Page 106 of The Devil in Her Bed
“She’s running away.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
It was time for her to leave. Past time, Francesca supposed, but she’d waited long enough. For consequences. For a miracle.
For a word.
Leaves crunched loud enough to sound like bones beneath her boots as she climbed the stone steps that had once been the entrance to Mont Claire Manor. No stately home waited on the other end of the archway, only the crumbling skeleton blackened by long-ago smoke.
Autumn was always a bit melancholy, but none so much as this. At least not in many years. In the frozen cold of the November day, her breaths created a mist that she parted as she walked over what was once pristine marble. Grit champed beneath her footfalls now, the inlays of artisans of the past covered with nigh twenty years of dirt as the place had been exposed to the elements for want of a roof.
The Crimson Council had certainly loved to set fire to fine houses. First Mont Claire, and then Cecelia’s manor in town.
They wouldn’t be doing that anymore, now that they didn’t exist.
She’d not come back here before. Not since that fateful day, and she didn’t want to now.
But it seemed apropos to say goodbye, and the graveyard in which she’d set stones for her mother and father and even the Cavendish crypts felt empty.
No, all their ashes were here: Ferdinand, Francesca, her parents, the staff she’d been fond of and the few that she hadn’t. Their dust was here, and their memories, too.
Francesca relived so many of those memories as she strolled through what was once the kitchens, promising herself she’d only visit the good memories.
The stove remained, of course, and she ran her finger through the grime of it before wandering down the halls past white stone pillars that held up nothing but the sky.
Enough of the grounds had been reclaimed by ivy and other flora, she felt like she might have been walking into a relic of a bygone age, not merely one from her own past.
A past she needed to leave behind. Permanently, if she was to do anything else with the life she had left.
After Chandler had stormed out of her life some months ago, Francesca had barely spent a day alone. Alexandra and Cecelia were constantly at her side, in her house, inviting her to functions and doing their best to distract and divert her. The love and care andconcern of her friends was more abiding and all-consuming than she’d ever realized.
She loved them so dearly.
And they were driving her barking mad. Bonkers. Because they reminded her how sad she was. How pathetic and alone. Seeing their happiness illuminated how empty her life would be now that she didn’t have vengeance to fill it.
Now that she didn’t have someone with which to share it.
No, best she moved on for a while. She’d go back to the Carpathians maybe, in the east. Get away from the noise, stink, and glitter of the city and lose herself to a place both primal and private.
And maybe find herself, too. Whoever she was now.
For days after their falling-out, she’d waited for Chandler. When he never came, she waited for the officials. To be stripped of everything. Or arrested.
It was likely she deserved it. A sin committed with good intentions was still a sin, and a lie was still a lie.
Chandler proved himself a good man, she thought. Or maybe he was just that indifferent to her, now. She couldn’t be sure. He could take everything she claimed, after all. It was technically his. Because of his father’s machinations, he was her heir. Well, the Mont Claire heir. Hecouldbe an earl twice over.
Suppose she just… gave it to him?She could renounce her title and claim to the Mont Claire lands. She didn’t want to be mistress of the ashes. There was no reason for it anymore.
She’d closely watched the very public, very accelerated trial of Luther Kenway, hoping for a glimpse ofChandler. And she’d done so a few times in the courtroom, though he apparently still couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
She’d watched him, regardless. Drank in the sight of him like the condemned might search for a glimpse of the sky, or the faintest hint of kindness.
After Kenway was hanged, Chandler had, indeed, claimed his title as Earl of Devlin. Cecelia had revealed that he didn’t take up residence at the London home, however, and Francesca understood why immediately.
He didn’t want to live with ghosts.
She found herself in the Mont Claire library, staring out a window that had no glass, looking down the hill toward the hedge maze that was no longer. Her childhood refuge.
