely?

And even if it was, what the devil was it doing in here?

“Boyle!” she called out for her maid, staring at the pile with a creeping sense of dread. “Boyle, would you please—” She turned, intending to step out into the hallway, only to find her empty doorway now occupied.

By Freddy.

He was leaning against the frame of the door, twisting his wedding band around his finger, watching her with his eyes upturned, like he was looking from her to the ring and back again, only to pause upon being found out.

She froze. She froze so completely, she breathed out a gust of frost. Worst of all, he appeared stunned too, his gaze taking in her body from the toes first, to her skirt, to her hands, and then flicking up to hover over her face, to linger there like he wanted to memorize it.

Like he didn’t know her face very damn well by now, from a thousand different angles.

“Claire,” he finally said, his pale lashes flickering. “Hello.”

Her nerves began to awaken, peeking up through the tundra under her skin like spring shoots. It wasn’t quite enough to go barreling past him and out into the safety of the rest of the house, but it was enough, at least, to move slightly. To find her voice.

“This is my room,” she said, and to her pleasure she sounded reasonably composed. “Not yours.”

“I … yes,” he said with the ghost of a smile and a nod. “I was about to remedy that. I had hoped to be out of here before you ever came to know of the mistake. I’ve already told Paul to pack everything up and move me to a guest room tout suite.”

“Well,” she observed unnecessarily, “you weren’t fast enough.”

It made him laugh, the devil. Just a soft chuckle that sounded almost like fondness. “Indeed,” he agreed, taking a small, damning step into the room with her, sending her heart directly into her mouth, where it thumped, wild and bloody, on the surface of her tongue. “I was not.”

She felt her back come up against the poster of her canopy, the wooden beam that shot up from the foot of the bed to the draping beauty above.

He took another step. And another.

He was so close now, close enough that she could smell him, could smell the bergamot in the soap that he favored and the layer of lavender from his shaving foam. She tried to swallow, and failed. Tried to run again, but did not move.

He didn’t keep coming. He stopped a respectful distance away but close enough to loom.

His eyes, she realized. She hadn’t been able to prepare for those eyes from the nursery window. She hadn’t been able to see the pale-blue sharpness she remembered and forgot all at once.

“You look well,” he said, “Claire.”

“No!”

Then she found her feet again. Then she shoved past him. Then she fled.

She covered an impressive length of hallway and staircase both in her burst of ichor. She ended up in a small study she had possibly never even seen before. She sat in it, in the dusty natural light, and she breathed. She breathed a lot.

And it didn’t even occur to her to be embarrassed by it until much, much later.