Page 42 of My Disastrous Duchess (The Untamed Ladies #2)

“ M r. Collins told me that I would find you here,” Margaret said from behind him.

Alexander didn’t turn, watching the sky turn from grey to black over the rise above the valley.

It would not be long before the Avon River reflected the stars on that moonlit night.

He noticed, for the first time, that old Pembroke House was visible in the distance, and he focused his eyes there as his mind raced with predictions for the hours ahead.

“I honestly worried you had already left and that I was too late to stop you. Tell me you have reconsidered.”

Every word Margaret spoke lilted with unease.

Alexander hated himself for worrying her.

He clutched Isadore’s note in his hand, and the parchment creased, making the ink faint when he turned it to the last rays of light above.

He remembered every letter on the accursed thing.

The address Isadore had enclosed; the suggested meeting time that night.

“ These unpleasant measures pain me ,” she had written, among other things.

“ You will bring the aforementioned sum, divided into coins and notes, to ensure Mr. Hawthorne’s safe return .

The inn is not far from the ruins, west toward the river until you reach the forest.. . ”

“No one else can save him,” Alexander said.

“It must be me. Were I to send anyone else to the meeting place—God forbid, some do-gooders from Salisbury—they would learn everything about his abduction, and my mistake. I cannot allow that to happen, and I will not allow Bastian to suffer for my... oversight.” He paused, thinking back to that church in Lover.

“And I must hear the truth for myself, Margaret.”

“You may not learn anything. We do not know what awaits you there.” Margaret’s voice was closer now. “Please, won’t you listen to reason? Isadore may have laid a trap for you. Even if she is your sister?—”

“That seems unlikely now, would you not say? All this time, I have accused Carlisle of being the fool, but it was I who was the fool. Lured in by a fragile resemblance to my mother, a woman I can scarcely remember... Months ago, I visited her grave site. A small, ill-maintained headstone without a name. That’s how little they thought of her.

And now I can never return there, for I have disgraced her memory as well.

If my father were alive, he would curse me.

You should curse me for bringing the threat of Isadore into our lives. ”

“You speak as though you know everything,” Margaret argued. “But you know nothing for certain.”

“And I will continue to know nothing if I remain here tonight.” He took her shoulders so she would look at him, kept his touch light, but insisted she come close. “You must forgive me for this in time.”

“I will never forgive you. Not if you go alone.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes, but?—”

“Then, Margaret?—”

“No. There must be another way.” She pressed her lips together. They were chapped, bitten raw. “Miss Bell will not harm Mr. Hawthorne. He is so good. No one could harm him.”

“You are good too, the finest woman who ever lived, and yet you were harmed once. I am not willing to take that risk again.”

Margaret stared at her shoes, allowing herself to be taken into Alexander’s arms. He held her against him under the light shroud of darkness until she broke away. She took his hands in hers, removed the note, opened it, and returned it to him with a sigh, then kissed his knuckles.

“Nothing will happen to me,” he murmured, relishing her kiss. “I will pay the price for Bastian’s freedom and return to you with him at my side.”

“You have always been so cautious. I wish you were being cautious now.”

He tilted her chin up. “And here I thought my prudence irked you to no end.”

“It used to. Many things about you used to irk me. But now...” She slipped her chin out of his grip and let her sentence trail off.

“What if Isadore asks for more money? What if she blackmails you months or years from now? There are no documents or clauses to protect you this time. It will not be simple like with my father.”

“Then the matter will be otherwise resolved... But for now, I must go to her. When I return, you and I can continue this life unburdened, and you can tell me how that sentence ends, how many things about me have ceased to irk you.”

Deep in the country, the lane past Old Sarum wound like a thread through overgrown fields.

Alexander leaned over to adjust the lantern with one hand, the other leading Thalia through the thick night toward their destination.

A small, illuminated cottage came into view, tucked down a thin forest road.

It was crumbling, visibly uninhabited, except for the candlelight glowing in the windows.

He had only known the place existed because of its proximity to Stonehenge.

Carlisle had taken him here on field trips as a boy.

What would Carlisle say if he knew where I had gone?

A vain question. I know what he would say. He would say that he was right all along: Isadore was a fraud. But the documents Ripley provided line up with her story. How she came into possession of this information remains a mystery I will soon solve.

The leather saddle creaked beneath him as he commanded his horse to stop. He dismounted carefully, unlatching the lantern and bearing it toward the cottage. Shadows flickered around him as he walked toward the old wooden door.

Inside was a cavernous and cold room. Abandoned wooden tables were covered with dust. Stucco peeled away from the ceiling and fell to the floorboards below. A lonely stool had been positioned at the bar, not covered in dust and cobwebs like the rest of the room, a candle smoking in a holder nearby.

Someone has been sitting there and waiting for me, Alexander thought. But whoever it was is gone, waiting for me elsewhere.

His heart seized as a creaking sound came from above. A narrow staircase led up to the attic at the back of the room. He took the stairs gingerly, but they groaned beneath his weight, alerting whoever was upstairs to his approach.

Patting the loaded pistol in his coat, he climbed toward the loft. The sloped ceiling revealed moonlight between its slats, and the beams creaked overhead. The air here was hot and thick with dust. He covered his mouth with his arm, peering through the darkness...

“So, you did come,” a female voice said. “The cynic in me really thought you were going to abandon Mr. Hawthorne to his fate.”

Isadore emerged out of the shadows wearing a familiar green coat. She inspected Alexander, maybe looking for a weapon. He held his lantern up to her face. A pale, dehydrated, miserable face.

“Before you ask, your friend is there.”

