Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: October 2017 5 - 8 - Heidi Rice, Annie West - Страница 17

CHAPTER EIGHT

“YOU HAVE A VISITOR.”

Eleanor looked up from the textbook she and Geraldine were poring over in the grand library to see Mrs. Redding standing over them, looking more crisp and disapproving than usual. Which was quite a feat.

“A visitor?” she echoed, trying to work out from the other woman’s expression what that could possibly mean. Eleanor didn’t know anyone in the area. Aside from a few rambles about the village with Geraldine, she hadn’t spent much time off Hugo’s estate in the five and a half weeks she’d been here.

“It is not encouraged for staff to invite friends and family to the estate,” the housekeeper said coldly, as if she’d caught Eleanor throwing a party like an errant teen. “We are not guests of His Grace. We are members of his staff. I’m certain this was covered extensively in the interview with the placement agency.”

“I haven’t invited anyone,” Eleanor protested, but it was no use. Having rendered her judgment, Mrs. Redding had already turned and was making her brisk way to the door, every line of her body showing her offense at Eleanor’s transgression.

Eleanor gave Geraldine a reading assignment to keep her occupied, then followed Mrs. Redding’s crisp footsteps toward the front of the house.

There was only one person who knew where she was, but there was no way Vivi would be here, surely. Vivi preferred to stay in the bright lights of London, or in the posh homes of friends abroad. She certainly didn’t venture into the north of England. Under any circumstances.

That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? she chastised herself as she walked.

Something was the matter with her. It had been growing inside of her since that terrible night in the Duke’s private library a week ago. As if he’d infected her with his touch. With the things he’d made her feel. She found herself tense and strange. Snappish with Vivi on the phone and even less able to sleep than she had been before.

It was her horror with her own behavior, she told herself stoutly as she made her way toward the great foyer. She’d allowed herself to be compromised and worse, she kept letting it happen.

The Duke hadn’t touched her again, which meant it was all she thought about.

But what he was doing was worse. Dropping by Geraldine’s lessons as the mood took him, for example, when Eleanor had assumed he was off somewhere else being Hugo on his usual international stage.

“This does not sound like the Latin I was forced to learn,” Hugo had said from behind her, out in the back gardens one unexpectedly fine morning, making Eleanor jump as she walked and then instantly try to conceal her reaction from Geraldine.

“It’s French,” Eleanor had said sternly.

“I am aware of that, thank you,” Hugo had replied as he’d moved to walk beside her. In French, which had made Geraldine giggle.

And Eleanor had wanted nothing more than to ask him to leave them to their walk and French conversation, but, of course, she couldn’t. It was his property. And his ward, for that matter. But she’d been psyching herself up to demand he respect Geraldine’s lesson time when he started talking to the little girl directly.

In perfect French, unlike Eleanor’s, which had been cobbled together from her time in school and the job she’d had for a year when she was barely twenty at a French company based in England.

And he kept it up for the better part of the next twenty minutes, as if Eleanor wasn’t there.

It had made her heart beat a little too fast in her chest. And it had made Geraldine glow, which was worse—because Eleanor had no defense against her scrappy charge.

And when he took his leave he bowed to Geraldine and only pinned Eleanor briefly with an unreadable look in his dark whiskey eyes. That had haunted her long after.

“Come have dinner with me,” he’d said another afternoon, appearing in the library when Eleanor had thought she and Geraldine were on their own.

Eleanor had instantly checked to see where the little girl was, but she was still at one of the tables in the center of the huge library, poring over a dictionary as she picked ten vocabulary words to use in the new story she was writing in the journal Eleanor had her keep.

“I appreciate the offer, Your Grace,” she’d said as frostily as possible. “But I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“For all you know I intended to whisk you off to Rome for the evening.”

Eleanor scowled at the book in front of her, though she’d stopped seeing the words on the page in front of her the moment he’d materialized at her side. “That would be almost incomprehensibly inappropriate.”

