Page 16 of Courting the Wrong Duke

“A note for Lady Eastmere.”

Her mother accepted it absently, breaking the seal without interest.

Rosalind watched the color drain slowly from her mother's face.

“What is it, Mama?”

She handed the note across the table without speaking.

Rosalind unfolded it.

The Directors of the British Institution regret that, owing to unforeseen circumstances, tomorrow's private viewing shall proceed by invitation only. Your attendance is therefore no longer required.

She read it twice before lowering the paper.

Isabella reached instinctively across the table. “Rosalind?”

Her mother closed her eyes. “It has begun.”

The words settled over the dining room like a funeral bell.

Rosalind looked down at the note again.

Yesterday they had been expected. Today they had become an inconvenience.

Her father had been missing only ten days, and already society was quietly pretending the Carlisles no longer belonged among them.

She thought of the ladies whispering behind gloved hands. Of gentlemen lowering their voices when she entered a room. Of invitations that would never arrive.

This was how it began.

Not with a public condemnation.

But with small, polite doors closing one by one.

Isabella said nothing further, but when Rosalind looked up, she found her friend watching her with quiet determination rather than pity. Somehow, that was easier to bear.

Rosalind folded the note with deliberate care, smoothing the crease with the edge of her thumb.

They could whisper and speculate. They could decide that the Earl of Eastmere had abandoned his family.

She refused to help them bury him before he had even been found.

Tomorrow she would meet Lord William Sinclair in Hyde Park.

Not because she trusted him. She wanted to. She simply could not afford to.

Because she refused to surrender the search.

And because, whether he realized it or not, he remained the last thread connecting her to the father she meant to bring home.

Chapter 3

The journey home passed more quietly than usual.

Rain tapped steadily against the carriage roof, the rhythmic sound filling the stretches between conversation. Outside, London's streets blurred into muted shades of gray beyond the rain-speckled glass. Gentlemen hurried beneath umbrellas.

Ladies gathered their skirts clear of puddles. Life continued with remarkable indifference while one family waited for news that refused to come.