Hell.
“I know quite a lot about gemstones, Mr. Carlisle,” Charity continued, “and it is…well, there is no accounting for taste.”
Ian suppressed a wince. In fact, therewasaccounting for it, when one had to account for everything else, besides. It had simply been the best he could afford.
“The stones are tiny,” Charity continued, “the color and clarity negligible at best. And yet…” Her dark gaze drifted about the room, taking in the tasteful furnishings that revealed nothing, the utter lack of personality within the office he’d practically lived within these last years. At last her eyes settled on him. “You could have bought another,” she said. “Bought some god-awful gaudy bit of jewelry worth more than a house. But you didn’t. You gave her an objectively ugly ring of dreadful quality.”
Mercy made a scathing sound deep in her throat. “Why? To send a message?”
“Of a sort,” Charity replied. “It’s ten years old, if I had to make a guess. An acrostic ring. The gems within it—they spell outlove. Felicity didn’t know.”
Didn’tknow. But clearly she did now. “She doesn’t want to hear it,” he said.
“She asked,” she said. “She asked me about the stones.”
By the tone of her voice, he supposed he was meant to infer that Felicity had asked because she hadcared. And that if she had cared, it might well mean that her feelings, complicated though they might be, had turned away from wholesale antipathy. That even if the duchess did not, precisely,likehim, she might be prepared to offer him some small amount of grace for the sake of her beloved sister.
That that particular show of sentimentality had, somehow, earned some minuscule fraction of her approval. And that he would be wise not to squanderit.
“I’ll admit that the ring is…meaningful to me,” he said carefully. “I doubt it carries much meaning to her. She knows she doesn’t have to wear it.”
“Things tend to have meaning whether or not we desire them to do so,” Charity replied. “Theygrowmeaning over time. And what grows from them is less dependent upon the message intended and more upon the roots which feed it. What are you growing, Mr. Carlisle? Weeds or roses?”
He hadn’t the time to answer, even if he might have found a ready response to the question she had asked of him, for the pound of feet upon the floor outside the office suggested they were about to have an intruder.
A moment later, the door slammed open and Felicity stumbled inside, her face a study in misery. Red-rimmed eyes glassy and too bright, the last echoes of a heartrending sob still clinging to her lips. A tremble in her chin which suggested that what little composure remained to her was in imminent danger of shattering entirely.
Ian was out of his seat and striding for her just as the first of those valiantly-withheld tears came streaming down her cheeks in a flood, moving so swiftly, with such urgency that he reached her even before Charity, who was the closer between them. “Felicity. What has happened?” he asked, reaching for her instinctively.
She tottered into his arms, muffling a sob against his shoulder. Her fingers curled into little claws as she clutched at his shoulders. “I couldn’t stop her,” she said in a plaintive little voice rife with pain. “I couldn’t do anything at all. She threatened to cause a scene. I had to let her go.”
Her? Christ. A missed opportunity there. “It’s all right,” he soothed as he cupped the back of her head, pressed a kiss against her temple. “It’s all right,” he said again. “Did she come to the school?” Blast it, it wassupposedto be watched at all hours. How had his men missed her?
A tiny shake of her head. “She was at the city center,” she said on a shuddering breath, and he felt the rapid expansion of her lungs with each unsteady breath. “Kings Road. The promenade at the seafront.”
Ian felt a frown crease his brow. “Whatever were you doing there?” he asked. It wasn’t precisely on the way home.
“I—I wanted to buy some roasted chestnuts,” she said shakily.
“But you hate roasted chestnuts.” Unimportant. Entirely immaterial at the moment. “Do you recall what she was wearing? Which direction she went?” Anything; anything at all which he might use to point his men in the proper direction.
“I don’t know. I don’tknow.” A hiccoughing sob; her nails scratched at the wool of his coat. “She disappeared into the crowd. I couldn’t do anything.”
A rustle of fabric as the duchess paused behind her, only a step or two away, smoothing awkwardly at her crimson skirts. “Felicity?” Charity ventured, her voice quavering uncertainly. “Is something…amiss?”
Amiss. That was certainly a word for it. Ian kneaded the tight muscles at the nape of Felicity’s neck. “You really ought to tell them,” he whispered,sotto voce. “If there’s even the slightest chance they might recognize her—”
“It’s Mama,” she whispered so softly he almost didn’t catch it. With a fierce sniffle, she lifted her head. “It’s Mama,” she said again, louder, as she swiped at her streaming eyes. “Ourmotheris extorting me.”
For a long moment, no one spoke. No one even breathed in the deafening silence which followed Felicity’s horrifying revelation. It had stunned them all. He’d thought it a distinct possibility that the villain had been in some way connected to her family. But he’d never imagined hermother.
Felicity’s fingers trembled as she tried, with little effect, to stem the flow of those tears, vivid green eyes glassy and framed with spiky wet lashes. “She didn’t even know me,” she said pitifully. “She only asked—‘which one are you?’”
Two infuriated, indrawn breaths. Mercy he couldn’t see but Charity—Charity crackledwith indignation, her hands fisted at her sides. “That nastybitch,” she seethed. “I’ll kill her myself.”
Given the anguish the woman had caused, Ian briefly entertained the idea of letting her. But first they would have tofindher. And as Felicity broke down once more into agonized sobs, Ian again urged her head against his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he repeated in that same soothing cadence he’d employed earlier.
Over Felicity’s shoulder, Charity cleared her throat.
