Page 19 of The Marquis' Game of Seduction
“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you,” Rose began. “I just wish you’d tell me… who is that girl?”
Duncan cleared his throat. “That’s Margaret,” he said. He said it without a moment’s pause, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Margaret,” Rose said. She turned the thought over in her mind. “I suppose she must be one of your imaginary friends.”
Of course. This was the most reasonable option. She had to stick to the idea that the girl she’d seen last night had been simply an apparition, a result of stress. She had to lean on her employer, believe him above everything. She couldn’t get carried away.
But Duncan shook his head with a strange violence. “No. Not imaginary.”
Rose’s smile snaked between her cheeks. Surely, he was lying. Duncan was continually making up little animal-friends, little play-friends, little creatures that ambled around him. She expected it was difficult for him to always know what was real and what wasn’t, especially when so much had changed in his life in the previous few months.
Duncan seemed to sense this inner thought process. Again, his eyes flashed toward hers, and they spat with anger. “She’s not imaginary. I suppose you think so because I craft so many other imaginary friends, but she is quite different. I can assure you.”
Rose swallowed. He said it with such volatility that she felt that she had to believe him. After a long, stretching silence, she whispered, “How do you know this girl, Duncan?”
Perhaps she was simply a girl from back in the West Indies, one he hadn’t mentioned yet? If so, perhaps they could arrange a pen-pal-ship, something that would help Duncan make peace with the fact that he’d lost so much of his past.
“I met her here,” Duncan said.
“Here in the Kensington Estate…” Rose asked. She furrowed her brows.
“Yes. Of course,” her returned. “She came into my room a few nights ago. At first, I was frightened of her and told her to leave. I told her that I didn’t want to believe in ghosts, at least not yet. But she told me that she wasn’t a ghost. And I suppose that’s something you have to believe about someone, if they say it to you.”
“I suppose so,” Rose whispered.
Duncan shrugged. “Anyway, she played with me for a while. She’s quite good at playing.”
“Did she tell you anything else about herself?” Rose asked.
Duncan shook his head. “Not really. Not that I remember. It was quite late. I told her that it was important that we both get some rest—or else we might end up ill like my mother. That’s when she left.”
Rose glared down at the drawing that Duncan had made of this young girl, this Margaret. Her heart thumped in her throat. Was it possible that this was the same girl she’d seen in the night? It couldn’t have been a coincidence that she and Duncan were both spouting stories of a little girl in the mansion—could it have been?
Now, Colin’s affirmation that there wasn’t a girl, that she was sorely mistaken, seemed even stranger.
Duncan blinked at her again, looking a bit confused and almost irritated. “I only have two more sentences,” he told her.
“Right, right,” Rose said. She brought herself up, stretched out her spine and said, “Two more good sentences, and then we can continue to play. I’m a woman of my word. You can always count on that.”
“Good,” Duncan said. “Because I’ve long figured out that most adults lie. Thank you for not doing that.”
Rose blinked up into the stained glass window once more. Her head felt heavy with the weight of this mystery. Just moments later, Duncan sprung up from his seat, dropped the quill, and nearly spilled the ink all over the hundred-year-old desk. Then, he whisked back through the shelves and book cases, calling out for her.
“I’ll hide again!” he said. “Maybe you really won’t find me this time!”
Rose’s limbs ached. For whatever reason, she suddenly felt profoundly tired. But she dragged herself out of her chair and marched back through the bookcases, knowing that she had to keep her word above all things. She wouldn’t be yet another adult. One who, according to Duncan, “lied all the time.”
Chapter 10
Later that afternoon, Duncan excused himself to his bedroom for a round of play. Although he invited Rose along, Rose made a tiny excuse since her mind was still awash with confusion regarding this little girl—and she trudged away from Duncan’s room with a mind to find Judith and corner her and get to the bottom of what was going on.
As she padded away from Duncan’s room, she heard him already in the midst of his wild storytelling, weaving a master plan for his horses and his army men. For a moment, she cradled this memory close—knowing that all too soon, Duncan would be grown and his mind wouldn’t work in such a fantastical way. It was simply the way of growing up.
Rose marched downstairs and swept past Colin’s study. To her surprise, the door was cracked, and she whipped back a bit to peer through. Colin wasn’t seated at his desk, and he didn’t appear to be stitched into any of the corners. She wondered where he’d snuck off to, during his “terribly busy” afternoon.
In previous mansions, Rose had normally found the general schedule to be simple to follow, easy to comprehend. She knew when to take the children where, when to fill their heads with knowledge, when to disappear so that the family could have “alone time,” that sort of thing. But the rules in the Kensington Estate seemed far different and far more difficult to follow.
Sometimes, Rose found Judith in the sitting room with some embroidery, something Judith had told her was one of the only things that calmed her racing mind. However, when Rose peeked her head into the sitting room, she found it empty and echoing. The windows were cracked a bit, causing the wind to sweep in off the moors.
