But maybe I can actually do it, she thought. I never would have believed I was capable of it before now. But if I’m strong enough to frighten Lady Katherine, perhaps I’m strong enough to fend for myself.
She would miss Brackhill Manor.
She would miss living in the household of a Duke.
She would miss Jimmy, who might always wonder where she had gone, and she would miss visiting the horses and feeding them carrots every afternoon.
But she would not miss orders and constant criticisms from women who hated her and found fault with everything she did.
At least when she was away from the manor, she would be able to choose who she surrounded herself with.
And I deserve respect.
Chapter 13
Lady Katherine and Mrs. Durian retreated once again, leaving Lenora in darkness, but only a short time had passed before they returned with Roy and John in tow.
The footmen had never been exactly warm toward Lenora. Hardly any of the staff had. They all knew enough to know it wasn’t a good idea to be friendly with someone the Duchess hated so deeply, even if they had never understood Her Grace’s hatred for Lenora. So they had always kept their distance, always left her alone.
But they had always been decent to her and growing up in this household it had been easy to mistake decency for caring. Lenora had memories of both Roy and John that she held dear, times she had been treated as if she were a person who mattered.
There was the time, years ago, when the family had hosted a ball for Christmas. Roy had been in charge of serving the meal that day, and when the plates had been taken out of the dining room and back to the kitchen, he had spotted ten-year-old Lenora lingering by the stairs. He had thrown her a wink and jerked his head to indicate that she should follow him. When she had, he had wrapped up several pieces of turkey and thrust them into her hands.
Lenora had taken her prize down to the stables and enjoyed it with Jimmy, and the two of them had spent a wonderful evening pretending that they were the lord and lady of a fine manor and calling each other Your Grace. Both had gone to sleep that night with full bellies. Such a thing was very rare in Lenora’s life.
And there was John, who had been a constant figure in the hallways as Lenora had gone about her work. He had always noticed when she was mopping and, more than any of the others in the manor, had taken pains not to walk on her newly-cleaned floors.
She had been a fool to think that meant he liked her. He was just being a decent person.
But he wasn’t being a decent person now. He and Roy untied her and grabbed her by the arms as if she were a bag of oats, hoisting her to her feet. She tried to shrug them off. “You’re hurting me,” she said.
“Don’t let go of her,” Lady Katherine said. “The minx can’t be trusted. She’ll run away. She may even turn on you.”
They didn’t let her go, but John’s grip on her loosened ever so slightly.
“All right,” Lady Katherine said. “Mrs. Durian, your task now is to go back upstairs and make sure no one is watching. I want a clear path to the carriage, is that understood?”
“Does that include Her Grace?”
“It includes everyone!” Lady Katherine snapped. Lenora could see that she was agitated, and she took some pleasure in it. At least this was going to be difficult for Lady Katherine too. “My Lady Mother may be aware of the plan, but if my Lord father questions her, she will want to say she saw nothing. Is that difficult to understand?”
“No, My Lady.” Mrs. Durian bowed her head.
“And what will you say?” Lenora asked. “What will you tell His Grace when he asks you what you saw? You can’t think he’ll overlook you in his questioning. Not his beloved daughter.” She filled her voice with as much poison as she could muster.
“I don’t have a problem with lying to my Lord Father,” Lady Katherine said.
“Of course you don’t.”
“Don’t you question me,” Lady Katherine snapped. “It’s for his own good. His own protection. He’s much to softhearted to take matters into his own hands, but I am not. He’s fortunate to have a daughter with grit and determination, a daughter who can do what has to be done.”
“What has to be done?”
“My father deserves loyal service from everyone in his employ,” Lady Katherine said. “You have shown yourself to be disloyal. He would be appalled at the things you’ve done. If I told him the truth, he would thank me for ridding this manor of you. You’re vermin. You’re a pestilence. I’m simply getting rid of a plague on our household.”
“Do you really believe that?” Lenora asked quietly.
“It is not a matter of belief. That is fact. You lied to me and my mother. You sought to deceive our guest, Lord Galdhor, to bring him under your spell. You thought to win his affections. It’s only thanks to my skills of deduction that I caught on to what you were doing before you could seduce him entirely, the poor man.”
“I thought it was thanks to Mrs. Durian,” Lenora said. “Wasn’t she the one who told you what she thought I was up to?”
“Mrs. Durian is a good servant,” Lady Katherine said. “A good servant operates as the right hand of her Lady, Lenora, something you would know nothing about. When you are gone, Mrs. Durian will be well rewarded.”
“And Lord Galdhor? What will you say to him?”
“It’s none of your affair,” Mrs. Durian snapped.
“Now, Mrs. Durian.” Lady Katherine held up a hand. “You believe your prey will miss you? Is that it, Lenora?”
