Antonia was in her room packing, when she heard a panicked tattoo on her door.
The interruption didn’t surprise her. For four days she’d fielded questions from staff unsettled with news that Antonia had left and Cassie spent what remained of the season with the Merriweathers. The agency servants finished tomorrow. The Somerset staff shut up the house then returned to Bascombe Hailey. Bella remained in London with Cassie.
To ascribe the term packing to her activity was an exaggeration. She stood unmoving in the center of the room while her mind picked and prodded at her gnawing unhappiness. She knew she’d done the right thing, leaving Nicholas. She couldn’t be his mistress, and life as his wife would be purgatory. But without him, she felt some essential part of her had been amputated. Ordinary activities required an energy and commitment almost impossible to muster.
Blindly she gazed at her open bag on the floor, but she saw only Nicholas’s stark expression as he spent himself inside her. She didn’t want this image, any image from that night, etched in her brain. But she had a grim suspicion that while she lived, she’d remember. And while she remembered, she’d hunger.
Whoever waited outside knocked again, so forcefully the doorknob rattled. With a heavy sigh, Antonia dropped the shawl she carried into her bag and trudged to the door. Every second was gray misery. She felt a hundred years old and these constant, trivial interruptions strained her to the limit.
To her astonishment, Bella stood outside, wringing her hands and panting as though she’d run a mile.
“Bella?” she asked in shock. “What are you doing here?”
Bella barged in, bumping Antonia against the wall. “It’s Cassie.” She stopped, gasping for air. “You have to do something.”
Sick panic constricted Antonia’s chest. “What is it? Is she sick again?”
Dear God, had Cassie suffered a relapse? The girl’s strength had returned so quickly, Antonia occasionally forgot how recently she’d hovered at death’s door.
The maid slumped against the armoire. Worried, Antonia rushed to pour her a glass of water. She extended it to Bella, who snatched it and gulped a mouthful.
“What’s happened?” Terror chilled her blood.
Bella looked up, her eyes glittering with tears. “He’s got her. I don’t know who else to tell. There’s going to be the most awful to-do. Oh, my poor sweeting.”
The glass trembled so violently, Antonia grabbed it. “Who’s got her?”
Bella glared at her. That at least hadn’t changed. “Who do you think? That ruddy bastard Ranelaw.”
After all her longing, the name was an arrow aimed directly at Antonia’s shredded heart. Before she thought to conceal her reaction, she retreated a shaky step, a trembling hand pressed to her breasts.
“The Marquess of Ranelaw?” she said hesitantly. “You must be mistaken.”
“He’s been after her from the start. The filthy brute. Now he’s taken her.”
Oh, Nicholas, Nicholas, tell me it isn’t so.
Immediate certainty weighted her belly, tightened her throat. Of course it was so.
Was this wicked act revenge on her for rejecting him? She hadn’t thought him so childish.
Or—what a gullible idiot she was—had he wanted Cassie all along?
“Taken her where?” she stammered.
“Who knows? I waited outside the Sheridans’, in case my lamb came to grief.” Her eyes sharpened with resentment. “For all that we’ve had our differences, you watch her like an eagle. But you weren’t with her this afternoon so I made sure she was safe.”
Cassie hadn’t been safe. Another layer of guilt to pile on the layers that already threatened to crush Antonia.
She stared blankly at Bella as she struggled to make sense of this. Did Ranelaw intend to marry Cassie? After proposing to Antonia only days ago? Immediately she stifled a surge of searing agony at the recollection. His proposal had been a ruse. Obviously. Cassie was much more eligible. Rich, young, pretty, untainted by scandal. So far, at least.
But Antonia wasn’t convinced he meant marriage to Cassie. Even now. She had a grim intuition that he sought the momentary gratification of a night’s passion, never mind the damage he did.
The man she’d first thought Nicholas to be might do this terrible thing. The man who had held her through a dark, passionate night was better than this.
Or so she’d imagined.
What a wealth of pain that admission masked. The enormity of his crime beggared description. She battered back the need to curl into a ball and scream out her confused rage.