CHAPTER 24
“These arrived for you this morning, Your Grace,” the butler said, holding out a missive and a wrapped item like evidence in a criminal trial.
Nancy eyed the package for an address or crest, but the paper was blank. Even the ribbon tying the bundle looked as though it had simply wandered off a plain haberdashery. “No sender?” she asked.
“None, Your Grace. The runner departed before I could make an inquiry.” He inclined his head. “It was left at the doorstep.”
“Thank you, Wilks.” Nancy took the package and studied its weight, which was more than that of a letter and less than a dictionary. She peeled off the wrapper, half expecting a dead fish or a bag of pig’s blood—her previous correspondence from unknown sources had rarely been so delicately presented.
Inside, a book bound in deep blue calfskin, title stamped in faded gold: Poems of Wordsworth. Tucked between the endpapers was a single rose—withered, but not wholly dead, pressed so flat it looked like a botanist’s warning. Nancy suppressed a groan. The letter, folded in quarters, bore no wax or watermark.
She pried it open. The handwriting was neat, almost professional, slanted just enough to suggest the writer wished to be seen as mysterious.
Her stomach clenched as she read.
My Duchess,
No star that burns upon the vault of night,
No pearl submerged in Orkney’s icy seas,
Could rival the kindling of your wit?—
Nor outshine the embers of your hair,
Luminous in the gloom of Scarfield’s halls.
With every word you speak, I am remade,
A moth drawn to the ruin of your flame.
If there be sin in loving so,
Let me be condemned,
So long as you are my sentence.
Yours,
A worshipper in darkness
Nancy closed her eyes and pressed the bridge of her nose. “Good God,” she muttered, and threw the letter onto her desk.
Of all the ways to begin a day, being compared to a celestial object or a doomed lamp was not the one she would have chosen. She checked the envelope again for clues—none. She sniffed the rose, on the off-chance it was laced with arsenic, but it smelled only faintly of old paper.
She opened the book. Nothing inscribed. No pressed leaf with a clue, no margin notes. Only the flower, flattened to misery between pages 37 and 38. Wordsworth, she thought, had never been her taste—too much mooning, not enough grit.
She set the book aside and glared at the letter. “A moth drawn to the ruin of my flame,” she repeated, aloud, with a shudder. “Insufferable.”
There was a noise at the door—a soft knock, followed by the gentle slide of shoes on carpet. Nancy stashed the letter under a blotter and greeted the interruption with as much civility as she could summon.
“Your Grace?” It was the under-maid, eyes downcast, tray in hand. “Your breakfast.”
“Thank you, Mary.” She accepted the tea and toast, resisting the urge to interrogate the girl about mysterious deliveries. Mary’s hands shook, just a little, as she set the tray. “Is everything quite all right this morning?”
“Oh yes, Your Grace.” Mary bobbed a curtsy, her face a study in repressed panic. “Everything is most agreeable.”
Nancy watched her scuttle away. Something was afoot in the house, and it had nothing to do with Wordsworth.
