Page 7 of While the Duke Was Sleeping (England’s Sweethearts #1)

Oh shit. The words had been bouncing around her skull from the moment the whirlwind of a family had burst through the door. Now, surrounded by them and their shocked expressions, cut off from the room’s only reasonable exit point, and faced with him, Rhett, the man who’d thrown her into England’s most disgusting body of water, oh shit became fuck, fuck, fuck . You’re in it now, Adelaide. God damn it.

“Lady Cordelia Highwater? The Lady Cordelia Highwater?” the youngest of the sisters said. “The one who—”

“Shush, Edwina.” The eldest looked a full decade older than the others, but she didn’t act it as she rammed an elbow into her sister’s ribs. “Lady Cordelia, how lovely to meet you. We did not know Peter had chosen a bride. Forgive our surprise.”

Adelaide slipped on her lady-of-the- ton persona, took the woman’s proffered hand, and gave it a little squeeze. “It is a pleasure to meet you too. I’m only sorry it’s under such circumstances. If you’ll excuse me. I need some air.” She turned to face the man who had, quite frustratingly, stalked her thoughts for the past week, and drew forth her coldest, haughtiest stare.

It hurt him, she could tell; but he didn’t protest. He merely raised an eyebrow and stepped aside.

With an appearance of calm that she did not feel, she left the room.

Adelaide burst into the cottage she and Cordelia shared knowing two things. First, they needed to leave. Now. Second, the universe was once again having a laugh at her expense. What else explained the sudden appearance of the man from the docks, whose touch had ignited a wildfire of wanting?

All her senses—physical, emotional, logical—had been turned upside down the moment they’d hit the river and those damn skirts had dragged her below the surface. She counted on those senses. They had kept her alive all these years. But even being back on dry land hadn’t centered them. Only on the long walk back to Cordelia that afternoon had she begun to feel in control.

Now, a week later, her senses were jumbled once again, and a disturbing thought threaded through her. Perhaps it was not almost drowning that had caused her awareness to tumble and bounce. Perhaps it had been him.

Which was one more reason for them to leave immediately. There could be no safety when her senses were misfiring.

“How did it go? What did the duke say?” Cordelia asked, leaping up from the chair.

“He said as much as an unconscious man could, which is nothing.” She scanned the room for things that needed to be packed, snatching them up in panic.

Cordelia paled. “He still hasn’t woken?” she asked as Adelaide pushed past her to the room where their secondhand trunks were stored.

“Despite the doctor’s best efforts.”

“But he hasn’t worsened?” Cordelia asked, trailing behind.

Adelaide dumped the items into the trunk with no care for neatness. “You mean, worse than showing no signs of life other than a heartbeat? No.”

There was no sign that Cordelia had even registered Adelaide’s distress. If she had, it was apparently so inconsequential to her that it didn’t deserve acknowledgment. “You need to go back,” she pressed. “You must be there when he wakes.”

That was a terrible bloody idea. Adelaide took Cordelia’s hands in hers. “It is time to admit to your role in the accident, apologize, and return to London.”

Cordelia shook her head. “My father will be furious. I cannot face him.”

The duke would be furious. He would scream and rant and likely lock his daughter in her room until he found another peer to take her. But he wouldn’t allow her to go to jail, and he would do his damnedest to protect her reputation. It was also his, after all.

“At least you have a father to face,” Adelaide said. “You have a family who will shield you.” She would give anything to raise her father’s ire again.

“You don’t understand,” Cordelia pleaded.

“I don’t understand?” Adelaide was tempted to give her mistress the dressing-down she deserved. To explain just what it was like to be without a family, to have no one but one’s self to turn to in a crisis. But sharing her past would give too much away. She gave nothing of herself unless she had to.

Cordelia narrowed her eyes. “If the duke wakes and you are there, this whole mess can be swept under the carpet. If you have him retract the announcement before it’s published, no one needs to know how he came to be unconscious, or of his ridiculous betrothal suggestion.”

Adelaide pinched the bridge of her nose. “It is too late for that, my lady. Your supposed betrothal is already public knowledge.”

Cordelia shook her head. “Only the servants know. They are inconsequential.”

Spoken like a true aristocrat. Alas, servants were neither inconsequential nor the only problem. “News has spread farther than that, my lady. The whole town knows.”

“A tiny town that no one can even find?” Cordelia huffed, crossing her arms. “You will make it right.”

“My lady, his family knows.” Members of the ton might not gossip about their own kin, but nor would they accept a quick brush under the carpet without a full account of what had happened.

