Page 38 of Bride of the Fae Duke

No magic.

By the time the red brick façade of Locke Manor loomed up before her, Nellie could no longer remember how she’d managed to find her way home, the sun-drenched city and its endless garlands and flowers a blur. The sun was beating down, but she barely felt its heat; just below her skin, a layer of ice seemed to have settled, cold and dark and hollow and whispering of death.

She’d been right from the start.

Why,whyhad she allowed his pretty words to blind her to the facts and lure her into this fairytale world that had always been too good to be true?

The hall was strangely empty, all servants gone for their midsummer holiday. She staggered past the portraits of Sir Percival and Sir Ambrose, past the open door to the dining hall, up the narrow stairs with its new green runner – step after step through this house that had begun to feel like her own already, and to what end?

It had been home to six other women, too.

Who had died, and there was no curse to blame.

Why?Why? Othrys was the common factor they all shared, there was no way around it … but what did he stand to gain from their deaths? Their family fortunes? Their connections? Had he been so impatient for an heir that he’d killed them when they’d failed to conceive within the first two months?

Was that why he all but knew the bloody Heartstrong book by heart?

She faltered on the landing, hand halfway to the door giving access to the back wing of the house. All she wanted was to crawl beneath her blankets and forget this miserable marriage existed at all … but Anne would ask questions, Anne would panic, and how could she do that to her little sister before she had a plan to deal with these revelations?

She had to go somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away and—

Wait.

If you ever decide you would rather get out of here …

She burst back into motion, flying up the stairs as if monsters were snapping at her feet. Second room to the right. That little office bursting with books and leather folders. The door stood ajar, and behind it—

Oh, thank the divines.

‘Mr. Walford!’ She all but sobbed the name as she stumbled through the doorway. ‘Mr. Walford, I … I …’

‘Good gracious, Lady Locke?’ The steward jumped from his seat, knocking a pile of paperwork onto the floor. His eyes went wide beneath the floppy tumble of his red hair. ‘Are you unwell? What is the matter?’

‘The curse,’ she stammered, collapsing into an empty chair. ‘The curse … Mr. Walford, it doesn’texist.’

He stared at her from behind his desk.

An eternity crawled by in silence, sunlight brushing the side of his freckled face as his eyes went wider, then narrowed to slits. His lips parted. Closed again. Then parted, letting out an oddly feeble, ‘I beg your pardon, Lady Locke?’

‘I asked Lady Arragher.’ Nellie hunched over, burying her face in her hands. ‘I … I thought we might be able to break it with her help, you see? But she said … she said …’

‘That can’t be right,’ Walford brusquely interrupted, and she’d never heard him sound so little like his cheerful, amiable self. ‘She must have been playing some fae game with you. Of course there is a curse. What else—’

‘I said the same thing,’ Nellie managed through the hiccough of a first sob. ‘I didn’t want to believe it either – but she’sfae, Mr. Walford. She can’t lie! So then … then …’

She didn’t get it past her lips.

A small thud suggested Walford had sat down again. When she lifted her head, he was watching her with those narrowed eyes; his fingers had tightened around the edge of the desk, knuckles white with the force of his shock.

‘Then?’ he said sharply.

‘Then Othrys … He must …’

The steward’s shoulders slumped at once – as if he hadn’t believed, until the very last moment, that she’d truly speak the words out loud.

‘Unless there’s another explanation,’ Nellie hurriedly added, feeling like a heroine clinging to a cliff in one of Anne’s fairytales. ‘Unless it was a coincidence after all – or perhaps someone else has been trying to make his life hell for whatever reason …’

‘Impossible,’ Walford said bleakly. ‘I would want to believe the same thing, but no one could have snuck into the house at night to push Colette down the stairs or attack Rosamund in the attic. And Othrys, he …’

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