Page 36 of The Duke's Stolen Heart
“Don’t mind her.” Lady Jersey leaned forward. “Eliza’s daughter is out in a year, and there are only so many dukes to go around. She had hoped Havencrest might take to her eldest.”
The idea stabbed through her gut, but all Antonia said was, “Thank you for the game.”
She made her excuses and filtered away through the crush. Her mind whirled with schemes. When it settled, a daring idea had taken shape.
It was reckless. Foolish. Downright dangerous if she was caught.
Antonia was instantly enamored.
The ladies were playing cards on Sunday. She had less than forty-eight hours to prepare for the sort of scheme that ought to take a week to pull off properly, but Antonia could do it. Now that her abortive ploy to escape had been discovered a sheen of panic coated her nerves like oil in a puddle. The sooner she got Havencrest his bauble and herself out of the country, the better.
Even if that left Margaret to fend for herself. Antonia pushed away the sting of hollow sadness. She had a plan. It was simply a matter of disappearing for an afternoon—and reappearing as someone else.
She needed help. There one person who could offer it to her was…whirling around the dance floor with a woman Antonia didn’t recognize. The stony tension around Malcolm’s eyes and forehead had softened. He looked almost happy. What would his life have been like if his parents had been loving toward one another instead of fighting to the death? It sent an unwelcome pang thudding through her breast and clashed with the beat of the music. This was who he was.
Wealthy.
Powerful.
Desirable.
While she was nothing but a fraud who had been born to nothing and would spend the rest of her life running. Even her name was fraudulent. What did it matter that she hated the name she had been given at birth? Taking a stranger’s identity hadn’t changed her own. Antonia was still the girl who had been born to poor woman of mixed heritage, raised as a pet by her natural father’s wife. Antonia had never forgiven her mother for whisking her away from the life of relative comfort and put her work as a servant. She had despised her mother for severing her relationship with Mrs. Beckwith, though now Antonia understood why her mother had done it—to protect her from the same fate.
Her pride and inflated sense of self-worth had been stoked by that early attention from the lady of the manor. In retrospect, Antonia guessed that Mrs. Beckwith kept her as a companion to needle her husband about the child he’d fathered on an unwilling household maidservant.
Lady Woolryte correctly suspected her for a fraud. How long did she have before Havencrest turned on her?
Her betrayal would crush Margaret’s gentle spirit.
You think you’re better than us?her mother had yelled in exasperation at Antonia’s adolescent sullenness.Just because you’re named Princess doesn’t make you one. Should’ve named you Dirt, ‘cause that’s what you are. Lower than dirt. You’ll spend the rest of your life emptying chamber pots and scrubbing floors no matter how pretty your face.
Fresh hurt from old wounds at the memory of her mother’s abuse. Unwelcome memories rooted her to the floor until a gentle touch at her elbow awoke Antonia from her trance.
“Are you all right?” asked Margaret.
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Thank you. How is your evening with Havencrest?” Antonia asked, stifling her emotions back into submission. She had no desire to revisit the many bitter fights she’d had with her mother. She had left all of that behind her when she refused to go home after her experience in the pillory. Whatever name she answered to, Antonia had been running ever since she was fifteen years old. Stealing had been a way to break the bond. There was no going back. Her only direction was forward.
“I rather like him,” Margaret confessed wonderingly. “His humor is gruff, but he is not unsociable once you get to know him. I only worry I look like a fool for not keeping up with his wit.”
“I don’t expect any of us are capable of it, Maggie,” Antonia commented wryly.
“You are.”
Her friend’s simple confidence spoke to yearnings Antonia could not afford to indulge. Not yet. She swallowed and changed the subject. “Maggie, dear friend, do you think you can conceal my absence from your brother and the countess on Sunday afternoon?”
Margaret glanced up at her. “Of course. But why?”
“I need to disappear for a few hours.”
Margaret’s pale pink lips puckered into a sulk. “You aren’t going to tell me why, are you?”
“Not yet. I’m sorry.”
“Is this like the night when you left the note? About leaving me?” Margaret asked. Her pout trembled as though she might cry.
“No! I promised you I would never do that again and I meant it.” Antonia grasped Margaret’s gloved hands. “You are the only true friend I have ever had, Maggie. I am not leaving. I need a few hours of my own time. That’s all.”
Margaret’s watery eyes cleared in the span of a single breath. “I know you and Havencrest are plotting something. Whatever I can do to help you, I will.”
Touched, Antonia smiled. “When the time comes, I promise to ask. I hope to give you the full story one day.”
It was audacious. Havencrest would storm and rage before capitulating. Because if there was one thing she knew how to do, it was clean houses and disappear into the woodwork like the proper servant she’d been raised to be.
And steal, then run, before she was caught.