“I just wonder what you’ll say to him. Won’t he be ashamed when you inform him that he was being tricked?”
“No need to tell him that,” Lady Katherine said. “No need to humiliate the poor man. Once you’re away, he will think of you no more. He need never know the cruel machinations to which he almost fell victim.”
Lenora closed her eyes. Thank God. Whatever else was about to happen, she did not want to think of Lady Katherine repeating these awful lies about her to Lord Galdhor.
He will think I’m dead, she thought, or he will think I’ve run away. Whatever story she decides to tell him, he’ll believe it. But he won’t think that I intended to trick him. He won’t be left remembering me as an evil girl, a servant who didn’t know her place, a trollop who was after his money and his title.
Perhaps he will remember me fondly, she thought as Mrs. Durian disappeared up the stairs to the main floor of the manor.
She was surprised by how much she cared about that, even now. Her life was on the brink. Everything was about to change forever. Surely it was odd that she had a thought to spare at all, to say nothing of the fact that it was Lord Galdhor she was thinking of. She hadn’t even known him a few weeks ago, and now she was deeply concerned with his opinion of her.
That was strange.
But it was also undeniable that Lenora had felt less and less like herself lately, and in some ways, everything was strange. It was strange to feel as if she had the right to defend herself against her Lady’s slanderous accusations, and yet here she was doing it.
It was strange to think of leaving Brackhill Manor too. But that was about to happen, and Lenora thought she’d probably never be coming back.
Mrs. Durian’s voice came drifting down from the top of the stairs. “It’s all right,” she said. “The foyer is clear. You can go ahead and bring her up.”
Lady Katherine gestured to John and Roy, who marched Lenora toward the stairs. When they reached the first step, they lifted her bodily off the ground and simply carried her up as if she weighed nothing. She hung suspended between them, trying not to cry out at the pressure of their hands on her arms.
The front doors stood open when they reached the top of the stairs, and Lenora could see that it was dark outside. They had waited until nightfall to move her. She felt disoriented—probably, she thought, because she had been sleeping on and off since her capture. Her internal clock told her that it should be day right now.
> Their footsteps seemed loud in the foyer, echoing against the marble floors. Lenora remembered how many times she had cleaned these floors, how many times she had crept across this foyer. She knew how to do it without making a sound. She could get from the main staircase to the kitchen without being noticed.
But Roy and John had none of her skill or subtlety, and for a moment she dared to hope that they would be heard after all.
Let Lord Galdhor come running out and see what’s happening, she thought. He’ll put a stop to it. And once he knows how cruel they are, he won’t let me stay here. Perhaps he’ll even take me back to serve in Galdhor Manor.
That would be a dream. The finest outcome imaginable. She could become lady’s maid to Lord Galdhor’s wife, when he did eventually take a wife. She would be smart enough to understand that Lenora posed her no threat. She would be safe and happy—
They reached the doors. Roy and John lifted Lenora again and carried her down the front steps, this time depositing her on the flagstones in front of the manor.
Lady Katherine came behind them, candle in hand, skirts blowing about her ankles. “To the carriage,” she called, sweeping past them like a wind and leading the way to the foot of the manor’s long drive. “Hurry. This must be done quickly.”
Sure enough, a carriage stood waiting at the foot of the drive. A single horse was tethered to the front, and as they drew closer, Lenora saw that it was Chester. Chester. Her heart warmed to think that her equine friend would be the one to ferry her away from here. She wondered if she would be able to stay with him, somehow.
It would be a tremendous comfort, she thought, to have Chester. If she could take nothing else from this place, she would take Chester and be grateful.
But I’m sure I’m just fantasizing again. She really needed to get her wayward imagination under control, to stop daydreaming about things that could never be. Chester belonged to the Duke. The Duke would want him back.
But then, the Duke wants me here too. At least, I believe he does. None of what’s happening tonight is about serving what the Duke wants.
If only there was some way to let His Grace know who had truly betrayed him! Lenora would have given anything to be able to tell him. But would he have believed her?
I’ll never know. I’ll never speak to His Grace again. And for a moment, she felt a pang of deep sadness about that fact.
“Put her in the carriage,” Lady Katherine instructed.
Lenora would have boarded the carriage herself. She didn’t care at all for the indignity of being carried around as if she were a sack of flour. But she was given no choice in the matter.
Roy went to the carriage and opened the door. John lifted Lenora in his arms. “Don’t struggle, Miss,” he said quietly. “We’ve been told to send you unconscious if you do.”
“I won’t struggle.” She remained placid in his arms, even though every instinct in her body urged her to kick and scream, to fight her way free, to run away from all of them.
John deposited her in the carriage and climbed in after her. She took one seat and he the opposite one, facing her. She could almost imagine that they were a pair of nobles out on a midnight right together. It would have been romantic if it hadn’t been so horrific.
