AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Maybe I’ll be unable to walk there because of our aunt,” Hermione said with humor as she pointed down at her injured foot. To her delight, Phoebe’s worried countenance lapsed into a giggle.
The two fell into silence, but it did not last long for Cordelia was back again, hurrying through the door with anxiousness in her manner as she waved her hands in Hermione’s direction.
“He has just gone into the study,” Cordelia said, taking her elbow. “You must go and join him.”
“Aunt, I will not,” Hermione declared with vigor, standing her ground. “I cannot walk in on a man and invade his privacy. What would I even say? My apologies, Your Grace. I have just happened upon you in your study because I wanted to look through your papers,” she stated mockingly. “What plausible reason could I have for being in his study?”
“Say you lost your way.” Cordelia steered her toward the door. “Appear helpless, like a lost lamb.”
“How attractive,” Hermione sneered at the idea.
“Do not be snarky, Hermione.” Cordelia pushed her in the small of her back, out into the corridor. Hermione only had chance to glance back once to Phoebe, who was looking at her sister with worry, before Cordelia closed the door behind them. Her aunt took Hermione’s hand tightly and dragged her down the corridor, past candles set against the walls toward the tall staircase that was in the center of the building.
“Through there.” Cordelia released her niece’s hand and pointed through a gap in the banister down to the lower floor and a door that was now closed.
“Aunt, please…”
“Hermione, you know you must,” her aunt turned to her with a gentle tone and took her hand softly. “For Phoebe’s sake as much as your own. Please, go.”
Seeing the pain and hearing the pleading tone, Hermione found herself nodding. With nerves on edge, she moved toward the staircase, and began to descend, holding the skirt of her dress high above her ankles to allow herself to walk. When she reached the halfway point on the stairs, she looked up to see Cordelia waving at her with enthusiasm. As she reached the bottom, she turned to the closed door that Cordelia had pointed out, breathing deeply.
I have to do this. For Phoebe.She repeated the words over and over again in her mind, but still her body did not move toward the door. She glanced back to the landing above, and when she found Cordelia was no longer there watching, she saw an opportunity to escape.
Little by little, she backed up from the study door across the hallway, heading toward a different room entirely. When the Dowager Duchess had given them a tour earlier that evening, there was a particular room that had caught her eye: the library.
Collecting a candle off one of the hallway tables, she carried the brass holder down a slimmer corridor that peeled off the first, hurrying to the far end. Set within the wall was a double doorway that she opened, revealing the library beyond.
Just as she had done earlier that evening, she paused and gasped at the sheer expanse of the room. Where her father’s library was small, damp with mold, and missing books, this was the opposite. It was vast indeed with so many bookshelves, not just lining the walls but set within the center of the room, that a labyrinth had been created. The ceiling height was great too, at least twice her height.
“It’s a maze of books,” Hermione whispered under her breath in awe. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
She wandered between the shelves for many minutes, searching through the literature the room had to offer, before she found a book she had longed to read ever since its publication the year before:The Modern Prometheus.
Taking the book within her hands, she moved to a fireplace and sat down in an armchair pulled close to its side. It was a grand wingback chair with the arms curving around her like an embrace. She settled within it, placing the candle on a table beside her and pulling the book into her lap. As she peeled back the front cover, she felt the first genuine smile she’d experienced for the last week and a half pull at her lips. She may not have been able to escape her father’s insistence on marriage for good, but at least she could escape it for one night.
* * *
Antony was certain he had heard noises on the staircase of someone moving around. Yet, as he moved back to the hallway, he found nothing except the empty stairs. Confused, he picked up a candle off a table and held it aloft over the staircase, wondering if he looked a little harder whether he would be able to find the source of the sound. Yet, the light bounced back at him off the empty steps.
Despite his mother’s insistence on their return home, by the time they had arrived back at the house that evening, both the Dowager Duchess and their guests had retired for the night. Antony didn’t mind too much as he was glad of the peace.
“Did you hear something?” Fergus’ sudden voice made Antony jump and spin round. Fergus didn’t hold back his laughter. He chuckled as he stood in the doorway of the study, looking at his brother. “Apologies, I didn’t mean to make you jump.”
“I thought I heard something too,” Antony explained, looking back at the staircase. “Perhaps, we are imagining things.”
“Maybe so,” Fergus said, leaning on the doorframe as he tilted his head to the side, analyzing Antony.
“What is it?” Antony asked, shifting under his brother’s gaze.
“Well, you do look rather a mess,” Fergus pointed out. In answer to these words, Antony turned to look at the nearest mirror stationed on the wall of the hallway. In the candlelight, he could see just what Fergus meant.
The brandy the bawd had spilt over his trousers was beginning to stain, and the jacket he had borrowed made him look more like a groundskeeper than a Duke at all, with the torn cuffs and the smears of dirt.
“I’ll clean up later,” Antony said, turning and walking away from the mirror.
“Later! It is already late,” Fergus pointed out as Antony walked past him.
“This from the man who has gone to the study to work,” Antony said wryly.
