Page 20 of The Milliner and the Griffin Rider

“That would be a first,” he said, his voice cold and mocking. “Of the many girls who pursue the Duke, I can’t say I’ve encountered one who doesn’t want to marry him, if she can manage it.”

“Of course I don’t want to marry him,” she snapped back, stung at his tone. “Then I’d have to spend the rest of my life actually living with him.”

Fletcher’s unexpected laugh broke the tension thrumming between Chloe and Harrison. He strolled forward and clapped Harrison on the shoulder.

“That puts the Duke in his place.”

Harrison shrugged off his lieutenant, still not breaking his focus on Chloe.

“Then what do you want?” he asked harshly. “I’m sick of the games. It’s time for the truth, if you please.”

Chloe resisted, scrambling to think of what she could say. But all at once the fight leeched out of her, her shoulders slumping. She was fooling herself if she thought she could keep up the charade long enough to extract a griffin egg from the Duke. She was fairly sure she had been fooling herself from the beginning—getting to know Harrison had only sealed it.

“I never intended to take it as far as marriage,” she said. “I just wanted him to fall in love with me.”

“Just to fall in love with you,” Harrison murmured, his voice rough. “And what did the Duke ever do for you to wish such a harsh punishment on him?”

“I—” Chloe blinked at him. She’d never thought of it in those terms.

Why had she not done so? Because she had believed the Duke was too shallow and self-obsessed to develop any feelings for her of lasting strength? It had been a condescending assumption.

Sage climbed out of her nest at last, weaving between the men to approach Chloe. Chloe greeted her arrival with relief, leaning against her as her knees wobbled, fresh shame filling her. Sage had grown so much in the last weeks that her shoulder now stood just below Chloe’s, and her presence filled Chloe with fresh strength.

“I can see what you mean,” she said in a quiet voice. “It was poorly done of me. But I was desperate.”

Something flashed across Harrison’s face, and for a second she thought he meant to step toward her. But he controlled the impulse, bringing his face back under stern control.

“What did you think the Duke could do for you?” he asked quietly, but there was steel—and something more painful—behind his voice.

Chloe clung to Sage. “I need a griffin egg.”

Her voice wobbled as she said it, and she realized that, just as she couldn’t play the love-struck fool for the Duke, neither could she hand over a griffin egg to Gannon of all people. What would he do with it?

“A griffin egg?” Harrison looked genuinely shocked, her words breaking through his cold anger. He exchanged a quick look with Fletcher, whose brows had shot up.

“Maddie and I have a sizable mortgage on our store, but we can exchange the whole thing for one griffin egg. Without it, we’ll lose everything. And then I’ll never be able to bring my sisters to Everard.”

Harrison’s face softened a fraction as she mentioned her sisters—he had heard her chatter about them to Sage often enough—but it quickly hardened again.

“You wanted a griffin egg in order to sell it? Because it’s valuable?” He sounded sickened.

Chloe swallowed. It sounded so terrible when he said it like that. And it hadn’t been quite like that in reality. But he was close enough to the truth that she couldn’t easily refute his words.

“I let you into my mews!” he snapped, but his expression said he had let her into more than that—and the thought now horrified him.

Her heart twisted, her body starting to shake. What had she done?

Fletcher stepped up to Harrison’s side, speaking softly. “Ranger spoke to her the first time they met. And Sage chose her. You can question your own judgment, but can you question theirs?”

Harrison’s brows drew together, but he didn’t refute his lieutenant’s words.

“Did we ever tell you why Sage was so small and sickly?” he asked instead.

Chloe, who had been struggling to meet his eyes, looked up, the arm around Sage’s shoulders tightening.

“What do you mean? I thought she was born that way.”

“She was,” Harrison said. “But not because there was anything wrong with her originally. Her egg was stolen.”