Page 73 of The Replacement Duchess

“Well, I did not do it alone. I had the help of a few maids.”

“Even so, it is lovely, and you must have worked quickly with it.”

“If you must know,” she explained as she led him through the rooms she had redecorated, “we did it over the course of a few days. We simply changed small things each day, and you did not notice.”

“I suppose that I have been rather out of sorts of late.”

“Yes, something like that.”

He wanted to apologize to her. He had never meant to lose his temper, but the library had been a difficult thing to think about for years, and the more she tried to force the issue, the more anger he felt flooding back. It had been unfair on his part, and he knew that, but he simply could not bring himself to tell her that. He wondered if she might do the same thing eventually, and begin the apology, and then they would be able to move past it completely, but for the moment they were speaking once more, and that was enough for him.

“You have not been lonely of late, have you?” he asked, and she turned to him with wide eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“In my absence. I know that you said Samantha was coming because she wanted to, but I cannot help but feel as though you invited her because you and I were not speaking.”

“It… It was partly that,” she admitted. “I will not make a secret of it, I have been lonely. I have always had Samantha, and then when I did not have her, I had you. It has been one of the most severe punishments that I have ever received.”

Colin’s heart pounded. He did not want to punish her. He had been upset with her, angry with her, but he had not wanted her to feel as though he had left her to her own devices specifically to make her miserable.

“I had not meant to do that to you,” he said gently.

“I had hoped not. Then again, I would have deserved it even if you did.”

“No, you would not have. That is not how we are supposed to be. We are supposed to communicate when these things happen. I do not want you to have that sort of life anymore.”

“Nor do I,” she said sadly, and then after a moment of silence, she laughed.

Colin could not help but join her.

“This has been such a long few weeks,” she sighed. “I do not know when it will end. Each time I feel as though we are getting to the end of it, something else happens.”

“Then it ends now,” he promised her. “From this moment on, there will be no more secrets, no more lies, and every time something happens, we deal with it together. It all stops now.”

“In which case,” she said slowly, “I need to tell you something. Oh, God, you will hate me.”

“What? I will not hate you. What has happened?”

“It is not what has happened, but what I have done.”

“Alright, so tell me what you have done. I will not hate you for it.”

“You might,” she said softly, walking to the stairs.

He followed after her, and as they walked into her room, she pulled a book from her shelf. He laughed, wondering if this great act that she had committed against him was simply taking a book of his.

Then she opened the book.

The moment the key slid out of the pages and into her palm, he knew what she had done. She handed it to him, and he turned and walked to the library, the key sliding into the lockand turning, and opened the door to reveal a library that looked nothing like the one he had seen all that time ago.

“Diana,” he said carefully, “what have you done?”

“I redecorated.”

“Why?”

“Because—because I—I do not know.”

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