Page 46 of A Wallflower for the Disguised Earl

Edmund went perfectly still, his hand retreating instantly to his own lap. His blood turned to ice. He pulled the blank mask of the secretary back over his face, locking his jaw so tightly his teeth ached.

Corinna sat rigidly beside him, her face pale in the firelight. The beautiful moment had been violently murdered.

Vivienne stepped fully into the light, her eyes narrowing as she surveyed the stone bench. She took in Edmund’s plain brown coat and Corinna’s flushed face with a look of profound, sneering dissatisfaction.

“Just the two of you?” Vivienne asked, her tone dripping with suspicion and disdain. “Sitting in the dark? Corinna, really. This is entirely unacceptable behavior. And you, Mr. Marsh, you forget your place.”

A beat of terrifying silence followed. Edmund braced himself, preparing to stand and take the full brunt of Vivienne’s fury to protect Corinna.

“I am right here, Miss Ashwell.”

Arabella stepped smoothly out of the shadows near the edge of the orchard wall. She was holding a silver cup of water in her hands, her expression completely placid.

“I was merely fetching a drink from the pump house,” Arabella said, her voice mild and perfectly even. “I have been here the entire time. Mr. Marsh and Corinna were kind enough to wait for me.”

Vivienne blinked, completely derailed by the sudden appearance of the earl’s sister. Her suspicious glare faltered, replaced by a strained, entirely false smile.

“Oh. I see,” Vivienne said stiffly. “Well. The hour is still terribly late. Corinna, you must come inside at once. You are reflecting poorly on the household.”

Corinna stood up slowly. She did not look at Edmund. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the ground, wrapping her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “Yes, Vivienne.”

Vivienne turned on her heel and marched back toward the house, demanding Corinna follow her immediately. Corinna walked away into the dark, leaving an empty, freezing space on the stone bench.

Edmund sat by the fire, staring at the space where Corinna had just been. His hands were shaking.

Arabella did not follow the Ashwell sisters inside. She walked over to the fire pit and stood beside Edmund, looking down at him. The firelight caught the aching compassion in his younger sister’s eyes.

She had seen it. She had seen the reach. She had seen the absolute, undeniable truth of what existed between her brother and the wallflower.

“Edmund,” Arabella said softly, her voice barely a whisper in the quiet garden. “This needs to be over. It is time.”

He closed his eyes, dropping his head into his hands. The heat of the fire offered absolutely no comfort against the freezing dread pooling in his stomach.

“I know,” Edmund whispered roughly, his voice cracking under the weight of his own lies. “God help me, Arabella, I know. But I do not know how.”

Chapter 17

The dawn at Ashwell Park crept through the leaded panes of the old downstairs study in slanting bars of pale gray. Outside, the dew weighed heavily upon the grass, and the world was entirely silent save for the occasional twitch of a restless hunter in the stables beyond.

Corinna sat with her elbows braced against the scarred mahogany of the table, her eyes narrowed in fierce concentration at the wooden board between them. The pieces were old, their polished ebony and boxwood worn smooth by decades of eager hands.

Opposite her, Thomas Briggs sat with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a mug of cold cider resting untouched near his left hand. He did not look at her face; he looked at the board, his fingers hovering lightly over his knight before he dropped it into place with a crisp, decisive click.

“Check,” Thomas murmured.

Corinna blinked. She leaned closer, her breath catching as she surveyed the devastation of her defenses. Her king was boxed in by his own pawns, completely stripped of maneuverability, while Thomas’s rook loomed ominously on the open file. She reached out, her fingers brushing the smooth wood of her bishop, only to pull back as the cold reality of her defeat settled over her.

“You trapped me three turns ago,” Corinna whispered, her voice rough with the early morning chill. “I was entirely too focused on your queen’s flank.”

“You always overcommit when you smell an opening,” Thomas replied mildly. He reached out and tipped her white king onto its side. It rolled a fraction of an inch before coming to a rest against a pawn. “You look for the grand attack and leave your back rank exposed. It’s a bad habit, Corinna.”

Corinna leaned back in her chair, letting out a long breath. She folded her hands in her lap, watching the dust motes dance in the shaft of light falling across the table. “You beat me.”

“I did,” Thomas agreed. He didn’t gloat. He merely reached out and righted the fallen king, setting it back in its box. He kept his eyes on the carved wooden pieces, his thumbs tracing the rim of the box. “He watches you.”

Corinna went entirely still. “What did you say?”

“The companion,” Thomas continued, his voice dropping into that steady, unhurried cadence that had grounded half her childhood. He finally lifted his dark eyes to meet hers, entirely devoid of mockery. “Mr. Marsh. He watches you the way a man watches something he is afraid of losing. And I have never seen you look at anyone the way you look back at him.”