“His family?” Cordelia’s voice faltered.

“He has three sisters. They are… loud, and they were displeased to discover their brother had entered into a betrothal without their input.”

“Oh, heavens.”

Adelaide paused for no reason she’d admit to before adding, “He has a brother, as well.” The temptation to keep that knowledge secret was stupid. Cordelia would know the truth, and there was no point wishing to keep Adelaide’s thought-stalker to herself. He was not hers to keep, and that wasn’t what she wanted anyway. She was an island. That was better. “At least, I assume it is his brother,” she continued, trying to sound normal as she spoke of him. “They have the same honeyed hair, though the younger has no grays.”

Cordelia nodded. “Lord Everett. Has he returned to England? That will set the cat among the pigeons.”

“How so?” Adelaide tried to mask her need to know with polite curiosity.

“He is extraordinarily popular with married ladies. All of them. I cannot discuss him further. It—he—is inappropriate.” Cordelia’s cheeks flamed red.

Disappointment coursed through her. Rhett was one of them , the men who played hearts like a deck of cards—obsessively attentive for a night and then discarded on the table when the sun rose.

You’ve had your share of them, Adelaide. No more. “That makes it even more important for us to return to London.” She needed distance between them. “We don’t want your name associated with such a man, and as of now, he thinks I am you.”

That should have been it. Adelaide wished that had been it. But Cordelia was like one of the alley cats of Cyprus, obsessively gnawing at the issue. She would attempt to hold Adelaide to their bargain, regardless of how foolish it was.

“That makes it all the more important for you to stay and settle this with the duke the moment he wakes. If his family thinks he’s betrothed, there’s no way we can keep that from the London gossips without the duke’s intervention.”

This was madness. Utter madness. “I will not continue this charade,” she said, checking beneath the bed for any items that might have been accidentally kicked under it.

Cordelia crossed to the trunk and started to pull items from it. “You will, because I’m asking you to, and you work for me.”

And that was one of the greatest challenges of becoming a lady’s maid. Sure, there was a guaranteed income, roof, meals, and even clothing, but it came at the expense of Adelaide’s ability to say “To hell with this; I’m leaving.”

When she was traveling from town to town, no one told her what to do. But now she had an employer whose goodwill and willingness to disperse wages she was reliant on. So she kept a smile on her face as she said, “You hired me to help with your hair and your clothes and to keep you company when needed. You did not hire me to lie to the family of a man you may have murdered.”

There. How many times had that sentence been said sweetly?

Cordelia was unswayed. “Then let me hire you for that.”

“Pardon?”

“I’ll concede that what I’m asking of you falls far outside of your role as a lady’s maid. That’s true. But if you do this for me—if you stay until he wakes or he dies, and you keep me out of jail and off the front pages of the newspaper—I will pay you an obscene amount of money. Enough that you will never have to work again.”

Adelaide scoffed. “You don’t have a cent, except for the jewels you were wearing as you ran, and they aren’t worth what you’re asking.” She slammed shut the cupboard door and stormed to the kitchen. The necklace alone was worth a bloody fortune—more than enough to lease a cottage for the next decade. But she didn’t want to do it, damn it.

Cordelia followed, like a nagging little duckling. “Like you said, I’ll have to go back home eventually. My father will compensate you handsomely for your troubles, and if he doesn’t, then I will sell what I need to in order to do so. You have my word.”

Selfish and spoiled as Cordelia was, Adelaide believed her. The duke would pay well; he wouldn’t risk Adelaide spilling the story to the constabulary or the press. But was all the money in the world worth walking back into that house and risking her freedom? If the duke’s family caught her in a lie, they might assume the duke had met with foul play rather than foolishness. If they were angry enough, she could be the one imprisoned.

Worst of all, she’d have to spend time with the duke’s family. The duke’s brother. The thought of being alone in a room with Rhett again rasped like sandpaper on skin. There would be no kissing this time, no gentle touches or witticisms.

Sensing Adelaide’s hesitation, Cordelia interjected. “I know you’re putting money away. I know that’s why you applied for a lady’s maid position when you clearly had no experience. Think about whatever you’re saving for before you decide to turn down my offer. You might never get it otherwise.”

Adelaide froze. She’d gone into service after six months of editors who had dallied on their payments. A lady’s maid’s wages were only marginally more than what she’d made writing, but the pay was regular, and if she wanted to someday lease her own home, she couldn’t continue to dip into her savings for food and board.

And she wanted a home.

