Page 64 of The Duke and His Jilted Bride

It seemed to satisfy the lady. Seraphina rose, smoothing her skirts again even when there was nothing to smooth. “I hope you won't take this moment as anything other than what it is. I only want you to go into this with your eyes open. It would be a shame, after everything, to build on something that isn't quite what it appears to be.”

“Yes, it would be.”

“And we’re sisters now, aren’t we? We have to look out for one another, and look out for ourselves beyond that.”

Seraphina left then with a little nod. The door closed behind her. Nike sat up and watched the door for a moment with her ears forward, then lay back down and grumbled.

Aurelia picked up her magazine and scowled at the front page.

Seraphina was wrong. She was very intelligent and beautiful, but she was wrong and had completely missed the mark about Evander. She didn’t know what had happened in the sitting room last night, and she didn’t know what had been building for weeks before that. She said she knew Evander enough to warn Aurelia about his weathervane moods and his obsession with rightness, but she was wrong. She did not know him, and Aurelia did.

She closed the journal and got up, leaning down to kiss Nike between the eyes before leaving. She had been meaning to go to the music room. She had a theme she had been developing for two weeks, something she couldn't quite put together, that kept circling back to the same four bars in the E minor key. It was the key she associated most with Evander. She wanted to work on it before dinner, and she was nearly at the music room door when she changed her mind and went to the library instead, where she knew Evander had gone to read.

Retracing her steps down the corridor, she reached the library door and pushed it ajar without stopping to question why it was closed. Her heart fluttered in her chest at the thought of being alone with Evander again, a smile coming to her mouth, the music forming slowly.

But when she saw what was inside, she stopped, a foot barely over the threshold.

Evander was there in the large and dim room, yes. He was standing near one of the windows, looking out. The light from outside made him see all dark. He was not alone. Seraphina was in front of him. She stood close, closer than any purpose required, her hand raised toward his face like she was either going to hit him or embrace him. His face tilted down toward hers, and there was a moment, from where Aurelia stood in the doorway, where it looked like…

It looked like…

Aurelia felt her face contort in agony. She couldn’t move, had looked for only a second before turning away. She understood what she was seeing, stifled a scream, then she stepped back. The door closed gently as she pulled it with both hands, so it made no sound. She stood in the corridor with her back against the wall beside the door frame and looked at the opposite wall, squeezing her eyes shut.

She had been so certain. She had been so sure that she knew him now. But Aurelia had been wrong. Or she had been right then and was wrong now. Either way, she walked back down the corridor to the music room and went in in total silence. She sat down at the pianoforte and put her hands in her lap, and she looked at the keys for a long time without actually playing anything.

The theme she had been developing spun in her head, the four bars that kept circling back and forth and back again. She thought about the last few months, the kisses and the long silences that had been the good kind, and she thought about how thoroughly she had been building something she was now not sure existed in the way she had thought it did.

Outside the window, the grounds were green and peaceful, and somewhere across the house in the library, something terrible was happening that she had walked away from without fully understanding, but that made her want to put on her coat and run all the way back to Aunt Violet, even if she died before she got there, lost in the wilderness between this new home and the last.

Twenty-Three

He had not seen it coming, and that was his worst mistake. Evander had been standing at the window looking at the grounds, wondering whether Poole had managed to locate Frederick and get him to ride with him, when Seraphina had come in and closed the door. At first he had thought it was Aurelia and smiled. But the air turned different around Seraphina, heavy and sickly sweet.

He turned to ask her what she wanted. She came around him, so close that he was momentarily stunned and couldn’t move. She said something – what the devil had it even been? It didn’t matter. Within minutes, without preamble, she leaned forward and tried to kiss him.

He managed, “What?” just before her lips could meet his.

Before he knew what he was doing, on instinct, he pushed her back violently. The motion was too hard. She hit the window frame and cried out, one hand going to her shoulder where she had caught the wood. He stood with his hand pressed over his mouth in disgust and watched her recover herself against the glass.

“I'm sorry,” she said immediately. “I'm sorry, that was–”

“What… in God's name… did you do?” He said it quietly, which was worse than if he had shouted it.

“I don't know.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I don't know. I'm sorry.”

“You… What did you do? You walked in here and–”

“Evander–”

“In my house…” He turned away from her, put both hands on the table behind him and stared at the grain of the wood. “With my wife, thirty feet away…” He breathed for a moment. “You are my brother’s wife…”

The silence behind him was horror. He turned back just enough to look at her. She was motionless against the window frame, one hand at her shoulder, her eyes wet, victimising herself as though she hadn’t just committed an atrocity. The crying had started before she came in. He could see that now. She had come in here already close to it, which meant this had not been a moment of madness. It had been a decision she had made. But for what?

His thoughts raced wildly, trying to make sense of the moment, putting things together that had happened so they could make sense. He wiped his mouth again with the back of his hand. Two years ago in the gallery he had felt nothing. Just the base confirmation of mutual indifference, two people making an error in silence. This was more than that. This was wrath, clean and cold, moving through him in a way that required considerable effort to contain it so he didn’t… so he did not…

“Sit down,” he said through gritted teeth.

She looked at him, eyes wide. He couldn’t read the expression in them even now to tell whether this was all a game.