Page 81 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
Each second that ticked by without a word boiled her anger to a pitch.
She pointed toward the door. “Leave.”
Finally, he looked at her. “In a few weeks’ time, this house will no longer be yours. What will you do then?”
“I will figure it out.” She ripped his satchel over her head and shoved it toward him. “Leave!”
He stepped over the detritus, placing the bag’s strap around his shoulders like armor or a burden he must always carry, and she wrapped her arms around her waist. He paused in the doorway. “Cordelia, I—”
“Leave. And when you figure out what it is you want, Lord Theodore Bromley, then let me know, and I’ll see if I still want you.” A surprise the words did not tremble on her tongue and break into a thousand pieces once they hit the air.
He entered the hall, and she followed him.
“Your father protected me, Theo.Youhave protected me.” She spoke to his retreating back. “But I will protect others from you. If I must.”
He didn’t turn around, and soon, even the thick wave of his hair disappeared down the stairs. She walked after him, barely aware of moving, wanting only to see him a moment or two longer.
Below, the front door opened. Then closed, and she placed a palm against the wall to steady herself, support herself, then she leaned her shoulder and hips there, too.
“Lady Cordelia.” Mrs. Barkley’s head, then the rest of her body, appeared, bobbing up the stairs. “Has he hurt you?”
The housekeeper would have heard the raised voices of the argument, the smashing of her pitiful collection. Yes, he’d hurt her.
But Cordelia smiled, as she always did. “I am well, Mrs. Barkley.”
“Let me help.” Mrs. Barkley shuffled toward her.
“Yes. Please send someone to clean up this room. Have… have everything but the furniture removed from it. Thrown away. We will not need it when we move.”
Mrs. Barkley disappeared once more, and Cordelia returned to the broken room to wander aimlessly about it, flicking that needlepoint cushion with the illegible wording and running a finger down a cup that looked more like a melted bowl. She waited for the inevitable pang of failure to come.
It didn’t. Lord Waneborough had held such high hopes, and she’d disappointed him by failing to be the prodigy he’d hoped for. He’d traded an actual artistic genius for her, after all. Would only have been right, a fitting repayment for his protection, to be good at art. And she had lived by that failure for too long. And she thanked Theo for releasing her from the obligation of guilt.
She would spend no more time regretting not being good at this. She could not paint a scene, but she could organize one, find the right people and put them in the right places as she had her instructors and their students. The true shame would be in continuing to wish herself otherwise instead of using her talents as they were. Her artistic endeavors had served their purpose long ago, had helped her heal.
And now she would help others. When Mrs. Barkley arrived with boxes, and they began to empty the shelves and tables and walls, she felt like a blank canvas, ready to be filled with a design of her own choosing.
She wanted that design to include Theo but could not know what design he would choose for himself.
Twenty-Two
Ink-stained papers covered the floor of Theo’s bedroom at Briarcliff. They ran from wall to wall with only small pathways winding throughout so he could walk through them, discover… nothing so far. Every single sketch he’d produced at the house party and since then.
Knock, knock.“Theo?” His brother Atlas’s honeyed voice almost made him want to open the door. “Weather’s fine for a swim in the lake. Join us?”
“Will a race in which I, naturally, win, entice you, brother?” Zander, of course.
“No. Go away.”
A double sigh he heard even through the thick oak of his door, then footsteps retreating down the hall. Thank goodness for small miracles.
No time for a swim. So many sketches.
All of them useless. The ones of Pentshire that offered truth depicted only soft or playful moments between a man and woman Theo now knew to be husband and wife. And those he’d made of the other guests—the Castles, the baron and his mistress particularly—just the same. No scandal there. Only pure love, a bit of pain mingled in at times.
Another knock, this one lighter but more persistent. “Theodore?” Matilda, Raph’s wife. “Will you be joining us for dinner tonight?”
“We’d love your company.” Fiona, Zander’s wife, her voice ever hopeful.
