Page 236 of The Enslaved Duet

“Fine,” she whispered. “If you want another enemy while you’re here, I’ll be one. But you should know, the choice was yours.”

“I have never made my own choices under this roof, and I won’t be allowed to now,” I countered.

She pressed her lips together in a flatline as she realized just how dead in the water her efforts to sway me to her dark side were, and then with narrowed eyes, she put the ball gag back around my head.

Cosima

I found the kitchen the same way I’d left from the beautifully refurbished wood paneled walls to the old AGA cooker and every single kitchen servant I’d known before. Straight down to Douglas O’Shea.

The knife wound of his betrayal radiated through my back.

It might have been slightly ridiculous to think Douglas would abandon his position as head cook at Pearl Hall after I’d gone, but it wasn’t a stretch to think he would have resigned after Alexander openly renounced his father.

Yet there he stood at the long worn wooden table at the center of the room with a red apple in his hand, the peel curling over his many-freckled hand like the body of a snake. The sight of his brightly glinting copper hair, red as the tip of a flame, and the ruddy collection of freckles splashed across his pale skin made my heart ache with nostalgia.

“Ducky,” he breathed, the sound of it like air leaking from a punctured lung.

He looked ruined by the sight of me. Tears pooled in his eyes, and his usually steady hands trembled as he put the apple down to brace himself against the tabletop.

“Out! The lot of you,” he ordered shakily.

I realized the entire kitchen crew had paused in their efforts to stare at me. The young servant I remembered was named Jeffery scuttled toward me on his way out the door and astonished me by tugging gently on my hand in a small sign of solidarity.

The gesture brought the tears haunting my throat out onto my tongue.

When I looked back at Douglas, he was blatantly crying.

“I’m in bloody shambles. I so wanted this to go a certain way,” he started between sniffles. “I wanted to be strong for you because I know how cocked-up this whole thing is, but ducky, the sight of you like that…” He waved a hand at my collared, shackled, and white corseted body. “It’s gutted me.”

“You and me both.”

He flinched at my cold tone, and then his eyes widened as he dashed around the table only to crash into the invisible wall of my rancor a foot before he reached me.

His hands fluttered like birds without a perch as he tried to explain, “I almost stormed out the second that tosser told me you’d up and left us. There was no way my sweet ducky would just run away without saying goodbye unless he’d done something to deserve it. Had my bags packed and everything when the great lord of the manor himself graced my doorway and explained a few things to me.”

He took a risk and clasped my hands in his, the chains between my shackles clicking like the tongue of a scolding Italian mother. I let him, not because I felt any less betrayed, but because after so long in the dark and lonely cold, I craved tender physical affection.

“It was Lord Thornton who asked me to stay on at Pearl Hall,” he whispered frantically as voices sounded in the hall. “You see, marra, I’m a proper spy now. Alexander’s eyes and ears in his enemy’s home.”

Relief sluiced over me like the cleansing rain of a spring shower. My knees trembled under the weight of his truth, and I was crying before I could stop myself, flinging my arms around Douglas in an inescapable hug.

He held me, and together, we cried for a good long moment.

“Have…have you heard from him since I’ve been here?” I choked out through my tears.

I knew before he stiffened in my arms what his answer would be. “No, love, I’m sorry. I heard about the explosion, and well, his grace seems to think both his eldest sons are dead.”

Anguish roar up my throat and spilled forth like water breaking through a dam. I clutched Douglas to me so tightly, I could feel the shape of his bones beneath his skin.

When I finally had control of myself, I stepped back, but only enough to look into his dear face, and say, “Thank you.”

His face juddered as he swallowed a sob, then smoothed into a tender smile as he collected one of my tears with his thumb. “You look cream-crackered. Sit down and help me with this pie while we plot your escape.”

Over the sweet scent of apples, Douglas explained how he had been using Alexander’s hawk Astor to send handwritten missives about Noel’s goings-on to a man Alexander paid and trusted in Manchester. Sometimes, Douglas would receive notes in reply, but mostly it was an endless stream of information about the Duke of Greythorn’s whereabouts, who visited at Pearl Hall, and anything to do with the Order.

“I have to say I was chuffed as a mother when I heard you’d done it,” he said with a cheeky grin when we spoke about the dissolution of the Order of Dionysus. “Thought the man was mad for taking them on, but then, what better reason than you to do it?”

The other kitchen staff returned after that, so Douglas and I were forced to keep our chatter superfluous, but as we put the finishing touches on dinner, he pulled me close under the guise of needing my help with the after-dinner tea service preparations.