Page 110 of The Duke and the Lady in Red
“Mrs. Ranier, I’ve come for Miss Longmore.”
“She is not here, Your Grace.”
“Did you finish up quickly then?”
“We did not even begin. She came in through the front door, departed through the back one, with hardly two minutes in between.”
Surely he’d not heard properly; the woman wasn’t communicating well. “She left through the back?”
“Yes. She implied she was having trouble with her lover. I assumed she meant you as I saw the kiss just beyond my windows. Quite scandalous.”
He took a step toward her, not certain what his expression conveyed, but she hopped back. “Are you telling me that she came in here and immediately left, using the alleyway?”
“I am, Your Grace.”
He almost asked her why, but the woman wouldn’t know. Although he did.Help me make whatever time my brother has left as pleasant as possible. Afterward, you can ask anything of me and I’ll comply. I’ll stay with you as long as you want. She’d even offered to sign her name in blood. She’d turned to him in her hour of need and he’d been fool enough to fall for her lies. It was inconceivable, unconscionable that she would swindle him again—
But she had, damn her.
“Where is she?”
Avendale had barged into Rose’s residence and cornered Merrick in the parlor.
“Who?” Merrick asked.
“Rose. Who else would I be looking for?”
“Ack! What are you doing?” Sally asked as she entered the room, and he swung around at her, irritated that she scrambled back as though his anger were directed at her when it was all for Rose.
“Rose ran off this afternoon. I want to know where I’d find her.”
“Ran off? That makes no sense.”
“You haven’t seen her?”
She wrung her hands. “Not since poor Harry was laid to rest. Why would she leave?”
He took a deep breath, expelled it, studied both Merrick and Sally. They seemed confounded. Maybe she hadn’t left him. Maybe—but why go out through the back?
“You love her,” Sally said.
He might have, but now ... dammit all to hell, he still did.
“We had an agreement. She was supposed to—” He broke off the words because they sounded silly, childish. She was supposed to stay with him. When he’d never declared his feelings, his love, his admiration of her. When he had never truly trusted that she would stay.
“She’s free now,” Merrick said. “With Harry gone.”
“Merrick!” Sally scolded. “Don’t say such things.”
“But it’s true.” He came to stand in front of Avendale. “She loved him. We all loved him. But she never had a chance to be a girl, not really. To be carefree. She always had the responsibility of him, from when she was a child from what I understand. You can’t know what a burden that was.”
Only he did know. He’d read Harry’s writings. Maybe she’d run off to be with that stupid factory worker in Manchester. She’d known she was leaving, when she’d kissed him publicly on the street outside the seamstress shop. He could see it now, in retrospect, in her voice, her eyes. He thought he’d learned how to read her, that she could never swindle him again. She was an incredible actress and he was more the fool.
“If she comes here—” What, what was he going to do? Force her to stay with him? “Tell her to knock on the servants’ door at my residence, and Edith will deliver her things. She won’t have to see me.” And he wouldn’t have the opportunity to beg her to stay.
Avendale sat in a chair by the fireplace in the library and tried to drink himself into oblivion. One moment he was cursing Rose to perdition and the next he was in danger of going in search of her.
She hadn’t come here to get her things. How was she going to survive with only the clothes on her back? Why hadn’t she just told him that she wanted to leave? Because he had made asinine comments about going after her if she left. She must have felt like a prisoner, mourning not only Harry but the complete loss of her freedom, of choice.
