But it had been obvious once she found out that Hannah had a lover. It made everything else come together too easily—the pallor, the tempestuous emotions.
“I know,” she said, feeling as exhausted as she’d ever felt. She looked at her little sister, who was regarding her nervously but with hope and excitement in her eyes, too. “You’re expecting.”
CHAPTER 9
“You have everything arranged, then?” Lord Turner asked crossly, his expression contrarian as he looked at Phoebe across the drawing room of their London home.
“Of course, I have everything arranged,” said Phoebe, who had nothing arranged. She’d repeated this same lie so many times during their journey back to Town from their country estate that she almost believed it.
She was lucky that her father wasn’t the kind of man to ask for details when he could just sit around and wait for someone else to do the work for him. Really, it was a miracle that he had managed to arrange a betrothal for Hannah, all things considered. A miracle that was currently the source of every single problem in Phoebe’s life, granted, but a miracle nonetheless.
Phoebe had wracked her brain for the last several days, but the best plan she’d been able to come up with was begging the Duke to forget he had ever been betrothed to Hannah in the first place.
This plan would have felt as though it had a greater chance of success if she hadn’t already met the Duke of Redcliff. Phoebe had probably met a more stubborn person in her life, but nobody came to mind at the moment.
The moment she had returned to London, Phoebe had dashed off a note to her friend Ariadne, hoping to gain something—anything—useful about Ariadne’s cousin. But the newly-minted Duchess of Wilds was off doing something, well, wild with her husband and was not expected, the footman who had delivered Phoebe’s note reported, for a few days at least.
“The butler said that Their Graces often keep an unpredictable schedule,” he had told her apologetically.
Phoebe, who had already known as much, gave the man an understanding smile.
“Thank you for your help,” she’d said, hoping that her tension didn’t show in her smile.
Ariadne had been her one hope for information about what made the mysterious and aloof—and bloody stubborn as a mule—Duke of Redcliff do the things that he did.
But that hope had been snuffed out like a candle flame in a puff of wind. And she was out of time to bluff.
So begging. That was the plan. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t see another way around it.
“It will be just fine,” she reassured her father and sister, who both looked at her expectantly. She didn’t give a damn about letting her father down, but she couldn’t bear to disappoint Hannah.
Not when Hannah’s would-be lover seemed determined to do just that. Hannah kept insisting that he just had to arrange “one last thing” before they became betrothed, though she wouldn’t clarify what that one thing actually was. Phoebe assumed this was because it was not a very good reason to abandon—even temporarily—a woman whom he had gotten with child.
She did not, she admitted, have the highest opinion of Lord Lyle of late.
There was a rap at the door.
“Your Lordship, Madams,” said the maid standing there, giving a nervous, quick curtsey. “His Grace, the Duke of Redcliff is here.”
And indeed, he was.
It was unlikely that the man had somehow gotten broader shoulders in the past three or so days, but he seemed even more imposing than Phoebe remembered.
Maybe that was just because previously, she’d only had her own secrets to protect. Now, she had Hannah’s.
“Your Grace!” Lord Turner leapt to his feet, nearly losing his balance in his exuberance. “So good of you to come. So good. Too good!”
Rolling her eyes at her father did give Phoebe some way to release a bit of the tension that had been building inside her these past few days.
“Your Grace,” she said, in a far calmer manner, “it’s good to see you again.”
He looked at her like he didn’t believe her. This, she decided, was fair. She only half meant it, and she didn’twantto mean it even that much. Stupid, lousy, handsome duke.
“Miss Turner,” he said. She could read nothing in his expression. It was as though they were meeting for the first time.
It was as though they’d neverkissed.
Too right, Phoebe told herself. They were pretending that hadn’t happened. And if she pretended hard enough, no doubt it would start to feel true.
