Page 55 of A Wallflower for the Disguised Earl

He found Phoebe standing near the cloakroom, waiting for the Ashwell carriage to be brought around. She was alone for a brief moment.

Edmund crossed the distance, stopping right in front of her. He didn’t care about his pride. He didn’t care about his title.

“Please,” Edmund pleaded, his voice breaking. “Please, do not tell her. Do not let her hear it from anyone else. Give me the chance to tell her the truth myself.”

Phoebe looked at him, her eyes completely devoid of sympathy. She saw the man, not the coat, and she judged him entirely wanting.

“You have one day to fix this,” Phoebe said firmly, her voice colder than the night air. “One day. After that, I will tell her everything myself, and I will ensure she never speaks to you again.”

Chapter 20

The morning light filtering through the tall windows of the Mayfair townhouse felt entirely too bright, too intrusive, for the heavy, suffocating silence pressing down on the morning room.

Corinna sat in the high-backed armchair by the hearth, a cup of tea growing steadily cold between her hands. She had not slept. She had spent the dark, agonizing hours of the night staring at the canopy of her bed, turning the fragments of the garden scene over and over in her mind like jagged pieces of glass. She arranged them, rearranged them, and tried to force them into a logical pattern.

Nothing fit. Absolutely nothing made sense.

She pressed her fingertips against her throbbing temples, squeezing her eyes shut. She saw the terrace again. She saw Mr. Marsh standing in the pale moonlight, his broad shoulders practically vibrating with a desperate, raw urgency.

I am done lying to you. You have to know who I really am.

He had looked at her with a hunger that made her pulse race even now, the memory sending a flush of heat up her neck. He had been on the very precipice of a confession, reaching for her, his blue eyes stripped of every single defense he usually wielded against the world.

And then, the interruption.

Corinna opened her eyes, staring blindly at the unlit hearth. It was Lady Margaret’s face that haunted her the most. The Countess of Ravenswood had looked at a lowly secretary with an expression of such apocalyptic devastation that it defied all rational explanation.

A countess did not look at a servant with that kind of intimate, soul-shattering grief. And Mr. Marsh had looked back at her not with the deference of an employee, but with the horrified, naked guilt of a son caught in a terrible betrayal.

Then there was Aunt Phoebe. Don’t. A single word, delivered with the unyielding force of a locked iron gate. Phoebe had stepped between them, effectively severing whatever fragile thread had been pulling Corinna and Mr. Marsh together in the dark.

“You are going to burn a hole through the Persian rug if you continue to stare at it with such violence,” a dry voice noted from the doorway.

Corinna snapped her head up. Aunt Phoebe stood in the archway, wearing a simple morning gown of dark green. She held a palette in one hand and a cluster of brushes in the other, but for the first time since Corinna had arrived in London, her aunt did not look eager to paint. Phoebe looked exhausted. There were faint shadows beneath her eyes, and the usual wicked spark of amusement was entirely absent from her posture.

Corinna set her teacup down on the small table with a rattling clink. She stood up, smoothing her navy muslin skirts, and crossed the room.

“You know something,” Corinna said. She did not ask; she stated it as an absolute, undeniable fact. “You stepped into that garden last night and you stopped him from speaking. You looked at Lady Margaret as if you understood exactly why she was fleeing.”

Phoebe walked over to the side table and set her brushes down with meticulous, maddening care. “It was a highly emotional evening, Corinna. The countess was simply overwhelmed by the crowds. It was her first public appearance.”

“Do not insult my intelligence, Aunt Phoebe,” Corinna countered, her voice dropping into a fierce, urgent whisper. “I am not Vivienne. I do not accept polite fictions just because they are tied with a neat ribbon. Mr. Marsh was about to tell me something vital. Something that terrified him.”

“Mr. Marsh is a man who carries a great many secrets,” Phoebe replied, keeping her back turned as she wiped a smudge of burnt sienna from her thumb. “Some of those secrets are dangerous. I stepped in because you were standing in the crossfire of a battle that you do not yet understand.”

“Then explain it to me!” Corinna demanded, stepping closer. “Tell me why a wealthy Countess looked at a secretary as though he had just broken her heart. Tell me why Mr. Marsh looked at her as though the world had ended. Tell me why he said he was done pretending.”

Phoebe finally turned around. She looked at Corinna, her expression tight and guarded. The older woman, usually so quick with a cutting remark or a brilliant deduction, seemed entirely at a loss for words.

“I cannot solve this puzzle for you, Corinna,” Phoebe said quietly. “It is not my board to play.”

“You are protecting him,” Corinna accused, her chest tightening with betrayal. “You know whatever lie he is hiding behind, and you are helping him keep it.”

“I am protecting you,” Phoebe shot back, a rare flash of genuine anger sparking in her eyes. She took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “I am trying to keep you from being pulled under by a riptide. You have a brilliant mind, Corinna. You see the moves before anyone else even knows the game has started. But you are letting your heart blind you to the danger in front of you.”

“My heart is not blind,” Corinna whispered, her voice trembling slightly. “He is a good man. Whatever he is hiding, whatever he has done, I know he is a good man.”

Phoebe’s face softened, the anger bleeding away into a look of aching sympathy. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could utter a single word, the doors of the morning room swung open.