The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(62)
The property had once been a hunting box with some attached acreage. Caro and Elizabeth had made it into a farm. They’d pooled what little money they had been between them, had hired men to lay the fields and plow the ground, year after year. Even with all that work, though, the land wasn’t truly theirs. Caro had been left the hunting box for her lifetime only. After she passed away, the property would go to some distant cousin.
With five thousand pounds, Minnie might purchase her great-aunts’ farm when the time came.
With five thousand pounds, she could do that and go very far away. Wilhelmina Pursling might disappear. She could go where nobody had ever heard of her. Somewhere where she wouldn’t have to make herself small to try and please a man. All she would have to do to get that safety was precisely what she’d promised Robert in the first place. She would have to be his enemy.
But the alternative…
She could simply tell the duchess no. For all the woman talked about knowing her son, Minnie didn’t believe she had any notion of who he was. Robert wouldn’t be happy with some proper peer’s daughter. She’d seen the light that came into his eyes when he talked about his plans for the future. If she did this, she couldn’t pretend it was for his benefit.
It was for hers. Because she would rather betray a man she could come to love than face the crowd again.
She could see her pale reflection in the window glass, superimposed on the farm. She looked herself over—those too-pale cheeks, the scar on her face. Eyes that shifted around, refusing to fix on any one spot. She held up her hand and watched it tremble.
“You’re only considering this because you’re scared,” she told herself.
But that wasn’t quite true. It was because she was terrified.
Chapter Seventeen
DUSK CAME, BUT MINNIE HAD NOT YET COME TO A DECISION. She was pacing in her room when she heard a pounding on the door below. There was the noise of scuffling and then a shriek from the entry beneath her feet.
“Minnie! Minnie!” Lydia’s voice.
Minnie rushed to her door. A storm had come on since the duchess’s visit and rain beat against the windows in sheets.
Minnie didn’t stop to put on slippers. She simply threw her bedroom door open and darted toward the stairs. Her friend stood in the entry, dripping water in a puddle. Her hair had fallen from its half-curls to lie in a sodden black mess at her shoulders. Her skirts and petticoats were bedraggled.
“Minnie,” she said again, before Minnie could descend the stairs to her. “Stevens is back, and you would not believe what he is saying to Papa. He’s saying—”
Minnie held a finger to her lips. “Shh.” She tilted her head to where the maid stood, watching in confusion. Don’t say anything. They might gossip.
“He’s saying,” Lydia said in hushed tones, coming up the staircase, “that you’re the author of those handbills.”
Minnie’s heart pounded in her chest. “Is he? Has he any proof?”
“He’s saying that you are a liar and a cheat—that he has proof that your mother never married, not ever, that you’re a child of sin. He’s saying your real name is Minerva Lane—”
Minnie set her hand over Lydia’s mouth. “Shh,” she repeated softly. “I know what he’s saying. No need to repeat it. Who does he think Minerva Lane is?”
Lydia frowned at the question. “Just—just some other woman. Stevens thought it was the name you were given to hide the truth of your illegitimacy.”
So. Stevens had discovered her real name—she had lived in Manchester when she was a tiny child, and someone must have remembered the connection. But he hadn’t traced her family history, or figured out why she’d taken on a new name. If he’d been looking in Manchester, he might well have missed the reason. After all, the scandal had broken in London.
“You have to come sort it all out. Stevens is talking about a warrant for your arrest.”
“For my arrest?” Minnie gasped.
“For criminal sedition. Papa has known you all these years. I don’t know how it could have happened, how he could think anything so impossible. I heard it all through the door. Minnie, you must come. Maybe if you send for the duke…”
Thunder rattled the windows, so loud that Minnie flinched.
“No,” she said swiftly. “Not him. Not him. He can’t save me.”
Stevens might not know why Minerva Lane had changed her name, but he would soon. Once that name was uttered in public, there would be no hiding her past. If Minnie married Robert, exposure would not just be a possibility. It would be a certainty. She would never be able to escape this noose around her neck. She could feel it tightening about her now.
Another clap of thunder came, long and low, vibrating through the air. Her hands trembled with it, and in the end, fear made the decision for her. She had a heartbeat to choose between ruin and betrayal, between the possibility of love and the certainty of defeat. And when it came down to it, love had served her poorly before.
“We have to leave now,” Lydia insisted. “I know you can put things right. You always do.”
Minnie knew what she had to do. She could see it already, a nightmare vision stripped of color.
“Have a horse saddled,” Minnie said to the housemaid, who still waited in the entry below.