“I would hate to be incomprehensible,” Hugo had murmured in that sardonic tone of his that made her think of his body pressed against hers and his clever hands between her legs. “My private dining room will have to do.”

“That is equally inappropriate,” she’d said sharply.

“But more comprehensible.”

“Your Grace—”

“It’s a bit late for that, Eleanor,” he’d said quietly. “Don’t you think?”

“I do not think,” she’d retorted, struggling to keep her voice in a whisper. She’d glanced at Geraldine, then back at Hugo again. “This is a game to you. But it’s a job to me. And more people than just me depend on it.”

Hugo’s impossible mouth had shifted into one of those half smiles that haunted Eleanor when she slept. And when she wasn’t sleeping, too.

“If I hadn’t tasted your innocence myself I’d assume that meant you had a child of your own hidden away somewhere.”

“I don’t have a child, I have a sister,” Eleanor had said in an undertone.

“A younger sister?”

“Vivi is twenty-five.”

“And she is unwell?”

Eleanor had frowned at him. “No, she isn’t unwell. But I’m the one who pays the bills.”

One of Hugo’s brows rose. “You pay for your twenty-five-year-old sister?”

And it had occurred to Eleanor that she’d never had to explain her situation to anyone before. Most people didn’t ask such impertinent questions and if they had, she wouldn’t have felt compelled to answer them.

“It’s complicated,” she’d said after a moment. “Vivi is very talented, but it’s not always easy to find the right place for her to shine. Once she does, everything will seem a good deal more...balanced.”

There had been something entirely too perceptive in Hugo’s gaze, then.

“Are you trying to convince me?” he’d asked. “Or yourself?”

When Geraldine had called out that she was finished, breaking the tight little knot that had seemed to hold them both where they stood, Eleanor had been unreasonably grateful.

Hugo made her feel like she no longer fit in her own body.

Not that she felt much like herself now, she was forced to admit as she hurried along the main floor toward the foyer.

Who exactly are you? a little voice asked from deep inside her, and to her shame it sounded a little too much like Hugo’s. Who exactly are you so desperate to hold on to?

She shook her head to get that voice to shut up, for a change. And then she turned the final corner that delivered her into the great foyer and stopped.

Because Vivi was standing there.

For a moment, Eleanor couldn’t make any sense of it.

There was no reason on earth for Vivi to be in Yorkshire, much less in the grand foyer of Groves House. Back in London, when Eleanor had asked if her sister planned to come up and visit her when she finally got a break after her first six weeks, Vivi had been noncommittal.

I can’t possibly know what I’ll be doing so far in the future, she’d said. Dismissively, Eleanor thought now. But at the time she hadn’t thought much of it. That was Vivi’s style, after all. So effervescent and carefree that she never knew what she was going to be doing from one moment to the next, much less six weeks out. But I doubt very much that I’ll have any business in Yorkshire.

But she’d said Yorkshire the way some people might say nuclear waste facility.

Eleanor told herself she had to be mistaken, but the woman who stood at the other end of the foyer was indisputably Vivi. She was microscopically thin, the better to show off the excruciatingly expensive designer jeans she wore thrust down low on her jutting hipbones. The denim licked down her minuscule thighs before disappearing into a pair of recognizably chic boots. She wore the sort of coat and scarf that would not look out of place in Sloane Square, and she wore her hair in the usual temperamental way. It was wild and wavy, pouring down her back and over her shoulders in an artful sort of tangle that was meant to look as if it never saw a brush or a styling tool, when the fact was, it took hours for Vivi to make it look just so. As she moved closer, Eleanor could see that her sister’s lips were pursed slightly as she took in the wealth on display across every inch of the deliberately jaw-dropping entryway. More, she had a particular gleam in her eyes that Eleanor recognized all too well.

Avaricious, that voice inside her whispered.

Eleanor told herself to stop. She was being severe and unfair. She should have been delighted to see her little sister. She was. Of course she was.

