Page 76 of An Unwanted Spinster for the Duke
She should have said no. She should have let Victoria throw a tantrum.
Anything would have been better than this. Better than her little sister going missing.
Dominic had no reason to be in the west wing corridor. He hated this place. And yet it called to him quietly, insistently.
A place of shadows and silence. Of secrets far too familiar.
Here, his footsteps echoed louder than they should have, bouncing off the high ceilings and faded walls.
Why have I come?
He’d already spent hours in solitude, brushing down Achilles and Beowulf, swallowing the urge to talk to them as if they might understand.
Restlessness gnawed at him, urging his feet down a path he had barred to others. Silence begot silence, he supposed. The quiet drew him in like penance.
The west wing had been closed for years, untended but not in ruin. Tidy, perhaps. Butlifeless. His father had died, and then his mother. After that, there had been no need to keep it open. It was a mausoleum of memory.
Then, he heard it. A voice.
Small. Panicked. Sharp with rising fear.
He flinched and shook his head hard.
A hallucination?
No. It came again.
He rounded the corner quickly, and found a young housemaid wringing her hands beside a girl in a pale lilac frock. Trouble in shades of purple.
“Your Grace!” the maid gasped. “I’m sorry. I told her she shouldn’t be here, but she wouldn’t listen. She said she wanted to explore. I—well, I know I shouldn’t be here either.”
Dominic’s gaze snapped to the girl. “What the devil is she doing here?” His voice was low, dangerous, and he clenched his jaw before it could rise to a bellow. “What are you doing here, Lady Victoria? Where is your sister?”
No need to specify which sister. He meant Marianne. Everyone would know.
“Just looking around, Your Grace,” Victoria replied evenly, entirely unbothered.
“You were trespassing. This wing is closed for a reason.”
She folded her arms and met his glare without flinching. “So thereisa reason. What is it, then?”
“There are holes in the floor,” he lied, “where nosy, little girls might fall and crack their skulls.”
Victoria bent slightly and pressed her foot to the hardwood. It didn’t so much as creak. She looked up at him with an arched eyebrow. “Looks fine to me.”
Dominic narrowed his eyes at her. He wanted to shout, to make this impertinent child feel the full force of his temper, but she was too young, and she wasn’t frightened. Not in the slightest.
And that, strangely, amused him.
She was fearless.
Very much like Marianne.
And he wondered, not for the first time, what shadows might follow the Grisham sisters.
What had carved their calm from chaos?
Suddenly, Victoria turned away from him and pointed at the wall. “Is that you?” she asked. Then added belatedly, “Your Grace?”
