“I can’t use a rich man as target practice. I can’t knife the father of the woman I’m now forced to marry.”
“Pardon me?” Isabella said. “I think I have wax in my ears. I think you just saidforced, but that can’t be right.”
“It is. If what Haws says is true about its contents, the letter is damning. He’ll keep his silence if I marry his daughter.”
“No!” Prudence jumped from her chair. “Absolutely not. The Duke of Clearford cannot be blackmailed into marriage.”
“Yes”—Samuel hung his head, his words almost a whisper—“he can.”
“Well, what is in the letter?” Lottie demanded.
Samuel’s jaw twitched. “He claims Mother possessed an entire library of… unmentionable books.”
In the silence that followed, one could have heard a flea fart. Felicity had frozen, wide eyed like a deer in a hunter’s sight. With the patience of a well-trained governess, Lottie crossed her arms over her chest and raised her chin. Andromeda, who sat in the center of their line, peered first left, then right, meeting each sister’s gaze before melting into the back of her chair. Prudence rolled both lips between her teeth. She seemed to be keeping a deluge of words at bay. Badly. She vibrated. Imogen and Isabella reached for each other at the same moment, their hands locking together. Everyone seemed to look toward Lottie at the same time.
Shouldering well the weight of their regard, their oldest sister leaned slightly forward, tilted her head, and spoke with clipped precision. “How can the books beunmentionableif you have just mentioned them?” A rather semantic approach, but perhaps it would buy them time.
“What sort of books do you mean?” Prudence asked, the words tumbling out all at once.
Andromeda cleared her throat. “Do you mean books of a… questionablemoralnature? Perhaps ones that might be unfortunate for anunmarriedlady to read?”
Samuel tilted his face to the ceiling with a groan, red raging across his cheeks.
“Perhaps,” Lottie said, “the sort of book Quinton and I caused a scandal with before we married?”
“Exactly that,” Samuel snapped, still studying the ceiling. His shoulders seemed to have bunched up around his ears. “But there is more. Involving… you. All of you. He says… he says his wife has heard, from a credible source, thatyounow have Mother’s books.” His chin dropped, his gaze settling on them.
What had Isabella expected to find in his eyes? The flames of rage?A cold sheet of impenetrable ice? She found neither of those. She saw a tightly controlled sheen of tears. Confusion. Also, a heavy dose of indignation.
He set off pacing once more, his steps long and violent, churning up the electricity of all their emotions. “How dare he accuse you. Howdarehe even speak your names. Where in hell would you even keep an entire library of… of those sorts of books? It’s preposterous!”
You could hide them in a rather large, locked wardrobe in their mother’s personal sitting room. Not that Isabella would let him know.
The sisters leaned toward one another, their chairs screeching across the floor as they dragged them close enough to put their heads together. Samuel continued ranting, and the sisters whispered all at once.
“Heknows.”
“Hedoesn’t.Mr. Hawsdoes.”
“What do we do?”
“Perhaps not whisper like this. It’s suspicious.”
“He’s busy. He won’t notice.”
“How many knives does he have on him today?”
“He’s not going to stab us. He’s protecting us.”
“And Mother.”
“But if he discovers what Mr. Haws says is true?”
“Shhh.”
They looked up at Samuel, who still paced and ranted, the slap of his boots on the floor a percussive rhythm for his diatribe.
“He won’t stab us even then,” Prudence said. “He loves us.”