“Vivi? What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”

Vivi took her time meeting Eleanor’s gaze. Her own lingered on the walls, on all that gold and gilt, stretching out in all directions. Statues and flowers and paintings that went all the way up to heaven and back. And that was just the foyer.

“Aren’t you the dark horse,” Vivi murmured.

“You don’t look as if anything terrible has happened,” Eleanor continued, telling herself that there was no need to read into her sister’s dark tone.

Vivi eyed her, her hands stuck into the back pockets of her jeans and her hips thrust out in what could only be called an aggressive posture. Eleanor ignored that, too.

“You told me this place was a tired old mausoleum. A crumbling pile of rocks, plunked down in the middle of a moor with heather growing all over it like a weed.” Vivi sniffed and jutted her chin at all the lavish displays before her. “Apparently not.”

“You were the one who called it a pile of rocks,” Eleanor pointed out, still keeping her voice calm and even and something like soothing. “I just didn’t argue.”

“I had no idea you were so secretive, Eleanor. Is that a new personality trait?”

“Surely you didn’t really think that the Duke of Grovesmoor lived in a crumbling pile of stones.” Eleanor made herself smile. “Given that he owns the better part of England.”

“It’s quite intriguing that you’ve decided you need to keep secrets from me now that you work in such a posh old house, isn’t it?”

There was no denying the fact that there was more than little attitude in her sister’s voice. But Eleanor ordered herself to remain calm, and not only because she never called her miracle of a sister out on anything, much less tone. But because she couldn’t trust the things that were happening inside of her.

The truth was that she hadn’t felt much like herself since Hugo had kissed her that first time. Maybe Vivi was right and Eleanor had gone squirrely and secretive. She’d never done anything like that before.

And when, exactly, were you permitted to have any kind of a life before? that voice inside demanded. Or have you forgotten that your whole existence is catering to Vivi’s life, not yours? She just doesn’t like imagining that anything might have shifted.

It was possible that Eleanor didn’t really like it all that much, either.

“If I failed to tell you something it wasn’t for any nefarious reason,” she said, still keeping her voice even. “I thought you knew everything there was to know about this position. You’re the one who recommended I interview for it in the first place.”

Vivi shook her hair back from her face, though none had fallen forward. “I assumed he’d thrown the kid in some second-rate cottage somewhere rustic. Not this.”

Eleanor did not rise to the defense of the kid. She did not dig into Vivi’s assumptions about rustic cottages. And she did not ask herself why it was apparently perfectly all right for her to live somewhere not quite as nice as Groves House. Because Vivi didn’t mean it. Vivi came across as thoughtless, but only because every thought that moved through her head came out of her mouth, not because she harbored any ill will. It was part of the larger-than-life charm that Eleanor had been grateful for every single moment since Vivi hadn’t died in the car accident that had claimed their parents.

She reached out a hand to place it on her sister’s arm and build a bridge, but Vivi pulled away.

“Vivi, whatever is the matter?” she asked.

And she wasn’t surprised when her sister’s expressive eyes filled with emotion. Not quite tears, but their glassy precursor. This felt like normal, suddenly. Like common ground again. Vivi had problems and Eleanor fixed them. That was the way the world turned.

“Everything.” Vivi’s voice was ever so slightly husky, as if from the force of her feelings. “The rent wasn’t paid. The credit card is full. The flat is a complete tip. I can’t find anything and what I can find is filthy and I don’t know what to do about any of it.”

“You didn’t pay the rent? And you went over the maximum on the credit card?” Eleanor shook her head, feeling dazed. “But I left you the money—”

“And that’s not the worst of it. Peter’s asked Sabrina to marry him.” Vivi stared at Eleanor as if she should have an explosive response to that bit of news. Eleanor only blinked and Vivi made a frustrated, impatient sort of noise. “Lord Peter, Eleanor. Hello. Only the man who’s been crucial to my happiness for as long as I can remember.”