Lady Katherine stepped up to the carriage door. “Goodbye, Lenora,” she said quietly.
Lenora said nothing. She gazed into the eyes of the girl she’d known since they were children together and judged her.
Lady Katherine frowned, and Lenora thought her silence must have had some sort of impact. If only I could know what she was thinking. She would have given a great deal to have that power right now. Perhaps Lady Katherine was feeling some shame at the lengths to which she had decided to go.
That’s fairly optimistic of me, Lenora acknowledged to herself. She may not even be capable of shame.
But perhaps she is. And if anything would drive a person to it, Lenora had to imagine it would be this.
She never saw me as any sort of equal. She never saw me as anything more than a servant—and she frequently treated me as less than one. As long as I stayed in that household, she would have been jealous of me.
It was a strange realization. Lady Katherine, who had grown up with the best of everything, was jealous of Lenora, the chambermaid.
For a moment Lenora felt very sad for her Lady.
Lady Katherine turned to Roy, who was still standing outside the carriage. “Take her as far away from the manor as possible,” she said. “I don’t want her finding her way back here.”
“Begging your pardon, My Lady, but I thought the plan was to take her into town.”
“Town!” Lady Katherine said. “Are you a fool? The manor is visible from there. She’ll be back within a day if you take her to town. I want her gone, don’t you understand that? I don’t want her turning up on our doorstep in a few days with a sad story about being mistreated.”
“Oh, right,” Roy said, “because His Grace won’t be happy if he knows what we’ve done, I suppose.”
“Never mind His Grace,” Lady Katherine snapped. “My father is not at home, and in his absence, you answer to me. Now, drive the minx out of town. She’s a clever one, so you’ll have to make sure you go a long way. Is that understood?”
“Yes, My Lady.”
A prickle of fear crept its way along Lenora’s spine. She had assumed that she was being taken into town too. She had thought to find a shop with a friendly-looking owner and see if they were interested in taking on help. But if she was being taken out of town…
What would she find?
Nothing but wilderness, she realized fearfully. No place to sleep. No work. No way to earn money. No way to get food or water.
And with a chill, she understood. Lady Katherine doesn’t want to kill me. She doesn’t want to commit murder. But she doesn’t want me to live either.
She wondered if Her Lady—no, she had to stop thinking of Lady Katherine in those terms. Lady Katherine was no longer hers in any sense.
So then. She wondered if Lady Katherine had acknowledged in her own mind the truth of what she was doing. Was she aware of the fact that she was murdering Lenora by sending her away like this? Or was it more innocent in her head?
I don’t want her to live the rest of her life free of the knowledge of what she’s done. If she is going to do it, she should have to face it. It’s only right.
So Lenora leaned forward. “If you take me out into the wilderness,” she said—to Roy, not to Lady Katherine—“I’ll die.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Lady Katherine snapped. “She’s more than capable. She’s wreaked enough havoc around the manor in the past week alone to convince me of that.”
Roy looked doubtful. “I don’t know, My Lady,” he said. “She’s just a little miss, after all. And there are wild animals out there.”
“Never mind wild animals; there’s no food out there,” Lenora pointed out, but no one appeared to be listening to her.
“She’s practically a wild animal herself,” Lady Katherine said with an unpleasant little chuckle. “She’s going to fit right in.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Roy said.
For a moment Lenora thought she might be saved. Roy seemed to have discovered his own fortitude. She wanted to fall to her knees thanking him but she held her breath. And waited.
“You’ll do as you’re told,” Lady Katherine said. “Or you’ll lose your position, and we won’t give you any references. I know you’re sending money to your wife and child, Roy.”
Lenora’s heart sank. She hadn’t known that. If Roy was providing for a child of his own, he couldn’t be expected to put her first. He couldn’t risk his position at the manor. She wouldn’t ask it of him.
He bowed his head. Lady Katherine, seemingly satisfied that her orders were going to be obeyed, turned on her heel and stalked back up toward the manor doors. Lenora watched her go until she had disappeared inside, and the doors had been pulled closed be
hind her.
Roy stood on the flagstones, watching Lady Katherine disappear back into the manor. After a moment, he turned and looked into the carriage.
Not at Lenora. At John.
“Are we really going to go through with it?” he asked John. “The girl’s right. She’ll die if we just abandon her out in the wild.”
“I’ve got some food,” John said. “Snuck it out of the kitchen. We can send that with her.”
“That won’t help for long,” Roy said.
“Roy,” Lenora cut in. Her voice was shaking, and terror spotted her vision, but what could she do? What could any of them do? “Was she telling the truth? You have a child you’re providing for?”
A Game of Chess With the Marquess Page 17