She pointed to a mass in the corner, barely illuminated by the crackling upstairs hearth. It was Bastian, a gag in his mouth, hands bound behind him as he sat barely upright against the wall. His eyes widened as he saw Alexander, shaking his head and squirming.

“He was like that for the first few days, but then he grew calmer,” Isadore said evenly, making Alexander’s blood curdle.

“I hate seeing him like this. But it really is his own fault that I had to tie him up. He should have just taken me to Gretna Greene like he promised, and all this could have been avoided.”

Alexander watched Bastian out of the corner of his eye, calculating his next move. “It’s true then,” he said. “You left Somerstead Hall to elope.”

“Not exactly. Not at the start...” She took a step toward him, trained on him like a bloodhound. “But I won’t tell you anything until you give me what I asked for. Where is it?”

“The money is downstairs, attached to the horse.” He had retrieved the sum from the Salisbury bank that morning—a mix of banknotes and coins, usually less likely to be perceived as counterfeit, stuffed into a bag that hung from Thalia's saddle. “Unbind Bastian now, and I will get you your money.”

“Just like that? You must think I’m stupid. If I untie him, it’ll be two against one.” Behind her bravado, he perceived fear. “You’re not curious to learn who I truly am? After all this time... you really don’t care at all about me, do you?”

“What would be the point in asking? No sister of mine would behave as you have. You are not who you claim to be. Isadore Bell does not exist except in my imagination.”

“You’re right. No Isadore Bells exist that I know of, anyway.

I had hoped to play the part well enough to convince you.

I’m an actress by trade, and this promised to be the performance of a lifetime.

Learning the history, the accent...” She plucked at her neck, nervous.

“It worked for a time, didn’t it? I could tell you believed me in the beginning, and Mr. Hawthorne was no challenge at all to convince.

But your little wife, and that uncle of yours.

.. Do they know where you are tonight?” she asked.

“I doubt it. You pride yourself on being so honorable. You would not have told them a thing.”

There was nothing honorable about that night. A deal made in the dark. A lie he had believed. He was shamed by his own credulity. He glanced at Bastian.

“He saw me differently in the end, too,” Isadore said, gesturing toward her captive.

“We left Somerstead Hall after Margaret had her accident. I knew you would blame me, and you would have been right. I did tamper with that beast’s saddle, planted a seed so your dutiful wife would swap horses with me.

I thought I would feel bad, but I was glad when she fell.

I was hoping to drive a wedge between you, hoping you would turn to me for support.

That letter under your door, for instance. ..”

Alexander shivered. It’s all been Isadore. Margaret’s accident. Everything .

She continued: “I told Bastian I feared you would blame me, and he swore to take me somewhere safe. That’s when I came up with another plan and floated the idea of marriage a day later.

That is, until we visited that wretched mother of his, and she disapproved.

I felt a change in him once we left. He looked down on me like all your sort do, could smell the poverty on me even if he refused to see it.

We only drove a few miles northward before he said we should reconsider our elopement.

Mummy’s second-favorite little boy couldn’t possibly defy that old crone’s wishes.

And when he could not be convinced to change his mind back, I had to take matters into my own hands. ”

“Enough of this,” Alexander said, terror snaking down his spine. “There is only one thing I need to know. You knew that I was searching for Isadore. You knew everything about her past. How can it possibly be? Who set you on to me?”

Isadore looked off to the side.

“You are a careful man, Your Grace,” she said. “But not quite careful enough.”

The stairs creaked behind them, and Alexander turned.

Mr. Ripley emerged from the darkness.

“You?” Alexander said, taking a stunned step back.

Ripley smiled, shrugging. “I’m very sorry it had to come to this, Your Grace. But it’s like my Sarah said. If you had only done right by her—or if not you, then your friend—all this unpleasantness might have been avoided.”

Alexander hoped the shadows would conceal his next movement, but he was wrong. Just as his hand darted for his pistol, Ripley drew his own weapon, leveling it at his chest.

“Now, now. No sudden movements,” Ripley warned. “I have no intentions of becoming a murderer tonight.”

“That would be a more compelling statement if you had not come armed.” Alexander raised his hands, aware of every breath he took, his mind filling with thoughts of Margaret. “You’ve had a long career, Ripley. Why throw that all away now?”

“You came to me, and I saw an opportunity,” Ripley explained, cocking his head to the side.

“I realized early on that your search for this missing sister was going nowhere. The trail ended with her birth announcement, and despite my best, genuine attempts at locating an Isadore Bell for you, I achieved nothing. And honestly? After so many years bartering in ton secrets, feeding on your poison, I’ve grown a little contemptuous.

So, I hired Sarah to play the part, hoping she would be legitimized, and in time, we would both enjoy the fruits of her new life.

I stayed close by, was almost caught once by your wife on the grounds, by that river, when I came to give Sarah some much-needed advice on moving things forward.

..” He looked at Bastian, now quiet on the ground.

“A widowed, aristocratic husband, perhaps? That had been my thought, but it hardly matters now. She never quite convinced you, did she?”

A wicked plan. Alexander could only imagine what would have happened to Bastian if he hadn’t seen through the woman’s performance.

“You will be brought to justice,” Alexander said. “For this, and for all you threatened to do but did not achieve.”

“Only God will judge me. But I have no fear. I have seen men more terrible than me do much worse and go to their deathbeds with hope for salvation.” His eyes flicked to a space behind Alexander. “I wonder... Will you?”

The blow came hard and fast to his temple.

Alexander buckled forward, light flashing behind his eyes.

He heard footsteps retreating as he hit the ground, the sound of Thalia protesting outdoors as she was untied. He tried a step, and then another, heading for the stairs...