Page 52 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

“You are frightened,” he said.

“Yes.”

She had promised him no lies.

He came to stand beside her, close enough that their wet sleeves touched once more.

“If the carriage is his,” Selina said, “then his presence here is an escalation. But we do not yet know what form it will take.”

“He has come onto my ground.”

“That may make him more vulnerable. It does not make him harmless.”

“No.”

They stood together in the hall, watching the closed front door while rainwater gathered beneath them upon the flags.

It was nearly an hour before Bassett returned. By then Selina and Nathaniel had changed out of their wet clothes and joined Georgiana in the small drawing room, where none of them had made much pretence of attending to the tea.

“The carriage belongs to Mr Felix Rowland, Your Grace. He took a room at the Wexford Arms this afternoon and enquired how far the inn stood from the gates of Wexford Park.”

Nathaniel’s expression hardened, but he did not move.

Georgiana set down her untouched cup. “Then I was right.”

“You were,” Selina said. “And because you recognised the carriage and told us, he has lost the advantage of surprising us.”

“He wished us to know that he had come,” Nathaniel said.

“Perhaps. Or he wished to be near enough to watch the house without approaching it. We should not decide his purpose for him.”

Nathaniel looked at Bassett. “No message is to pass between the inn and this house without being brought directly to me. If Mr Rowland approaches the estate, I am to be informed before he reaches the door.”

“Very good, Your Grace.”

After Bassett withdrew, Georgiana looked towards the darkening windows.

“What do we do now?”

“For tonight, nothing,” Nathaniel said. “Tomorrow, we discover what brought him here.”

“And until then,” Selina added, “we deny him the satisfaction of knowing that his arrival has frightened us.”

Georgiana glanced at her. “Has it?”

“Yes,” Selina said. “That is why we shall be careful.”

Nathaniel’s hand found hers beside the tea tray. He did not cover it until she turned her palm beneath his.

Outside, the last rain fell from the trees in slow, heavy drops. A mile away, Felix Rowland waited at the village inn.

This time, they knew where he was.

Chapter Fourteen

Nathaniel returned from the village shortly before noon with mud upon his boots and blood drying across the knuckles of his right hand.

Selina noticed the latter before he had removed his coat.