After an entire lifetime of moving from one place to another, she wanted somewhere she could put down roots. She wanted to own an entire bookcase, rather than the two or three novels that she exchanged whenever she reached a new town. She wanted an armchair that wasn’t worn from a thousand different arses. She wanted it worn from just one arse—hers. She wanted to sit beneath a tree she’d planted that had grown tall enough to give shade.

With the kind of money Cordelia promised, she could lease a home in a village somewhere, with a garden she could tend to and rooms full of furniture.

But was it worth the risk of facing Rhett Montgomery again?

Rat-a-tat-tat. Both women jumped at the unexpected knock. Rat-a-tat.

“Are you going to answer the door?” Cordelia asked.

Adelaide swallowed. There could be a half dozen people outside, each with a dozen different reasons for being there. Perhaps the duke had died, and the staff had come to let his fiancée know. Perhaps he’d died, and there was a constable there to arrest her. Perhaps he had died, and the sisters had come to grieve with company. Perhaps the duke lived… perhaps.

“Fuck it.” She stormed to the door, counting on her intuition to guide her from there.

“What is it?” she asked, yanking the door open. Fuck.

Rhett stood there, leaning against the doorway, one hand gripping the frame.

“Mr. Montgomery,” Adelaide said, casting her eyes downward as though if she couldn’t see him, this moment couldn’t happen. “I’m sorry for your…” She stopped. The duke wasn’t dead. Speaking as though he were would only invite bad fortune. “… these current circumstances.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you sorry? Tell me, Lady Cordelia, what is it you have to apologize for?” His tone had sharpened, whet on a stone of suspicion, and Adelaide’s heart rate increased.

“Your household is in turmoil; most empathetic creatures would feel sorry for that.”

His expression darkened. “And for your own turmoil?”

He was talking of her supposed betrothal. Were she truly engaged to the duke, her own life would be in a state of upheaval, her heart would be cracking. So, she schooled her face into an expression of grief. “I’m sorry for that too.” Sorry she’d been embroiled in all this business.

There was a long pause as he studied her.

“How can I help you, Mr. Montgomery?”

He flinched. “It’s Mr. Montgomery now? No more Rhett?”

Rhett was the rogue on the docks, the man who’d made an awful day bearable, the happy memory she’d turned over in her mind a hundred times since then. The lord in front of her was anything but. He was furious, and he was hurt. Wounded dogs bite, Adelaide. Keep your distance. So, she kept her silence too.

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I have never lied to you. Not once.”

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

“Because it was inconsequential.”

“It is hardly inconsequential when you belong to my brother.”

Adelaide drew herself to her full height plus some. “I belong to no one.”

Rhett rubbed at his face. “Of course. I did not mean to imply actual ownership… Damn it. You are my brother’s fiancée.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You were not mine to kiss,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Yet it is all I have thought about.”

She leaned against the doorway, her body close enough to feel his warmth, but not touching. Not again. She was so tired, and he was looking at her for an explanation. She had no words for him. None that he wanted to hear. None that would not embroil her even further in this mess.

After a moment of silence, he shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped back. Her body protested the distance. It was colder without him. His face had shuttered. The rogue was gone. “Meg insisted I let you know you are welcome at Strafford Abbey, and that you mustn’t leave because the duke’s overbearing sisters have overrun the place.”

“She said overbearing?”

There was a ghost of a smile. “I may have editorialized somewhat. But they are keen for you to visit tomorrow so they, we, can learn more of you and how you came to be engaged to our brother.”

Adelaide swallowed hard. She could tell him the truth right now. After all, up to this point, she hadn’t lied. She’d stayed quiet through Cordelia’s blatant mistruth and hadn’t corrected any misunderstandings, but she’d not truly taken part in this sham.

Cordelia would be furious, and there would be no keeping it from the London gossips. Adelaide would lose her job and most likely any chance at another position within the ton , but she wouldn’t have been complicit.

But telling the truth would mean giving up the money her employer had promised, and accepting that a home of her own was far off. She would be stuck in service, or wandering, for decades.

She stared at him, at all the various consequences he represented. “I’ll see you in the morning, Mr. Montgomery. Please send word if the duke wakes before then.”

Rhett stalked down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the night. His breath fogged in the cold air, obscuring the light from the local village.

“Brother.” Jac stood in the doorway, her robe hugged tight around her. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine, Jac. I just needed some air. It felt like the walls were caving in.”

“Didn’t you just spend a week on a ship?” she asked, joining him on the landing. “Aren’t the cabins tiny? However did you manage?”

