Page 17 of Snowed In with the Jilted Duke

Startled, Pippa ran to the library’s window. Indeed, snow was falling in thick flurries, blown across the lawns by strong winds that formed snowbanks against every minor obstacle. The shrubs and benches in the garden were already half-covered, and would likely be fully covered within a few hours.

“But Penny is out there somewhere!”

She turned to Oliver, who crossed to stand next to her. “Never fear. If anyone can locate her and find shelter for the both of them, it’s Hugo.”

Pippa nodded, his nearness and his certainty bringing her a small measure of comfort despite her anxiety for her twin’s safety.

Oliver turned to Mother. “If we are to do this, Mrs. Montgomery, we must keep this secret as closely guarded as possible. No one outside of the three of us can know.”

“Four,” Pippa said. “Sally—our maid—already knows Penny is gone.”

“Can she keep the secret?”

“I asked her to. She has always been discreet.”

“Very well. The four of us, then. And when your father arrives, we shall take his advice.” Oliver held his hand out to Pippa. “Do we have a bargain?”

She hesitated for a long moment. “This is insanity.”

A mordant grin crossed his face. “It is. But I see no other way to avoid a scandal that would ruin all of us.”

She looked to her mother, and then back to Oliver. Could she do it? Could she pretend to be Penny for a week or more? Could she pretend to be Oliver’s betrothed for that long?

Pippa feared both would be far too easy for her to do.

“Very well, your grace.” She put her hand in his and shook on it, ignoring the spark that ran between them even with that simple action. “We have a bargain.”

Once back in the room she had shared with Penny on every visit, Pippa could not help but have second thoughts. Logically, she knew Lord Hugo would find Penny and keep her safe, but she could not help but feel her sister’s absence from every corner of the room.

Tamping down her fears, she allowed Sally to lead her into the dressing room to see what of her trousseau Penny had left behind. Penny had taken only a few of her new dresses, mostly practical ones made of wool that would keep her warm on her journey, along with one of her fur-lined cloaks. Only three of the trunks had been unpacked since the rest had been carried into the dressing room in the duchess’s suite to be opened after the wedding, but it was a far larger array of dresses than Pippa had brought, in a dazzling range of colors.

“I can’t wear Penny’s dresses,” Pippa said. “They don’t suit me.”

Sally looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean, miss. You have the same coloring and the same figure. Anything that looks well on her will look well on you.”

“But I…” Pippa’s voice faded away as Sally pulled a sapphire blue dinner dress from the clothespress and held it up to her in front of the mirror. Even in the dim light inside the dressing room, the color added a glow to Pippa’s winter-pale skin that was far more flattering than the gray and brown dresses she had worn since Penny’s illness.

She couldn’t wear the dresses from Penny’s trousseau. It would be an appalling thing to do to her sister. Especially when she had been eaten up with jealousy at every fitting, wishing she was the one being fitted for beautiful dresses ahead of her wedding to Oliver, but knowing her dreadful envy was why she did not deserve to have them.

You can, a voice whispered in her head. You can have Penny’s dresses. She left them all behind. Just like she left Oliver behind.

“I’ll take this one downstairs to press it before supper, shall I?” Sally bustled out before Pippa could answer, leaving her to wander the dressing room and open the various drawers to stare into them. Sally had unpacked for both Pippa and Penny, and Pippa could not help but notice the contrast between what they had.

All the pretty muslin and silk underthings Mother had ordered for Penny were still there. You shan’t need those until you marry, Mother had told Pippa, and certainly she had been right. Plain cotton was good enough for spinster Pippa.

But Pippa coveted them, and they were all brand-new, never worn. The modiste had delivered them only the day before the family left for Cumberland, and Sally had simply packed them straight into Penny’s trunk.

She closed the last drawer and looked around the dressing room. She felt strange, disconnected. So many of Penny’s belongings around her, but no Penny. She could not help expecting her twin to sail through the door at any moment, chattering about her adventure in the snowstorm with no thought for Pippa or how concerned she had been. Penny had always been the charming twin, the sociable one, the one who made friends easily while Pippa hovered awkwardly nearby. Penny had tried to include her twin, of course, but their mother had made Pippa painfully aware that Penny’s destiny would take her far beyond the rest of the family socially. She would be a duchess, forever above Pippa whenever they would meet, and the estrangement between them that had begun with Penny’s betrothal contract would be complete.

Pippa stared at herself in the mirror, cold glass reflecting back the face she missed seeing most. She and Penny had never been separated for more than a few days at a time, and even when they were, she had always known where her twin was. The nightmare echoed through her head again, and she pressed her palms to her temples to push the thoughts away.

She had wanted Penny’s life, envied every part of it, and the price she had to pay to gain it was to lose her sister all over again.

The only small comfort she had was knowing Lord Hugo would find Penny, or die trying.

She flinched as the dressing room door opened and Sally returned with the gown, even more splendid now that the travel wrinkles had been pressed out. The process of transforming plain little wren Pippa into magnificent peacock Penny began with bathing and brushing and primping until Pippa stood before the tall mirror again at last.

She realized now that Penny had not quite re-gained the weight she had lost during her illness, because Pippa’s breasts filled out the bodice of the evening gown far more than Penny’s had during its fitting, swelling perilously above its confines. With a glance, Sally rummaged for a fichu and tucked it into the neckline of the gown, making it a bit more modest.