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Pea entered the castle through the kitchens, blinking at the sudden cool, gloomy light. The staff there nodded and murmured good morning, and she saw the preparations already underway for tomorrow’s dinner party.
Pea nodded absently to them, but she didn’t speak, not until she found Kethnick, in the dark panelled corridor near the Duke’s study, several newspapers folded neatly under his arm.
“Good morning, Lady Ashley.”
“Kethnick… I’m looking for Leo…for the Duke. Where is he, please?”
“His Grace left for London just now, Lady Ashley.”
“London?”
“There is a sitting of the House of Lords Select Committee.”
“But yesterday… I mean…he didn’t mention he would be away.”
“I believe it was a last-minute decision, Lady Ashley.”
He waited a moment for her to speak, but when she did not, he bowed discretely and went on his way.
Pea hardly noticed him leave. The shadowy corridor seemed to stretch and warp, her wide eyes seeing nothing. Leogone. Leo gone without a word, a note…
She looked up at a noise. Kipper sat in the open doorway of Leo’s study. Looking for her master. The dog’s tail picked up its pace as Pea walked toward it. She sat on the floor by the dog and patted its silky fur.
“He left you too, did he?” she said hoarsely to the dog. “Don’t pine. We’re too good for him.”
Kipper sneezed. Pea sighed and stroked the dog’s ears.
He was a busy man. He had responsibilities. He took them seriously. Maybe that’s all this was. He hadn’t wanted to wake her. He hadn’t thought to leave a note because Kethnick, his entire staff—everyone but her—knew where he would be.
She had no reason to feel so unspeakably dismal.
Except…she wouldn’t have been able to leave.
If she had woken first and business had called her, she wouldn’t have gone. And the fact that he had…well. Maybe it all meant far less to him.
It must have. Because what had he done really, other than tell her how much he wanted her and whisper filth against her skin? No sweet words. Just how he was fucking her three ways, with his dick and his fingers and his mouth all at the same time, and how much she loved it.
And even now, something curled delicious and deep inside her at the memory of it. How many times had he been in her, on her? How many ways had he touched her, claimed her? They hadn’t been able to stop.
Sex. A decade of schoolboy fantasies, he’d said. All the things he had wanted to do to her at sixteen, eighteen, twenty. All the years of pent-up lust.
Now spent.
Now gone.
So why had she thought it was more? Why had it felt like his eyes said all the sweet things his mouth did not?
Typical, silly old Pea.
Silent tears fell onto the old dog’s fur. Kipper didn’t mind. She just snuffled up to lick Pea’s ear. “Sorry, old girl,” she murmured. “I’m getting you all soggy.”
The dog must be fifteen years old, Pea realised. On one of Pea’s first ever visits to Thornley, Leo’s mother, the duchess, had taken them all—her, Edward, Leo—down to the stables to see the litter of puppies. The Count, about sixteen years old, had knelt among them, smiling slightly as the puppies rolled and pawed at his knees. Enchanted, Pea had knelt too and picked one of the squirming puppies up. It kept trying to lick her face and she had laughed.
“That one, I think,” Leo had told his mother.
The duchess was as tall and intimidating as her husband and their son, but she smiled fondly as she looked at Leo. At the puppy. At Pea. “Yes,” she had agreed. “Definitely that one.”
“You’ve grown a lot since then,” Pea told the dog. “But you still keep trying to lick my face.”
