Page 2 of A Heart Worth Loving

“Of course, my lady.”

Kyla glimpsed through the door behind Lady Ainsley, her mother’s full figure scurrying up the stairs across the hall.

Kyla swallowed.

Lady Ainsley started to turn toward the balcony French doors.

“Where did you get that divine dress, my lady?” Kyla asked.

Lady Ainsley faced her again. The disdain remained but, as Kyla hoped, satisfaction glittered in her eyes. “Mrs. Dupont, of course.”

Kyla nodded. “Of course. She’d outdone herself this time.”

“She is a true artist.”

“Indeed, she is. Forgive me, ma’am, but I must pay a visit to the ladies retiring room.” She curtsied again, and Lady Ainsley nodded in approval, then started past her.

Kyla reached the door and entered the hallway. She darted right, then up the stairs, hot on her mother’s trail.

“Mother, where are you?” she growled under her breath as she arrived on the third floor of the manor house.

A hallway stretched right and left. She huffed an irritated breath and took the hallway to the right. The first door opened into an empty library, and the second gave her a shock by presenting her with a brown-haired girl in a rose-printed muslin dress identical to hers. She started, then realized she stood before a mirror. Heart pounding, she closed the door and tried the next. This time, she spied her mother bent over a table placed at the foot of a magnificently carved bed.

“Mother,” Kyla hissed. “What are you doing?”

Her mother’s blonde, silver-streaked ringlets bounced as she whirled. Her wide eyes relaxed with recognition. She placed a hand over her heart and released a breath. “Bless me, Kyla, but you do give a body a fright.”

Kyla stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. Judging from the expensive brocade bed curtains and the jewelry box on the table, the bedroom belonged to a lady—perhaps even to Lady Ainsley herself.

“Mother, what are you— Put those back,” Kyla gasped as she caught sight of a strand of pearls peeking through her mother’s fingers.

Her mother smiled sheepishly. “These must be worth a fortune.”

Kyla hurried to her mother’s side. “Put them back, before we’re caught.” She pointed to the jewelry box lying open on the table.

"We can’t have Margaret dressed like a pauper,” her mother objected. “She’s marrying a viscount, Kyla. A viscount. We must provide her a proper dowry and—”

“Put them back.” Kyla attempted to pry her mother’s fingers apart. She failed. Her mother maintained a desperate hold.

Kyla thinned her lips. Why did she feel like the parent and not the child? “You will never be able to sell them, mother. There’s not a jeweler in Scotland who won’t recognize the famed Ainsley pearls.”

Her mother stubbornly lifted her chin. “It will be easy enough to break them apart."

Not again. Five years prior, they’d quietly left Cornwall to avoid suspicion for a similar offence.

Kyla lowered her voice. “Mother, how can you risk this? Even the hint of scandal would derail Margaret’s marriage.”

Margaret was so in love with Richard, the marriage simply had to go off without a hitch. Her little sister deserved happiness.

“But she’s in such desperate need of clothing, dear, and—”

“That is untrue, as you well know,” Kyla snapped. “Papa’s business provides us a comfortable wealth. If—”

The bedroom door rattled.

With a gasp, her mother dropped the pearls into the jewelry box, and Kyla slammed the lid shut. As one, they turned as the door swung open. A maid with her arms full of linens sailed through. Her gaze fell on them and she screeched.

Kyla grasped her mother’s arm and guided her to the bed. “My mother is unwell,” she informed the maid with a calmness she didn’t feel. “She was searching for a place to lie down, but I do believe we should go home, instead. She is feverish.”