Surrender to Me (The Derrings #4)

Surrender to Me (The Derrings #4)

Sophie Jordan



Chapter 1

After nearly an hour in the Countess of St. Claire’s drawing room, the long-suppressed words finally stumbled past the Duchess of Derring’s lips. “He’s alive.”

Conversation halted and all heads swiveled to gape at her. Astrid smoothed a trembling hand over her faded muslin skirts and suffered the wide-eyed stares, wondering if there might have been a more prudent way to introduce the topic that had burned on her mind and left her staring into the dark long after she retired to bed last night.

“Bertram,” she clarified, pausing to clear her throat. “Bertram is alive.”

The room’s other occupants—the Dowager Duchess of Shillington and Lord and Lady St. Claire—continued to stare at her as if she had sprouted a second head. Only Lord and Lady St. Claire’s baby, bundled on the lap of her mother, appeared unaffected by the announcement, letting loose several happy shrieks, incongruous to the charged silence.

Lady St. Claire was the first to gain her voice. “Bertram lives?”

Astrid nodded to Jane as she bit into a savory tart. If she dined now, she would not need to eat later, which meant more food for the servants.

Cheeks full, she chewed slowly, the flaky crust and burst of pungent truffles and minced onion resembling dust on her tongue. Unfortunate that she could not appreciate the fine fare. Her own cook was good, but she could only do so much with the paltry sum Astrid gave her for market every week. Astrid shook off the thought. No sense worrying over what could not be helped.

“Bertram?” Lord St. Claire echoed beside his wife, his expression politely inquiring.

Jane smoothed her hand over his larger one, the gesture intimate and loving in a way that made Astrid squirm in her seat. Likely it was the strangeness and unfamiliarity of it that disturbed her so. Sentimentality, genuine affection between a man and a woman, struck her as…odd.

“Astrid’s husband, dear,” Jane explained in a hushed voice, looking Astrid’s way almost apologetically—as if she knew how much that particular truth aggrieved her.

Husband. Unfortunately, she could not deny it. She was in fact married, no matter that some days she managed to forget…managed to pretend she was not.

Perhaps it was insensitive, but she found it easier to believe Bertram dead than the cold truth of the matter—that he lived his life blithely unconcerned of her and the family he left behind.

Only a part of her always knew he lived. And now she possessed a letter indicating her instincts were correct.

“How do you know he’s alive?” Lucy, the Duchess of Shillington, asked. “It’s been a long time—”

“Five years,” Astrid quickly replied, the number embedded in her mind as sharply as her own name. Five long years she had waited. Even knowing he would never return. Not for her. Not for his responsibilities. And certainly not for the hangman’s noose that faced anyone found guilty of forgery.

She had waited, clinging to a thin thread of hope. The hope that perhaps homesickness, at the very least, would seize him and bring him back to face his crimes…and set matters right.

With shaking fingers, she loosened the tattered strings of her reticule and removed the anonymous letter she had read countless times since its delivery yesterday. Without a word, she handed it to Jane, then reached for another biscuit.

Jane accepted the letter, transferring baby Olivia to Lord St. Claire’s arms. He tickled one of the rolls beneath the infant’s chin and she made a gurgling sound, halfway between a coo and giggle. The sound was bittersweet. Astrid closed her eyes against it, against the reminder of all her life might have been. At nine and twenty, the prospect of hearing her own children’s laughter winked dully, a gem without life or luster.

She opened her eyes and schooled her features into the familiar mask she had mastered over the years. Even before she had married Bertram, she’d made impassivity an art form. Duty and forbearance. Chin high. Eyes straight ahead. Keep the emotion out. With good reason. Emotion led people astray and ruined lives. A lesson learned well when her mother abandoned her for the arms of Mr. Welles, Astrid’s dancing instructor.

Hiding had become as natural as breathing. A vague smile, a cool look, all calculated to reveal absolutely…nothing. A Drury Lane actress could give no better performance.

“No,” Jane gasped, her hazel-gray eyes wide as they lifted from the missive. “Bertram’s in Scotland?”

First Astrid gave a single nod, swallowing the last bit of her biscuit. The emptiness in her belly still there, she plucked another tart from the tray. Taking an indelicate bite, she chewed as Jane passed the letter around, permitting her husband and Lucy to read the words that had reverberated through her head since yesterday.

“Engaged!” Lucy cried in affronted tones. “That—that wretch! He’s wedding an heiress under an assumed identity?”

“A Sir Edmond Powell,” Astrid supplied. Having already investigated the man, she elaborated, “A prosperous gentleman in possession of quite a bit of land in Cornwall. Coal mines. He spends most of his time abroad. It appears he has not stepped foot on English soil in quite some time.”

“A prime identity to assume,” Lord St. Claire murmured dryly. “No one likely recalls the fellow’s face.”

“He must be stopped,” Jane announced, stabbing an elegant finger in the direction of the letter.