“As long as you can remember,” Eleanor repeated dryly.

Vivi waved a hand. “This past month, anyway. We’ve been quite close.”

“And by this past month,” Eleanor said, trying her best not to panic at what Vivi must have done to their finances in so short a time, “do you mean the month that I’ve been here, in this house that you might have noticed is miles and miles away from anything, teaching lessons to a seven-year-old child?”

“The point is that everyone thought that I was in with a chance,” Vivi complained. “But he chose Sabrina, of all people. The cow. She’s no better than she has to be and who cares if her father has all that money? But everything’s gone pear-shaped.” Vivi held Eleanor’s gaze for a moment, then shifted to look around the foyer again, almost as if she was calculating something as she did. “It was time to make myself scarce, that’s all. I thought I’d hole up with you for a little while.”

“Vivi,” Eleanor said softly. “What did you do?”

Her sister shrugged, though it was more of a defensive gesture than anything else. “Some people need to learn how to have a bit of a laugh, that’s all.”

Eleanor suddenly became very aware of where they were standing. The foyer appeared empty, but Eleanor had been in Groves House too long now. She knew that the Duke’s staff were everywhere. That every word was being watched, recorded, judged. That whatever Vivi might have done, the whole house didn’t need to know about it.

Though it was entirely possible that all of England would, if she’d got up to her usual tricks. And found her way into the tabloids again. Of course, Vivi would likely view that sort of exposure as a great success.

“Come on,” Eleanor said, reaching out once more and this time, actually taking hold of her sister’s arm. “This is not the place to talk about this. We’ll go somewhere a bit more private.”

Vivi certainly didn’t evidence any sense of urgency as she sauntered along, letting Eleanor keep hold of her as they walked. Eleanor didn’t know why it made her teeth clench, hard. This was nothing new. This was who Vivi was. She never thought things through. The rent, the credit card, whatever idiotic thing she’d done to Lord Whoever and his new fiancée. She expected the whole world to revolve all around her, and because of that, it usually did.

Or Eleanor’s did, anyway. It always had.

But Groves House wasn’t the place for Vivi, something deep and dark in Eleanor’s gut insisted. She couldn’t let her sister take—

Eleanor was ashamed of herself. There was nothing here that was hers. There was nothing anyone could take from her, especially not the sister she loved. The sister she would give anything to if she had the chance. The sister who had somehow survived that accident, and kept Eleanor for being all on her own.

That was what she was telling herself, fiercely and on repeat, when she turned the corner that led toward the nursery wing where her rooms were and nearly ran straight into Hugo.

And she knew who she was then, in an instant. She knew too much about the feelings she’d been telling herself were uncertain for so long now. Particularly after what happened in his library a week ago. Oh, the lies she’d told herself to explain it all away...

But there was nothing but truth here, pouring into the hallway like the diffident light of the afternoon outside.

Eleanor did not want Vivi to meet Hugo.

There was something inside of her, hunched and ugly, all claws and spite. And it was dragging all of its sharp edges around and around in the pit of Eleanor’s stomach, because it wanted to avoid this. It would have done anything to avoid exactly this.

She did not want Hugo to behold her vibrant, charming sister who wrapped men like him around her fingers.

Or tries, anyway, that ugly little voice hissed.

But it was too late.

Because Vivi recognized Hugo instantly. Of course she did. Eleanor knew her sister, but even if she hadn’t she’d have understood the change in her sister’s body language. Suddenly everything was languid, easy. Suddenly Vivi’s eyes seemed smoky, and the little giggle she let out was the same.

Eleanor had never wanted to slap her hand over her sister’s mouth before. Or at least, she’d never wanted it this badly.

“I had no idea, Miss Andrews,” Hugo drawled, coming to a stop a few feet away, his dark gaze unreadable, “that governesses could multiply in the space of an afternoon. Like geese. How extraordinary.”

