Page 18 of While the Duke Was Sleeping (England’s Sweethearts #1)

Not long after Adelaide and the siblings had piled back into the duke’s bedroom, there was a rumble from outside—a coarse, rasping sound Adelaide had only heard a handful of times. “Is that a motor?”

Immediately, Jac discarded her knitting project and jumped from her seat to press her face to the window. “It is! It’s a motor!” she said, bouncing on her toes.

Rhett and Adelaide exchanged glances. “Are you expecting company?” Adelaide asked, suddenly uneasy.

“No. Who is it?” he called to his sister.

Winnie climbed up from the floor where she was sitting with her back against Peter’s bed. “I don’t know why you were the one who went to look,” she said to Jac. “You can’t see that far without your spectacles.”

“So I’m not even allowed to look?”

“I’m just saying, there’s really not much point in looking when you can’t—ow!” Winnie rubbed her side where Jac had jabbed her with an elbow.

“The motor is green,” Jac said, triumphant.

“And the color of the man’s hair?” Winnie asked dryly, ignoring the glare Jac sent her and pulling the curtains further aside to look out. “I don’t know why you don’t just wear your spectacles. Then it would be as clear as—oh, it’s Uncle Frank!”

“Uncle Frank?” Rhett and Jac both asked, their expressions perking.

Winnie gathered her skirts and half skipped, half ran from the room.

“Wait, Winnie,” Jac said, tripping over Meg’s discarded slippers. “Just hold on a minute.”

“Uncle Frank?” Adelaide asked Rhett, hoping the worry didn’t show on her face. Somehow, over the past two days, she’d become so at home that the anxiety she’d felt over her fraud had melted away. None of the sisters had shown any hint of suspicion, and even Rhett had stopped testing her. She’d felt safe. Stupid, Adelaide. You are never safe.

Uncle Frank would be of the ton . If he’d been in London at all over the past few months, Frank would likely have met Cordelia, and Adelaide couldn’t count on him having the same poor eyesight that Jac did. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Rhett furrowed his brow. “Surely you’ve met Uncle Frank. He is quite the fixture on the London social scene.”

Cold crept over Della, and she shivered. Luckily, Rhett and Meg were too busy bickering to notice.

“Don’t be so stuck-up,” Rhett said, picking up Meg’s slippers and handing them to her. “Uncle Frank has been nothing but kind to us.”

Meg shoved them onto her feet. “Uncle Frank is kind when it suits his agenda, and he’s a terrible, terrible influence on you. Why is he here? Did you send for him?”

Rhett shook his head. “No, but I’m glad he is. We could use his help.”

Meg sniffed. Adelaide couldn’t tell if it was in distaste for the uncle or at the suggestion that they needed his help.

“We need nothing from Frank,” Meg said, rolling her neck the way Adelaide had seen boxers do before a fight. “We should thank him for his concern and then tell him it is too delicate a time for guests.”

“He’s hardly a guest.” Rhett peeked out the window. “He’s family.”

Meg shook her head, closing her eyes as though she could block out what was happening.

Adelaide knew that look. She knew the kind of man who inspired it.

“I’m going to my room,” Meg said. “I need a moment to gather myself before I face him.”

“Do you want company?” Adelaide asked. Perhaps she could avoid coming face-to-face with a man who might be her undoing. If Uncle Frank had spent so much time in London, he was bound to notice her fraud immediately, and the Lord only knew what he’d do with such information.

Meg shook her head and left, muttering.

“She is just being dramatic,” Rhett said. He took Adelaide by the hand. “She blames Frank for the time I got caught painting Lord Weatherington’s horse green—but that was a joint idea, if a terrible one. I’m just glad it wasn’t both of us who had to endure Weatherington’s dressing-down.”

Rhett’s tone suggested he held no ill will toward his uncle, but Adelaide was getting a sense of the man’s supposed bad influence.

“You’ll love him. He’s great.”

As he dragged her from the room, Adelaide cast a glance over her shoulder at Peter. “Now would be an excellent time to wake, Your Grace,” she hissed. As she expected, he didn’t react at all.

The Montgomery family resemblance was strong. Frank shared his nephews’ hazel eyes and sandy hair, but where Rhett and Peter were both muscular and toned, Uncle Frank was soft. His body wore all the hallmarks of an idle life. He had stripped off his gloves already, and his fingers looked like breakfast sausages. The fluffy buoyant knot in his cravat did a fair job of hiding his sagging jowls. Still, his eyes were sharp, and he’d probably been handsome in his youth. Beneath his puffy skin was fine bone structure, not unlike Rhett’s.

When the two men embraced affectionately, they were close to the same height. Frank smiled as he roughed up his nephew’s hair, and in that moment, Della could see exactly why Meg declined to spend time in this man’s presence. His smile was oily, and it didn’t move past the unnatural curve of his mouth. A real smile lit up a person’s entire face. A real smile could be felt like it radiated outward. A real smile could be seen in the eyes. When Frank smiled, the pulling back of his lips resembled a snake at the moment it struck.

That venomous reptilian gaze locked onto Adelaide. “Well now, Rhett, who is your beautiful guest?”

