Rivals and Revels (A Regency Romance)

31. The Mirror Broke

The dinner approached, and Mabel excused herself. Lady Catherine never mentioned the scandal, but her eyes were full of worry; she knew. "Please, please, go rest. Why, I can't think of dinner myself after the last trials on the road."

Her room and solitude weren't as calming as she thought they would be. She sat on the bed, still dressed in dusty travelling dress, unrefreshed. Her fingers braided and unbraided until she keeled over onto her side and finally cried. Ruined. Two men taking turns with her, passing her around. Ravaging her... in this very bed, she supposed.

She jumped up, like it was the furniture's fault somehow that Everett had profaned her infatuation and her hopes. She should have married him to punish him... or Radcliffe. Marrying Radcliffe would hurt him more. And her mother would have been so crossed if she had learned that Mabel declined marriage offers far, far above her wildest dreams.

She grabbed her head into her hands, standing in the middle of the room, wanting to run. But where? She was caught fast.

The pounding in her temples grew louder, louder... No. It wasn't her chaotic pulse she was hearing. The sound was rhythmic, but it was tapping, not pounding. And some scraping. And screeching of wood. As if someone...

She knew where she needed to run now: to the staircase. Then down it, half-way down, to the step Radcliffe had climbed to.

The cane found the next step, anchored itself. The straining hand gripped the railing. The healthy foot lifted, entrusting his weight to the weak one. A wince, a groan. Sweat plastered a streak of black across his tall forehead. Another step gained.

She blocked his way, taking over the step that would be his next purchase. "What are you doing?"

He slumped against the railing, catching his breath. His blue eye bore into her. "Coming to see you."

Her fault: she didn't come to dinner, with or without his rose. "Let me help you back down. We can talk in the salon."

"There is no need. I'm perfectly fleet on the way down, and I only wanted to give you these." Radcliffe reached into his breast pocket and produced a stack of paper, carefully folded, tied with a ribbon.

"You are returning my letters?" A proper thing to do, considering the scandal, only she knew the moment the words tumbled out of her mouth it wasn't true. The handwriting dotting the paper wasn't hers; it was his.

"No," he said. "Every day I wrote a letter to you, and wouldn't send it, write another one in its stead, the one you have received.... But they are yours."

He thrust the letters into her hands, a swift push, embarrassed. The bow that followed it, though, was slow and courteous. "Good night, Miss Walton."

She moved to help him down the stairs, but stopped; he didn't want that. Besides, he was right, hopping quite fleetly downstairs. She'd only get in his way and mess up his progress with her interference.

"Good night, Lord Chesterton," she whispered after him.

Nobody bothered to furnish a woman's bedroom with a writing desk, so she spread the letters on the bed. They were meticulously sorted by date, one a day, even on the days that she had missed his correspondence, presumably a victim of the vagaries of the mail service.

She quivered pleasantly while her eyes ran across the first lines. They were love letters, confessions of ennui eating him in her absence, of tears overwhelming him as he wrote, of hidden passions. He sounded like a brooding hero of Miss Austen's novel talking to some Pamela, not wryly humorous Radcliffe. Not her Radcliffe at any rate.

Was it why he didn't send those, because they sounded all wrong? Or was the sentiment all wrong. She thought of it as she washed up, preparing to change for the night. Yet the sight of her nightgown made her cringe. Yes, she was exhausted from the road, from the awful news, from Radcliffe's games... particularly from Radcliffe's games. How was she supposed to sleep?