It wasn’t the size of Peter’s bedroom that was the problem. It was the weight of the person in it. Who’d have thought a person could suck out more of the air while unconscious than they had when they were awake?

“Ships are conduits to adventure, Jac. It doesn’t matter how small they are; they’re giant with possibility.”

Jac rolled her eyes. “How very poetic of you. Next, we’ll discover that you spent your time in Germany writing poetry with Otto Schwarz.”

Rhett could feel the heat creep up his neck.

“Rhett!”

“One cannot travel to Weimer and not pay a call on Schwarz. It’s what one does in the land of poets.”

His sister clapped a hand over her eyes. “Lord, Peter is going to have a conniption. He’ll wake from this episode and then pass out all over again. Tell me you are not the subject of one of Schwarz’s poems.”

Rhett put his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet. He felt no shame about that hedonistic week and was rather chuffed that Otto had chosen to write about it. But that didn’t mean he wanted his younger sister to know the steamy, graphic details.

“Tell me which one it is.”

“Never.”

“I must know.”

“It’s bad enough that you’ve seen those infernal sketches of my member; you do not need to hear it described in lavish prose.”

Jac stared at him mulishly.

He changed the topic to the one that was tumbling over and over in his mind. “What did you make of Lady Cordelia?”

Jac shrugged. “It was hard to make much of her when she escaped from the room almost immediately. Not that I blame her. Winnie was making so much noise.”

Rhett raised an eyebrow. Of all his sisters, Jac was the loudest. It was as if she assumed other people’s hearing was as bad as her eyesight, and she yelled to compensate. “I invited her back tomorrow so that we can meet her properly.”

That wasn’t the truth. The girls might want to “meet her properly,” but Rhett wanted answers. He didn’t for one moment believe that she was the Duke of Thirwhestle’s daughter. No young lady of the ton had such a mouth for profanity and for kissing. Even his sisters, who were as sensible as young ladies got, would not acquiesce to a stranger disrobing them, regardless of how few other options there were. They would have rolled home like a pig in a blanket before stepping foot in that tavern.

“She accepted?” Jac asked, clapping her hands. “Thank goodness. I’m half-mad with curiosity. Is Peter the reason she left the Duke of Hornsmouth at the altar? I never thought he could inspire that kind of passion. He’s so… staid. I always assumed his wife would be equally…”

“Dull?”

She glared at him. “Conservative.”

There was nothing conservative about Della. He couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from inching upwards as he recalled the stream of profanities she’d leveled at the ship’s captain.

His smile faded, though, with the reminder that if she was who she said she was, she was bound to his brother. Once again, Peter was given freely what Rhett coveted simply because he was a duke and Rhett was not.

It wasn’t Peter’s fault, though. Arguably, he was in a worse position. Women would say and do anything to become a duchess. There was no lie they wouldn’t tell. No level they wouldn’t stoop to.

Rhett may not be husband material, but now that he was aware of that, he could enjoy his affairs knowing exactly what women wanted from him—a flirtation, a romp, and that was all. Peter could never truly trust a woman’s motivations.

Della, if that was her real name, absolutely could not be trusted. He put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “You are sure that she is Lady Cordelia, aren’t you? She is the one you saw running down the aisle?”

“Yes,” Jac said confidently.

“And you were wearing your spectacles?”

Jac frowned, a crease forming between her brows. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Rhett exhaled, running a hand through his hair. “It has a lot to do with the current situation, Jac. We know nothing of this woman or her motivations. She is likely not who she says she is. Even if she is Lady Cordelia, for all we know, she’s just another title hunter.”

Jac screwed up her nose. “I know what I saw, and didn’t you see her too? How many redheaded women could have been fleeing London in such an ornate wedding dress on that very day?”

Jac made a good point. The evidence pointed to Della truly being Lady Cordelia, but he didn’t like it. It didn’t sit right.

“You’re so cynical, brother. If all she wanted was a title, she could have married the Duke of Hornsmouth. No, I’m convinced this is a love match.”

He didn’t believe it. The woman who kissed him a week ago couldn’t possibly be in love with someone else. Surely. Yet Lady Meredith had kissed him, and Peter had been her target all along. “You don’t find it strange that none of us knew Peter was betrothed? That he hadn’t told you or Meg?”

She shrugged. “Peter has never exactly shared his feelings with us. Besides, Andrew says our brother has been talking about marriage for months. I don’t know how the relationship between Lady Cordelia and Peter began, but I’m so glad it did.”

Rhett wanted to be happy for his brother. He wanted to have as much faith as Jac did, but he didn’t. Something was off. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he would find out.