Eleanor watched that gleaming gaze of his flick over her sister, and was more than a little surprised when it returned to her. But perhaps he was outraged. Perhaps he was looking for an explanation as to why he’d been kissing the likes of Eleanor when all the while he could have had Vivi.

And that ugly thing inside of her grew thicker. Burrowed deeper. But there was no stopping a speeding train, and Vivi had always been far more dangerous than any high-speed rail.

“Your Grace,” Eleanor said stiffly, especially when Vivi seemed to melt into her side, holding on tight to Eleanor as if she was her very own plush toy. “May I present my sister, Vivi.”

“You may,” Hugo said in that same sardonic drawl that made heat bolt through Eleanor, but didn’t seem to have the same effect on Vivi. “If you feel you must.”

Eleanor frowned at that, but her attention was drawn by her sister, who couldn’t seem to stop that damned giggle.

Be kind, Eleanor told herself sternly. Hugo was an overwhelming man. Anyone would be expected to overreact to the sight of him.

“I am honored, Your Grace,” Vivi simpered. Then she batted her eyelashes at Hugo. “And here I thought every duke in the land was over the age of fifty.”

“It only feels that way,” Hugo replied with that liquid ease of his that made the bottom of Eleanor’s stomach disappear. “It is the obsequiousness that ages a man, not the title.”

Eleanor flushed on her sister’s behalf, but it was a wasted effort as Vivi hardly seem to notice that the Duke had just taken her down a peg or two. Or perhaps she did notice. Perhaps that was her sister’s true secret weapon, all this time. Maybe Vivi got her mileage out of pretending not to notice the very clear signals sent all around her.

But in either case, Eleanor frowned at Hugo, because she wasn’t pretending anything.

“If you’ll excuse us,” she said, perhaps too severely, “I must show my sister to my rooms and then return to my duties.”

“I’m sure Geraldine can manage,” Hugo said offhandedly.

“Have you been supervising her reading, Your Grace? I had no idea you had taken such an active interest.”

“I have been supervising my accounts,” Hugo said in a faintly chiding tone that made Eleanor flush slightly. Again. “Which is how I know that I employ a veritable fleet of overpriced nannies. The child is more than fine. Always.”

Vivi laughed again then, though there was nothing to laugh about in Eleanor’s opinion. Then she let herself flop a bit toward Eleanor, as if she was giving her a hug from the side.

“You must forgive my sister, Your Grace,” she said merrily. “She’s ever so serious. She always has been. It won’t surprise you to learn her favorite color is gray.”

Eleanor told herself there was no reason for it, but that didn’t stop the feeling of betrayal that swept over her. And the injustice of it, to have Vivi cut her down like that and call her gray, of all things, when it wasn’t even true.

But there was nothing to be gained by arguing the point. There was no arguing with Vivi.

“My favorite color is not gray,” Eleanor heard herself say, to her own astonishment. And once she’d started it seemed silly not to carry on. “On the contrary, I prefer a bright and cheerful red. It just so happens, however, that one cannot march about life forever dressed like a cardinal.”

Next to her, Vivi slid Eleanor a cool look. She pretended not to see it.

But she was certain Hugo did. Just as she was certain that Vivi was about three seconds away from hurling herself across the space that separated them to make a complete fool of herself. All over him.

And the truth was, Eleanor could hardly blame her. She’d made a fool of herself over him herself, hadn’t she? Such a fool of herself, in fact, that she hadn’t even realized she was doing it until now.

When it was much too late.

Hugo was devastating. Full stop. Today he was affecting his international rock star look again. His dark hair looked messy, the intriguing kind of messy that made Eleanor want to test it with her fingers. His dark eyes were lit with that suppressed humor of his, dark and sardonic. He wore another one of his battered T-shirts that left nothing of his perfect chest to the imagination and another pair of jeans that hugged him in all the wrong places, as if he aspired to give the two-fingered salute to the fusty dukedom with every breath and outfit. And as if there were no autumn drafts snaking along the halls and no wind rattling the windows, come to that.

