The duke had leaned back and folded his arms. “Mrs. Right, we have known each other a good long while. Whatever it is on your mind, out with it.”
She had no choice. She’d have to admit what she’d done to have any chance at talking some sense into the duke and saving her dear Serenity from that rogue of a marquess. “Well, as it happens, I do not know if you are aware, but there are times when one is dusting and straightening things when one’s eyes, terrible traitors that they are, will take in words suddenly thrustupon them. Words written down. On a paper. Those words might be anywhere at all and a person cannot always direct their eyes in a preferred direction—”
The duke held his hand up. With a snort, he said, “A person cannot always direct their eyes in a preferred direction? I’d find it rather uncomfortable if my eyes were going off doing things without me. Mrs. Right, if you were to put that idea in plain English, do you mean to say that you accidently read some of my correspondence?”
“Aye, that would be the plain English of it.”
“I see. And I will make a giant leap and imagine that correspondence was from some lowly servant in Lord Thorpe’s household.”
“Yes, and so you can see why I did not think—”
“That I would allow one of my daughters to wed a scoundrel who had meddled with a housemaid.”
Mrs. Right nodded sadly. She really could not understand it. It seemed so unlike the duke!
“That letter was not written by a servant in Lord Thorpe’s household, but rather, an unhappy younger brother.”
Mrs. Right staggered back and fell into a chair. The letter was written by Lord Charles?