Shit. Damn. Fuck. Her charade was over. You should’ve told Rhett the truth, Adelaide. You should have admitted it all yesterday. Now, they’re just going to think you’re a liar.

“Uncle, this is Lady Cordelia Highwater. Surely you’ve met before.”

Frank properly smiled then, and Adelaide shivered. She was about to be devoured, swallowed whole, digested for months.

She turned to Rhett. “I can explain—” The words were barely out of her mouth when Frank interrupted.

“Forgive me, Lady Cordelia. I’m so used to being dazzled by your finery under the light of chandeliers that I didn’t quite recognize you in a day dress.”

“I… Oh… Pardon?” He can’t truly think you’re Cordelia. Yes, she and Cordelia both had red hair and blue eyes and a relatively similar figure, but that was where the similarities ended. No one who had spent significant time with one would mistake them for the other.

He’s playing you, Adelaide. You’ve become a card he’s shuffling in his hand, ready to use to his best advantage.

She did not want to be ensnared in his trap. Whatever schemes he was concocting, she wanted no part in. She was about to blurt out the truth, confess all to Rhett, when Winnie slipped her hand into Adelaide’s and squeezed tightly. “Della and Peter are engaged!”

Frank’s eyes narrowed as he looked at his niece, and then at Rhett, and then finally at Della. “Well, this is a surprise, given the circumstances in which I last saw you.” He crossed the short distance that separated them and took Della’s free hand. He drew it to his lips—cold, dry, unfeeling.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she waited for him to sink his fangs into her skin.

“Oh. You mean the wedding ?” Jac whispered conspiratorially. “We don’t talk about that.”

Della looked at Rhett. He was staring at his feet, his toes grinding into the floor as they always did when the subject of either of Cordelia’s betrothals came up.

Did he have little to say on the matter because he had little interest in weddings, or was it because the thought of Della marrying another was too difficult to bear?

How she wished it was the latter.

“It was a beautiful wedding. No expense was spared. I rather think your mother stole every flower in England. How cunning of her. How resourceful.”

He was not talking about Cordelia’s mother. Not really. It was code. How cunning and resourceful you are, Adelaide, to fool an entire family. “The duchess does like flowers.”

“Then I’ll be sure to send her some. It has been almost two decades since the last bouquet I sent her, on the birth of her child.” Not “on your birth.”

He knew.

She could see the cogs in his head whirring as he tried to put together all the pieces Rhett’s family had missed.

He knew she was not Cordelia. She was not betrothed to the duke. And from the speculative glance he gave his nephew, he knew that there was something between her and Rhett. Frank literally rubbed his hands in glee.

Fuck. Damn. Damn it.

Frank put his arms around Jac and Winnie. “Come on, girls. Take me to see my other nephew. On the way, you can fill me in on all the news.”

“The news isn’t great, I’m afraid,” Jac said as the three of them headed toward the stairs. “Peter has taken a fall. Terrible, terrible thing. Luckily, Della was right there .”

Frank looked over his shoulder, his gaze locking with Della’s. “That was a lucky thing indeed.”

As he and the girls left, Rhett crossed to Della, brushing her arm. She couldn’t help but lean into him.

“Jac needs to work on her delivery of that news,” he said. “She almost makes it sound as though you played a part in my brother’s accident.”

“I played no part in his fall.” Only the lie that came afterward.

Just this morning, she’d had a glimmer of hope that it would all work out and that somehow the family wouldn’t be furious at her deception, that Rhett would understand why she had lied, and that he’d still want a life with her in England. That they all would want her in their lives.

Uncle Frank’s arrival changed things. The outside world, reality, was creeping into the bubble she’d been in.

“Are you well?” he asked, concerned. “You look as white as a ghost.”

She swallowed down the lump forming in her throat. “Everything feels so awfully complicated.”

Rhett nodded and took her hand. “It is, and it’s up in the air. All we can do is wait.”

Wait for Peter to wake. Wait for Peter to die. Wait for the truth to come out. The waiting was going to drive her mad.

“Are you coming?” he asked.

She nodded back tears. “I’ll be there shortly. I just need a moment.”

“Well, then I’ll see you in a moment.” He squeezed her hand before letting it go and following his sisters.

Bloody hell, fuck, damn. What are you going to do now? The longer she stayed, the more likely it was that everything would fall apart in the worst way. Uncle Frank was a problem she hadn’t accounted for. If she stayed under this roof with him, he would have her twisted up like a fly in a spider’s web.

But could she leave now, before the duke woke? She would be giving up everything—the money Cordelia promised, Rhett, his siblings, the future home she’d let herself imagine. She gnawed at her thumbnail.

“Lady Cordelia?” The footman she’d spoken to yesterday approached her hesitantly.

She plastered a fake smile on her face. “How can I be of assistance?”

“I asked around downstairs, my lady. The announcement notice His Grace was planning to send to The Times was last seen in Lord Everett’s bedroom. Another footman put it there so that his lordship could decide what to do with it.”

Something inside her loosened. It was a sign. Stick to the original mission. Find and destroy the betrothal announcement, wake the duke, beg forgiveness, and leave. All she had to do was accomplish all of that without coming face-to-face with Frank again.

“Thank you. Your help is much appreciated.”