Or as if he was immune to all of it, because he was that darkly beautiful.

But Eleanor was quite certain that all Vivi saw when she looked at him were pound notes.

“If you wish to wear red, I would not object,” Hugo said, a current of dark laughter in his voice. “There is no required uniform, Miss Andrews. I hope Mrs. Redding didn’t mislead you on that score.”

“Oh, you silly old thing,” Vivi cut in then, with a little trill in her voice, and though her eyes were on Hugo she was clearly speaking to Eleanor. Or pretending to, anyway. “You know that red doesn’t suit you.”

Hugo’s attention swung back to her sister, and Eleanor was glad, because she felt stricken straight through. Ashamed, if she was honest with herself at last.

Had she really imagined that she was anything to a man like this but a diversion while he was bored? Even for a moment?

She knew the way of the world. There was a reason Vivi was the one who flitted about with people of Hugo’s ilk, and it wasn’t only because she was thinner and prettier. It was because she bloomed in such circumstances. She came alive. She stole all the light from the room.

Men like Hugo were destined for women like Vivi. Women like Eleanor were destined to be exactly what she was here in Groves House: staff. And that was all right, she told herself fiercely as she watched her sister show her dimples to Hugo. Some people were meant for the shadows and Eleanor had long since accepted that she was one of them. She didn’t know what had happened to her over the past nearly six weeks, stuck away in this rambling old house with only a seven-year-old to talk to. She’d started believing in the sort of fairy tales she read to Geraldine. Or she’d been tempted to, anyway.

She’d even let Hugo touch her.

When she knew—when everyone knew—that he was a man who toyed with others. And so what if he’d claimed the tabloids had lied about him? That was what he would say.

She didn’t understand how she’d allowed herself to feel so many impossible things inside and then lie to herself about it. Because if she’d been as unaffected by Hugo as she’d claimed she was—as she’d been so sure she was—nothing Vivi was saying or doing could possibly have bothered her.

And that was the trouble. It bothered her a lot.

“You must bring your sister to dinner, Miss Andrews,” Hugo said, snapping Eleanor back to the issue at hand, and she tried to stop noticing that his eyes looked like overpriced whiskey. Especially when she couldn’t read the expression in them, as he looked from Eleanor to Vivi and then back again. “In my private room. Tonight.”

“I would love to, Your Grace,” Vivi trilled—but Hugo was already walking away.

Eleanor pulled her arm away from Vivi’s then, and hated herself for it.

“There’s no need to respond,” she said matter-of-factly. “He is the Duke and this is his house. That was not a request or an invitation, it was an order.”

Eleanor set off again then, aware that her sister was following behind her. And that Vivi was laughing softly under her breath, which the tight, thickening thing inside of her knew could only bode ill. But she refused to look over her shoulder to see. She refused to give in to the dark things sloshing around in her gut.

She refused to be the person she’d apparently become.

Eleanor finally reached her rooms, and threw her door open, beckoning for Vivi to come inside.

And then had to ask herself why she was surprised that her sister entered the room very much the way she had, back when she’d arrived. Staring all around at the sheer luxury. Eleanor found herself standing there in the sitting room, rooted to the floor as Vivi gave herself a tour, feeling awkward and angry and deeply disappointed in herself.

“My, my, my. This just gets better and better.”

Vivi’s faintly accusing voice floating in from one of the other rooms struck Eleanor in the heart. Because the truth was, she felt guilty. Horribly guilty.

And she knew why.

Her sister would have been here like a shot if she’d had any idea the sort of opulence that was on display at every turn in Groves House. That alone would have encouraged her. But Hugo’s presence? Her sister would have done anything to meet the Duke of Grovesmoor. And Eleanor still couldn’t explain to herself, not reasonably anyway, why she hadn’t let Vivi know from the start that Hugo was in residence.

“You fancy him.”

