Page 49 of Stolen By the Cruel Duke
“I am proud of your industriousness and bravery.” Lady Carfield beamed at her. “It makes me happy that even though you were without me, you found ways to fight back against that man.”
Iris’s heart clenched. Even though she’d forgiven her mother, it still meant more than she could admit to hear her say she was proud of her.
“But considering all this,” her mother continued, “I’m surprised His Grace would have such a violent, angry reaction to the break-in. It appears as if you have done everything you can to earn his trust and prove you are on his side.”
“Phineas doesn’t trust easily, though,” Iris explained. “His parents’ deaths left him feeling abandoned, I think, and he now believes others will abandon him as well.”
“It’s not as if they abandoned him on purpose,” Lady Carfield said indignantly. “They were murdered.”
“He knows that. But when you’re at that age, I think the feelings you have about it are not quite reasonable. He is afraid to let himself love because he believes those he loves will leave him in some horrible way or another. So he doesn’t trust anyoneand is quick to assume the worst about people. And now that he’s learned Father murdered his parents, well… I think he’s paranoid that Father set all of this up to take me away from him, too, just as he had become close to me.”
Lady Carfield’s eyes swept over her daughter’s face, and she reached out and touched her hand. The gesture was soft and sweet—maternal. “You really care for him, don’t you?” she murmured. “The formidable, dangerous Duke of Eavestone. You really love him, don’t you?”
“I do,” Iris whispered, her throat suddenly clogged with emotion. “I love him more than anything on earth. And now it’s too late. He doesn’t trust me. In fact, he hates me.” Tears began to spill down her cheeks, and she didn’t even bother wiping them away. “Father was right in the end—marriage really is pain. Worse than that, he got his way. He married me off to a man who has made me miserable, just not for the reasons he intended.”
Lady Carfield took her in her arms, and for a long moment, she let Iris cry against her chest. It was one of the most comforting moments of Iris’s life. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried in her mother’s arms, and it eased the knot in her chest just a little to feel her mother’s arms around her and know she wasn’t alone.
Finally, Lady Carfield kissed her forehead and held her at arm’s length, looking deep into her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Iris,” she whispered. “This is all my fault. If I had just told your husband the truth all those years ago, he could have had Carfield arrested, and none of this would be happening now. But I was afraid… HisGrace was only a boy at the time, and even with the evidence, Carfield could have found a way to thwart him.
“And I felt powerless. When someone has made you feel as small and insignificant as your father made me feel, you start to believe them. Even the most confident person in the world couldn’t get through years of marriage to a man like that without starting to wonder if they really are as worthless as he says they are. And I was so young when I married your father, so impressionable…”
She hung her head, and Iris patted her hand in what she hoped was a comforting manner.
It was frightening to think of her mother being bullied by her father, and Iris tried to take a deep breath and calm herself. At least she was no longer crying. Her old instinct for strength and preservation was kicking in, and a determination she hadn’t felt before was starting to flood her.
From nowhere, she remembered her father’s promise that he would take them down, that he would break them. Perhaps it had been his plan all along to sow discord between her and Phineas. Well, if it had been, then he had succeeded. At least for now. But there was still fight left in Iris.
“What’s done is done,” Iris stated, with more determination than she had felt even moments before. Her mother looked up at her, her gaze curious. “What we need to figure out now is how to help Phineas bring Father down. Because Phineas is no longer a boy,and I know he is smart enough and strong enough to thwart our Father. What he needs, what we can help him with, is evidence.”
Her mother blinked, then shook her head. “But the evidence is gone…”
“It’s not gone,” Iris insisted. Her brain had begun to whir, and she was thinking hard. “Father has it. And I am willing to bet anything that he has it in the safe where you found the letter between him and the murderer he hired.”
“But how can we get into the safe? Lord Carfield has surely moved the key, after all these years. And you’re not allowed on his property.”
“I’m not sure yet.” Iris held up a hand as a thought occurred to her. “What was it that Phineas said? That I must have been spying on him because Father knew we were at the mines?”
“Yes…” her mother said slowly. “He seemed to think Carfield had arrived too quickly at the mines to have been told of your presence by someone who had to send the information all the way to London. He was convinced Carfield would have had to learn where you were going ahead of time.”
“And he thought perhaps I’d told Violet and Rose by accident, but I didn’t. I knew better than to mention anything to them, in case Father forced it out of them.”
Her mother’s eyebrows knit together. “Who might have told him, then?”
Iris considered this. There were several people who had known they were going to the mines, namely the butler and the groomsmen, who had been required to prepare the carriage and horses. Other than that, it was only Phineas’s valet… But Phineas would have vetted his staff. He would be entirely sure that none of them were spying for her father. Anyway, why would Lord Carfield have needed Iris to spy on Phineas if he already had a man on the inside?
Unless…
Unless it wasn’t Iris he wanted to spy for him. Unless Iris was the decoy, the distraction from the real spy, who would have arrived with Iris right underneath Phineas’s nose.
Iris looked up at her mother, her mouth hanging open. “We need to talk to Anna, right now.”
It didn’t take Anna very long to confess.
Iris and Lady Carfield found her upstairs in the guest bedroom Iris had insisted she rest in. When they came in, she was drinking the sherry they’d brought her earlier and staring vacantly at the ceiling.
The moment Iris walked through the door, a blazing look on her face, her lady’s maid burst into tears.
“I’ve wanted to tell you for ages and ages,” Anna sobbed not ten minutes later as she sat on the edge of the bed, a handkerchief pressed to her face so that she wouldn’t have to make eye contact with her mistress. “There were so many times I almost told you, Your Grace—you have to believe me.”
