Page 73 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

Although truth be told, even she wasn’t quite sure she believed it. She could not entirely shake the feeling that if she allowed herself to fall asleep, she would wake to discover this had been a dream.

“You as well,” Danielle said, when Constantia did not stand and join them. “I’m not leaving you hear to brood over this affair all night.”

Brood? Was that what she’d been doing? It was, well, more than overwhelming to try to take it all in. And a good deal of the story made her sorrowful in ways she hadn’t expected.

But most of all, she was not sure how to begin to reconcile the woman shaped by the vicissitudes of a hard life, a woman whose experiences had formed a whole suit of rather spiky armor around her, with the woman Herr Schenk claimed she really was.

Out of habit, she shuffled the papers and books into neater stacks, not for the first time wishing her thoughts were so easy to compose. Eventually, though, she got to her feet and snuffed the last brace of candles from the dozens that had been lit at the start of the evening.

“Come on,” Danielle said. “I’ll show you to your room.”

It took a moment for those words to sink in. “My . . . room?” She was tired, yes, and a bit befuddled. But she was reasonably sure that after more than a fortnight at Rylemoor, she could find her way to the schoolroom.

“Your new room,” Danielle clarified. “Edwina feels it would be a shocking dereliction of her duty as hostess to allow a princess to continue sleeping in that broom cupboard upstairs.” There was something slightly wry in her voice. Constantia opened her mouth to protest, but when it turned into a yawn instead, she realized arguing would be futile and followed Danielle out.

Harriet was already several paces ahead of them, and Constantia was surprised when Danielle led her in the same direction, toward the east wing. But she supposed it was to be expected that the guest chambers would be placed near the family apartments, in the part of the house that had been best maintained over the years. And after all, now she was no longer masquerading as a teacher; she was a guest.

Only a guest.

“I have not had an opportunity to praise your portrait of my brother,” Danielle said as they ascended the stairs.

Constantia nearly stumbled. The unveiling of that picture seemed to belong to another lifetime. “You were pleased, then?”

They had reached the landing, and Danielle paused, appearing to have to consider her answer. “It is an exceptional likeness, very much the man I know my brother to be. Charming, kind, generous to a fault.” Even Constantia, who had a great deal of confidence in her abilities, doubted she had conveyed so much with brushes and paint. “But I will confess,” Danielle went on, “I cannot find pleasure in anything I am sure will bring him misery.”

“Misery?” Constantia echoed.

“Marriage to a stranger, some merchant’s daughter he does not love—what else would you call it? That is what your portrait will ensure.” She took a few steps down the corridor and paused again. “But of course, you did what you were paid to do. If my sisters and I have convinced ourselves that you care too much for our brother to help seal his fate, well . . . I suppose we have only ourselves to blame. We did not know when all this began that you are the infamous Miss C.”

The words stung, though she knew the lashing was deserved. “I certainly do not wish to see your brother miserable,” she insisted. “But I did not consider myself as having the authority, the right, to go against what both he and your aunt seemed to think best. Difficult situations are often difficult to remedy—”

“He cares for you, you know.” Danielle turned and searched her face, probing for a reaction to those words. “A great deal.”

“And I—” she began, then broke off with a blush.

Care did not begin to do justice to her feelings for Alistair.

Oh, if only he hadn’t left.

Danielle stopped before a door and handed her the candle. “I’m just here,” she said, and Constantia could have sworn there was a smile about her lips as she added, “You’re the last door on the right.”

She took the remaining steps down the corridor slowly, her mind too busy sorting through the events of the last hours to also propel her feet. So much had changed—everything, one was tempted to say. But she wasn’t sure she ought to go that far until she’d had a chance to tell Alistair all that she’d learned and ask him—

The last door on the right swung open to reveal a large chamber with a heavy four-poster bed. It also revealed the subject of her thoughts, clad in a dressing gown and sitting in a leather wingback chair before a fire blazing on the hearth, a book propped open on his knee.

She was torn between warring instincts: to acknowledge her mistake and withdraw from a chamber that obviously belonged to the Earl of Ryland, or to draw closer to the warmth and coziness of the fire—and to him. “Oh. I’m sorry for intruding,” she said, frozen in indecision on the threshold. “I must have misunderstood Lady Danielle’s directions.”

“Danny sent you to my door?” He had risen and turned toward the firelight so that she could watch amusement play about his lips, a half smile very like the one she had just seen on his sister’s face. “Then I doubt there was any mistake.”

“You can’t mean—? Surely she wouldn’t—”

He shrugged. “I did warn you that my sisters were mischief-makers. Long before the monthly encouragement of Mrs. Goode.”

Constantia glanced over her shoulder, into the empty corridor, and asked in a low voice, “You don’t think she, er, suspects?”

“That we . . . ? No. None of them believes their dour elder brother capable of courting scandal in quite such a dramatic fashion.”

And that, she supposed, was partly her handiwork too.

“Why did you leave?” she asked, standing with one hand on the door, torn over what to do. She thought of how he’d wrapped her in his arms earlier that evening, how he’d attacked a much bigger man in the darkness just to keep her safe. She wanted him by her side now. Forever.

But what he wanted mattered too.

“I could ask you the same,” he replied, laying aside his book and coming closer. “Though I suppose I already had your answer, didn’t I? Then let us say I suspected you would prefer to grapple with the implications of Schenk’s story on your own terms, and that there might be aspects of your history you would not wish others to know.”

“But Lady Harriet has heard—”

“I cannot say the same for all my sisters, but Harry is no gossip.”

She believed it. “And if I wish for you to know everything Herr Schenk told me?”

“Then you may tell me,” he said, the ghost of hesitation in his voice.

“Tonight?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, the tiniest hint of a wall going up between him and a truth he was obviously reluctant to hear. “Just as you wish.”