When the last sob faded, she sat at her writing table and began to make a plan.
The hilltop house would be finished next week; the roof had been repaired, the water closets installed, and most of the furniture delivered. It was meant to be a retreat, a place for the twins and for herself, far from the toxic fog of London. If she left now, no one could stop her. Not even Oscar.
You do not have to ask permission. You never did.
She summoned her lady’s maid, a clever girl with quick hands and a sharper tongue. “I will be leaving at first light tomorrow,” Nancy said. “Pack what you can for me and the twins. The rest can follow.”
The girl’s mouth fell open, but she caught herself in time. “And the Duke?”
Nancy shook her head. “He has business in town. We will not disturb him.”
The girl curtsied and fled, leaving Nancy alone.
She wrote a note to her mother. The words would not come, so she settled for the truth.
Mother—
I am moving to the country for a time. The children need the fresh air, and I need the peace.
Please do not worry. I will write again when I am settled.
With love,
N
She sealed the letter, then lay back on her bed, eyes open to the shadows chasing each other along the ceiling.
Somewhere, a clock struck midnight. She wondered if Oscar was home. She wondered if he cared. She wondered if he would even notice she was gone.
CHAPTER 35
Oscar squeezed the bridge of his nose until the pain radiated through his skull and his vision pulsed white at the corners. It did nothing to clear his mind. The study was quiet, but the kind of quiet that seethed.
He’d replayed the argument a dozen times. Nancy’s voice echoing off the study shelves, her hands—clenched, then splayed, then clenched again—white-knuckled as she drove each accusation into him with precision. The letter, damning and scented, its pinkness now a punchline in the grotesque farce of their marriage.
He was, by all rights, ruined.
Oscar let out a slow breath and looked around his study, as if the battered desk or the rows of ledgers might explain where he’d gone wrong. They did not. Nothing did. The only certainty was the shape of Nancy’s back as she’d walked away from him, rigid as a column, her anger so complete it filled the doorway even after she’d vanished.
Something was wrong.
Not just the letters—though those were odd, he had to admit, and increasingly so the longer he considered them—but the whole narrative.
The way events had unfolded, the logic of the thing. Nancy, for all her chaos and defiance, had always been stubbornly, even irritatingly, honest. She would not deceive him about a lover; she would simply tell him to his face and offer no apology.
Likewise, he doubted she could muster the effort to feign outrage. That anger had been real, and it had been for him.
Which meant the only liar in the room had been the paper. And the paper did not write itself.
Oscar stood, circled the desk, and considered the possibilities.
If the letter to him was a forgery, then it must be the work of someone in the house. The handwriting—he searched his mind, conjuring the image—was round, almost childish, but with a practiced touch. The perfume was thick, but not quite the right blend for any of the women he’d kept company with in years. He ran through the names, faces, scents. All wrong.
If the letter to Nancy was also false—well, that was a different beast entirely. The pressed rose, the Wordsworth, the verse. The implication was not just infidelity, but romance. Seduction.Someone wanted Nancy to believe herself beloved, or at least, to believe that Oscar believed her capable of being so.
He paced. Listened for the familiar creak of the floorboards, the distant clatter in the kitchens. The household was asleep, or pretending to be.
He pulled the desk drawer open and examined the pile of correspondence. Letters from his solicitor, invitations to Parliament, the usual missives from country friends, and ancient aunts. Nothing stood out.