Eleanor’s head shot up at that. She found Vivi leaning in the door that led from the sitting room to the bathroom, a considering look on her pretty face.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “He’s my employer.”

Vivi shook her head, and there was a sharp light in her eyes that Eleanor couldn’t say she cared for at all. “Why else would you have lied to me?”

“I’ve never lied to you, Vivi. And you still haven’t told me why you’re here. Not the real reason.”

“I missed you.”

Something pointed seem to lodge in Eleanor’s side, because she wanted that to be true. And she also knew it wasn’t.

“I don’t think so,” she said quietly. “You’ve had scandals and overdrawn bank accounts before without getting on a train. What makes this different?”

“I don’t want to talk about London. It’s so boring. What’s not boring is you holed up in this gorgeous house with Hugo Grovesmoor. Something you failed to mention to me, night after night after night. If that’s not a lie, Eleanor, I don’t believe I know what one is.”

“You were certain I would never encounter him,” Eleanor replied, and she was aware of the fact that she was trying much too hard to keep her voice even. Though she allowed the slightest hint of impatience, as if this was one of Vivi’s flights of fancy that she was called upon to temper. Because it should have been. “And I saw no reason to tell you of his comings and goings, because I hardly know when or if I’ll lay eyes on him.”

“You met him before today.”

“Yes, I met him. If you consider being presented to him like any other member of staff ‘meeting’ him.” She made quote marks in the air with her index fingers, and shook her head at her sister. “I think when you meet men it’s a little more momentous than when I do.”

She expected Vivi to argue. But instead, her sister only smiled. Which did not make Eleanor easy in any way, because she knew Vivi. There was always a scheme. There was always the next plan. The smile was never acquiescence.

Or worse, that little voice chimed in, she agrees.

When had she become so awful about her own sister?

And anyway, Vivi was changing the subject. “Why have I been shuffling about London, forced to spend my nights in a grotty bedsit, when you’ve been living it up like the landed gentry?”

“These are the governess’s quarters,” Eleanor said. She made herself smile. “This is what passes for a grotty flat to a duke.”

“You are in terrible, terrible trouble, big sister,” Vivi said, but if there was a storm, it had passed.

Once again, Eleanor saw before her the sister she knew. With a mischievous look in her golden eyes and an infectious grin. She blinked, doubting herself. It was as if she’d made her sister into some kind of enemy the moment she’d dared walk into the house—which said nothing nice about Eleanor. It said a whole lot, however, about jealousy and envy and a whole host of other, vile things that Eleanor didn’t want to admit were sloshing around inside of her.

Congratulations, she thought. You’re a terrible person.

“I know you have to work,” Vivi continued merrily. “I’ll take you to task later. In the meantime, I think I’ll help myself to that glorious bath.”

Eleanor stood there for a long while after her sister disappeared. After she heard the water turn on in the bathroom, splashing into the huge tub. She stood there and she tried to collect herself. She tried to remember the person she’d been before she’d come to this far-off place, and more, before she’d let Hugo touch her. Change her.

Make her into that jealous, dark-minded creature who was selfish beyond measure.

She told herself that it was over. That whatever the spell was that had held her in its grip these last weeks, Vivi’s appearance had broken it. It was time to wake up and remember what she was doing here.

She made the money. Vivi was the one who reeled in men like Hugo. And for good reason. She was the sort of girl who caused scandals that ended up in tabloid newspapers. She was someone.

Eleanor had never been anybody.

She forced herself to leave, then. She closed the door to her own rooms quietly behind her and headed into the hall. She had to find Geraldine and get back to her job, which was the only reason she was here. The fact of the matter was that Vivi should never have come here, but she had. And worse, she’d run straight into the Duke within moments of her arrival, when he could have thrown them both out.

But he hadn’t done that. And Eleanor knew why.

And if something lodged in her heart, making it feel cracked straight through, she told herself it was nothing.

Nothing at all. Nothing new.

Nothing that mattered.