The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(89)

Mal did not care for the baroness’s words, nor did he care for the way she seemed to indict Lady Emily in the fact that Mal had chosen to love his wife and forgo finding a replacement altogether. Of course, it was odd that the girl didn’t eat soup, but it wasn’t grounds for cruelty. They would invite her to the dinner with Lilith and Felicity. He could find a man who didn’t care for soup, he was certain.

“I assure you, Lady Emily, it was a pleasure to meet you.”

Lady Brunswick continued on as though he had not spoken. “It’s no wonder that the Soiled S’s all departed so quickly, but you would have thought someone could have told us you’d chosen your replacement, so we were not all left alone at the evening meal, waiting for your decision to be announced.”

He stilled even as she pressed on.

“Instead, you took to your bed in the middle of the day! Good riddance to you and the Dangerous Daughters. Our family deserves better.” She took hold of Emily’s arm. “Come along, Emily.”

Emily looked as though she wanted the ground to swallow her whole, but that was not Haven’s concern. He lifted his hands to stay the conversation. “What did you say? The others departed?”

“Like thieves! Skulking off in the dead of night!” the baroness sniped.

The words unlocked the other mothers. “An hour ago. The Talbot sisters all climbed into their coach and hied off.”

“Sesily left her cat,” Lady Felicity added, as though it mattered.

For a moment, it didn’t. And then Lilith added, soft and serious, as though she understood the implications of her words, “They were in quite a rush.”

They had left.

Surely not Sera. Not after everything they’d experienced that afternoon. Not after promising they’d discuss it. After, she’d said.

He shook his head, looking from Felicity to Lilith and back again. “All of them?”

“Of course all of them!” the baroness squawked. “They got what they wanted, the madwomen!” She turned to her daughter. “Come along, Emily, we must to bed as well, as tomorrow our search begins anew.” She tapped her husband on the shoulder. “You as well, Baron.”

Brunswick grimaced at the summons, but followed it nonetheless; at least, Mal assumed he followed it. He did not linger in the doorway, turning on his heel and heading for the door connecting his rooms to Sera’s.

He burst through it, half expecting her to be there, in the bed, asleep. At the dressing table, fiddling with a button hook. In the chair by the empty fireplace, reading. Laughing with her sisters. Something.

But she was not. The room was dark and empty of her.

She’d left him.

He moved to inspect the wardrobe, finding it full of her things, dresses in a dozen purple hues, shoes piled below. On the dressing table, powder and hairbrushes, pins and baubles, a bracelet she’d worn at lawn bowls. Earbobs he recognized from one evening’s dinner.

She’d left him, and quickly.

Goddammit, she’d told him she loved him, and she’d sped from the house as though hell itself was chasing her. Like Merope and the Pleiades taking flight as doves. And Malcolm, blind and desperate Orion, forced to hunt her again. Like a fool.

He bit back the scream of rage that threatened to loose itself in the dark room and went to the window, open to let in the summer’s night breeze. The room faced the drive, a long, lingering path that led to the main road and then to the London post road.

There was no sign of the carriage, no lantern light flickering in the distance, no indication that she’d ever been here.

He placed his hands on the windowsill, clutching it until the stone and wood bit into his palms, and whispered her name with all the rage and desperation and love he could find.

She’d left him, like a damn coward.

And then the thought came, cold and harsh and terrifying. What if she’d run again?

He went stick straight. She wouldn’t run again. Not the way she had before. She’d left with her sisters this time. They wouldn’t let her go, would they?

Words echoed, memory of the day she’d appeared in Parliament and asked for the divorce he never intended to give her. I have no reason not to end our unhappy union. I have nothing to lose.

No reason not to run. Nothing to lose.

And she didn’t have anything to lose. She’d made sure of it. She’d returned to London on the arm of the American, with whom she had friendship and nothing else. She sang in a tavern. Slung whiskey as what—a lady barkeep? She had money—her father’s and his mother’s—and nothing to tie her to London.

But she had him, dammit.

“She said she loved me!” His harsh, broken whisper cut through the darkness, and he closed his eyes, fists clenched at his sides. “How could she leave me?”

Love is not enough.

“Your Grace?”

He spun, heart in his throat, to face Lady Felicity Faircloth, framed in the doorway, a lantern in one hand and Sesily’s damn cat in the other. He shook his head to clear it. He did not have time for these girls. “It was never real, Lady Felicity,” he said. “You were a ruse.”

She nodded. “I know. Anyone with eyes in their head could see that you and the duchess were for each other and no one else.”

“Anyone but the duchess could see it, I think you mean.” He could not keep the frustration from his tone.