Ripped mid-sentence, the remains read…of tourmalinebefore a string of numbers that amounted to an extortionate price.
Something stirred in Elias’s memory. May had spoken of a tourmaline necklace once before, had she not?
His eyes strained to make out the surviving signature at the bottom. She’d left him a clue, after all.
“May Anne Carr,” he breathed her name like the holy prayer it was. “Wherever you are, whoever you serve, you are mine to find.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Three days had passed since May left the duke’s estate in the middle of the night, tear-stricken and heartbroken. Two days since she’d gone by the pawnshop armed with nothing but pleas only to see the clerks scatter like roaches at her approach. They’d slapped the door closed and disappeared, as if she were a leper. One day since she’d gone to the market in the morning only to see the duke’s people shopping the stalls; she turned around and ran, before she could be recognized.
All that was in the past; today she was pressing her lady’s dresses with mechanical precision, even as the Lady Justina herself eyed her from the doorway.
“Would you put aside those dresses already and tell me what’s going on?”
“Nothing. I am perfectly fine.”
“Liar. I can see the circles under your eyes. Don’t you trust me enough to tell me why you came back early?”
May put aside the iron. She had no time for this: the coals in the iron would cool, and she would have to start all over again. She thought she’d found the person who’d be her home; she waswrong. There were better uses of her time than crying over milk that was never hers to spill in the first place. But the tears came down all the same.
Justina’s arms found her at once, and the next thing May knew, her body was wracked with sobs that didn’t sound like they could belong to her, and yet they did.
“I did something foolish.”
Once she started talking, she found herself unable to stop. The story of her and the duke poured out of her until all her secrets lay bare, and she’d been hollowed out once more.
“You should have come to me for the money,” Justina chided gently as she wiped May’s tears away with her thumbs. “I might not be as rich as the duke, but I would give my all to help you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” May looked away. Justina meant every word, and that was exactly why May wouldn’t take more than her friend could afford to give. “The necklace is already gone, and there is no getting it back. Some things just aren’t meant to be.”
“Just you wait until I see that abominable duke.”
Something in May bristled at that descriptor, anyway. “He isn’t entirely wrong—I did deceive him.”
“So? He is an utter fool not to see you for who you really are. You would have made an excellent duchess, and I intend to tell him so at the first opportunity.”
“Me, a duchess? This isn’t a fairyland: that was never on the table.”
“I know what I’m talking about. Who does he think he is, using you so ill?”
Who, indeed. May was so sure she’d uncovered his true nature, only to be undone when he turned out to be a stranger.
“I suppose I mistook a comet for the sun. I should have known better, and I’m fine, just a bit… singed.”
“You are a poet.” Her friend playfully nudged her nose. “Your torn heart certainly bears fruit: a couple more lesions on it and we could get you published in a journal.”
“Apologies.” May could not do much to conceal her blush. “I wasn’t thinking when I spoke.”
“You were thinking too much, but we shall remedy that with... a stroll, perhaps?” Justina frowned at May’s shaking head. “No? Something else, then?”
“Post, my lady.” The butler popped in with a knock on the door. The rest of the staff were long used to their lady hanging out in her servants’ quarters. “This one was marked as urgent.”
“Might that be your nameless mystery man?” May thought back to the night after the masquerade ball.
“He has a name!”
“One you didn’t invent?”
