Page 69 of Duke of Pride

“Thank you. I will be right down.”

It was the middle of the night, and all the guests had retired. Victoria looked at the room she had called her own over the last month. She threw her cape over her shoulders and closed the door behind her.

She moved through the darkened halls of Colborne House like a ghost, her boots soundless on the polished floors. The moon cast a silvery light through the windows, painting her path as she slipped from room to room, memorizing the shape of the shadows, the way the air smelled of beeswax and lavender.

She saw his room up ahead. The room that had been hers for a whole year.Hisroom. Her mind went to that night when their bodies collided in the dressing room. Fire erupted in her veins, but grief got hold of her heart and squeezed.

Her hand rose to the round, ornate doorknob. One push and she could step inside. One word and she could wake him. But what would she say? Goodbye?

Her fingers curled into a fist, before she let it drop.

As silently as she could, she ran out of the house. The cold night air hit her like a slap as she slipped through the servants’ entrance. The carriage waited, the horses stamping impatiently. She climbed in. The door clicked shut.

The first sob tore from her throat before the wheels had even begun to turn.

It will all go away. It will go away.

And yet she knew well that this pain would be wedged between her ribs forever.

CHAPTER19

Brandy

Stephen knew that something was wrong when Euclid started to bark in the middle of the night. He got up and took him out, thinking he needed some freedom after the stupid mutt had spent the whole day locked in the study with him.

But Euclid rushed down the stairs, all the way to the servants’ entrance, and started wailing. Stephen studied the fresh tracks of a carriage. The butler came rushing after him.

“Alfred, did any of our guests leave in the middle of the night?” Stephen asked.

“Not a guest,” the butler replied, unsure of himself.

Stephen’s back stiffened. His fingers twitched. He knew what that meant. He knew from the way Euclid was barely holding back from launching into the night. From the way even his butler hesitated to confirm it. From the fact that he knewhertoo well. Yet he needed to hear it.

“Who was it?”

“Miss Victoria.”

Euclid’s whines cut through the silence, sharp as a blade. The dog pawed at the gravel where the carriage wheels had torn into it, his nose pressed to the ground as if he could still catch her scent.

Stephen stood frozen in the doorway, the cold night air biting through his thin shirt.Gone.The word echoed in his skull, hollow and unrelenting.

“Victoria.”

But his voice faded into the wind, too late to reach her.

* * *

The next morning was one of the worst in his life. One more sleepless night, but he had to get up, shave, wear clean clothes, and go downstairs for breakfast. Pretend that he didn’t care that the seat beside Annabelle was vacant. Eat something to keep up appearances, one hand patting Euclid, who was depressed.

Then, he had to show the guests out as they left one after the other. The house party came to an end, and his mother was giving out small pouches of lavender from their garden—a small gesture Victoria had suggested.

“This is truly thoughtful.” Blackwell’s voice brought him back to the present.

The rake was sniffing a sachet and looking at a card wrapped in a ribbon with interest.

“Is that Miss Victoria’s handwriting?” he asked.

“Yes, she wrote almost half of those,” Dorothy replied.

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