After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(86)

It was almost impossible to believe that this was not yet another cruel trick.

What if they didn’t want her?

Her hand crept to her pocket; she checked the direction on the letter one last time, just to be sure.

Hope was a choice. It had always been a choice, from the first moment she decided to hold on to it. It had been hope that pushed her from bed this last night, and hope that put one bare foot in front of the other all the way here. Camilla inhaled, made fists of her hands, and chose—foolishly, despite all possible evidence—to trust in it one more time.

Her chin went up; she climbed the stone stairs to the entrance. The door did not open for her. Of course; she wasn’t expected. On the other side, she could imagine a footman glaring at her barefoot form.

She rapped the knocker and waited.

No response came. She rapped again.

Finally, the door opened an inch. The man who blocked that narrow gap glared down at her. “The servant’s entrance is round the back. If you have business, apply there.”

Camilla straightened her spine. “I’m not a servant.”

“Then shoo altogether.”

She wouldn’t start this way. She wouldn’t act as if she were begging for scraps.

Deep down inside her, she remembered the child she had once been—the one who might have been entitled to enter here. That girl had been disabused of most of her finer notions, but Camilla would do her best to remember.

“You have to let me in.” She refused to speak quietly or demurely. She refused to let any hint of a quaver show. “I don’t need to go ‘round the back. I wish to have a word with Lady Judith. I must.”

The man grimaced and attempted to shut the door. Camilla stuck her foot—her bare foot—in the way, and winced as the wood struck her abused flesh.

“Move,” the man hissed, “or be moved. And you will refer to the lady of the house as Lady Ashford. Don’t speak of her in such familiar tones.”

“I shall speak of her any way I wish,” Camilla said, “because—”

There was a great clamor in the hall behind the butler. He turned, and Camilla took advantage of his temporary inattention to shove her way into the entry. She looked up.

Judith stood at the end of the hall. Judith.

God. It had been almost a decade since Camilla had seen her sister. Last time she’d seen her, Judith had been selling all her frocks. She’d been dressed in ugly wincey, and she’d looked pale and wan with grief.

This was an older Judith. She was rosy-cheeked and plump once more, dressed in a fine blue day gown and silk slippers. There were pearls at her ears.

Camilla didn’t look down at herself. She knew how dingy her gown was. She hadn’t had a traveling cloak to keep dust off her, and her clothing was stained with soot and smoke from the journey. She was all too aware that she had no shoes, that her feet were black with dirt and…well, she didn’t really want to know what else.

The butler turned back to her.

She looked like a servant. Honestly, that was unfair to servants. At the moment, she looked far worse than one.

Judith’s hands went to her mouth. Her eyes shone. “Camilla?” Her voice was low.

A man came to stand behind her sister. Camilla knew him, too—he’d visited their family often as a child. Christian.

Another woman joined them—tall and blonde and willowy, dressed in a pink gown with frothy lace at the edges. She was—inexplicably—holding a fork in one hand.

“Camilla?” that woman asked.

Camilla didn’t know if she was welcome or not. She didn’t know how to ask. But then Judith ran to her—slipping, barely catching herself on an ornate side-table in an attempt to stay upright. She didn’t hesitate, not for one instant. She wrapped her arms around Camilla, soot and all.

She was warm and clean and— “Oh, God, Camilla. Where have you been?”

Yet another woman appeared—this one, an elderly lady dressed in a dark purple gown. And another man—no, not a man, despite the height, not with that new fuzz on his cheeks. He was a boy.

That was Benedict, Camilla realized, the chubby five-year-old child she’d loved so well. He had grown taller than her.

That made that blonde, willowy lady who was watching her… Theresa?

Camilla could hear her heart hammering in her chest.

“Never mind,” Judith was saying, taking her arm. “Listen to me. Come in. We have food and towels.”

Camilla felt as if she’d faced down a wall, as if she’d pulled her fist back to punch it to pieces until she broke her hand—and as if the stone barrier that had reached impossibly far above her head had crumpled like paper. She was going to break down, right here. Right now.

She couldn’t lose her nerve. “Judith,” she said. “I need your help.”

Judith was still clinging to her, and Camilla found she could not let go. All for the best; her sister hadn’t noticed that Camilla’s soot had transferred to her gown.

Camilla reserved a silent prayer of apology for whichever servant would have to remove it. She knew from bitter, personal experience precisely how long it would take.

“Anything,” Judith said.

Camilla had to marshal her thoughts. There were years of explanation to give, and so much to hear in return. Right now, though, all of that distance boiled down to the last hours of her life.