Page 59 of The Duke's All That
Seraphina saw red. Stepping up to him so they were nose to nose, she said, low and cold, “Andyoucan be certain that if you ever seek us out you shall regret it. I am aware how you must have leveraged your daughters’ supposed deaths to further your connections and your career in Parliament. I am also aware how dearly you hold your reputation. If word ever got out that my sisters and I are alive and well and you lied to hide the truth, you would be ruined.” She stretched her lips into a smile that was more a baring of teeth than anything else. “And we will gladly tell all and sundry the truth should anything happen to any of us.”
Her father’s face paled before turning florid in his rage. “You bitch,” he hissed, his body shaking. As she watched, he raised a hand as if to strike her.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Lord Farrow,” she drawled. “I have not been idle these past years. I have friends in high places now, ones who would be more than happy to assist me in seeing you suffer, and greatly. Now,” she continued as she held out her hand, “the key.”
His eyes fairly popped from his skull, so furious was he. For a moment she wondered what she would do if he dropped dead at her feet from apoplexy. She rather thought she would gladly retrieve the key from his pocket and step over his still-warm body.
In the end he reached into the pocket himself, handing the key over with impotent disgust.
Taking it, she brushed past him and headed for the door. As she opened it and was about to leave, however, she paused and said over her shoulder, “As this is the last time you or I will ever see one another again, I shall bid you adieu. I hope you get exactly what you deserve, Lord Farrow.”
With that she sailed out the door, through the house, to Iain’s carriage in the drive. And as she settled inside next to Phineas, and in the growing twilight the carriage began the trek back toward Durham to the inn, leaving Farrow Hall and her father and all the memories wrapped up with him behind, she felt that, for the first time in thirteen long years, she could finally breathe.
Chapter 26
Candles were glowing in the windows of the rooms above the Quayside Circulating Library when the carriage pulled up. Seraphina looked with a full heart at that place she had worked so hard to build for her sisters, knowing that if she was going to finally stop living in fear, as she had determined to do back at her father’s home, she had to trust them with the truth and tell them everything. Which in and of itself frightened her nearly beyond bearing.
Dragging in a shaky breath, she allowed the driver to help her down to the pavement. The air, she noted absently, was already beginning to cool, the end of the summer season having come and gone while she was away, a stiff autumn wind coming in off the sea. It wrapped around her like a caress as she and Phineas waited for Iain’s men to retrieve her bag, and she closed her eyes as the comforting feel of home filled her up. Or, at least, home as she hadbelieved it to be, before she had gone off with Iain on that ill-conceived trip to dissolve their marriage—a trip that had changed everything for her, ripping apart at the seams what she had believed to be true, patching it up again into something new and brilliant and frightening.
“Miss Athwart,” the groom said, and she opened her eyes to find the man holding her bag out for her.
“Thank you,” she murmured, taking the bag. She cleared her throat and adjusted her spectacles. “And thank you both, for everything.”
“It was our pleasure, miss,” the driver said, touching a finger to his brim. “Would you like us to help you inside?”
“Oh, no. That won’t be necessary.” She pointed down the street toward the Promenade. “The Master-at-Arms Inn is just that way. They will take fine care of you for the night.”
They nodded, climbing back up on the carriage. As the driver was about to urge the horses on, however, Seraphina, feeling as if she was about to lose Iain all over again, panicked and stepped forward. “When you get back to Scotland, please tell His Grace—”
But what message could she send to him? That she loved him; that she was sorry she never told him that; that she missed him and wished she were with him and wanted to take back everything she had ever said about how they could never be together? No. Because though all of that was true—so much so it broke her battered heart—she still had no doubt that she had made the right choice. She had burned all her bridges to a life as a respectable member of the aristocracy. And while she could never regret the decisions she had made to save her sisters, she could still mourn the fact that a chasm had opened between her andIain when he had taken on the dukedom, a chasm that could never be crossed.
But the men were watching her with mounting concern. “Please give His Grace my thanks for the use of his carriage,” she finished lamely.
Nodding, they waved and were on their way, the last link to Iain rumbling down the street. Resolutely she turned back to the building, looking up at the golden stones of the facade to the windows above. As she watched, a shadow passed across a window: one of her sisters. Battered heart swelling, she retrieved Phineas’s cage from the ground and, squaring her shoulders, marched around the side of the building to the small door and narrow stairs that led to the upper floor.
A comforting warmth enveloped her as she stepped into their apartment, the sound of her sisters’ chattering, like busy magpies, making her eyes prickle. They sat close together on the small, worn sofa, their backs to her and bright red heads bent together, a beloved sight she had not known how dearly she had missed until now. Quietly pushing the door closed behind her, she placed Phineas’s cage down and opened the small door. At once he scrambled from the contraption, eagerly flying to her sisters, alighting on Millicent’s shoulder with a happy little chirp.
“Oh!” Millicent exclaimed. “Phineas!” And then both girls turned and saw Seraphina, and the excitement and love in their eyes was like a balm to her soul.
“Seraphina!” Elspeth cried, jumping up and running to her, arms outstretched. “We have missed you!”
Seraphina embraced her, holding her close, pressing her cheek to the soft crown of her sister’s hair, even as she closed her eyes tight against the sudden burn in them. SoonMillicent joined them as well, and Seraphina thought her chest would burst from happiness.
But that happiness was tempered by the knowledge that there were things that needed to be said before she lost her nerve entirely. Things that could not wait a moment longer, not if she wished to finally move on from the past and stop living in fear.
Pulling back, she looked down into their sweet faces, that same blind trust in their eyes that had always been there. She had counted on that blind trust for far too long, a one-sided thing she had not reciprocated as she should have. No, she needed to also put her trust in them.
Drawing in a deep breath, she said, not even attempting a smile, “Let us sit. There is much I have to tell you.”
At once their joy dimmed, uncertainty taking its place. But they did as she bid, making their way to the comfortable circle of well-loved seats, huddling together as if they knew they would need one another after Seraphina was done.
And they would. As much as she might wish otherwise, the coming conversation would be painful. Yet she also knew it could not be put off a moment longer. If she did not do this now, when the confrontation with her father was still fresh in her mind, when Iain’s admiration was still bolstering her spirit, she would never be able to do it. And her sisters deserved better than her continued secrecy. Drawing in a steadying breath, Seraphina began, her voice warbling.
“I have not been fair, to either of you. I have kept things from you, all in the name of protecting you. Just as I have tried to protect you for these past thirteen years. But in doing so, I have disrespected you both. You deserve toknow the whole of our history,myhistory. And it is past time I told you.”
“Seraphina,” Elspeth said, even as her knuckles turned white where she gripped tight to her sister’s hand, “you needn’t tell us if it pains you.”
Which would have been an easy out. But Seraphina was through with keeping these two women—for they were women now, though she had tried to keep them children for so very long—in the dark.
