Page 39 of Setting a Maid's Heart on Fire

Has she not given me enough?he told himself angrily. Not only had she become his wife and an excellent life partner, loyal and helpful, kind and beautiful. She had also given him the means to fix all his problems without even knowing it.

He had still to tell her his secret, that he was beyond poor. At least, he had been until she had come along and seen holes in his plans where even he had not seen them.

She has given me far more than I deserve, and yet I still want more!he realised, feeling sick to his stomach and absolutely disgusted with himself. Still, he couldn’t help thinking on how he had felt when she had fallen into his lap.

Though his heart had still been beating fast due to the falling of the candle, his attention had been utterly stolen the moment she kissed him. Even in total darkness, she had been intoxicating, her scent wreathing all around him, the warmth of her body causing his senses to go wild.

Merely being able to touch her was a dream come true after so many weeks of waiting for her to finally come to him. And yet somehow he had managed to mess it all up. He still had no idea where he had gone wrong.

Just before dawn, Anthony was startled by the sound of knuckles wrapping on his bedroom door. Having stopped staring at the ceiling instead of gazing at the chink of light between the drapes, he almost jumped out of his skin and rolled over just in time to find his butler hurrying into the room.

“Cartwright, what is it?”

The butler had never taken it upon himself to come to his bedroom before he awakened for the day, always seeming to appear the very moment the duke’s feet touched the hardwood floor at his bedside.

“Forgive me, My Lord, I hope I did not wake you, but a messenger has arrived this very moment,” Cartwright explained, and Anthony’s heart skipped a beat. A messenger during the middle of the night could mean only one thing. His solicitor had not been wrong when he had suggested there were still things he could do for the British Army. Though his efforts were far more secretive nowadays, he could still feel proud in knowing that he was continuing to do his part for his country. As a duke, espionage was all he had left.

Anthony gestured the butler forward and held out his hand, awaiting the letter the messenger had brought. The moment he read the words, though they might look quite mundane and boring to any civilian reading them, Anthony knew he had to act right away.

“Cartwright, wake my wife,” he insisted as he scrambled from the bed and began to dress. “We are to leave for London immediately.”

Chapter 25

Penelope was more than a little relieved when Cartwright came to her to announce that they were to travel to London. Having not slept after the frustrations of what had happened in the library, she had been quick to find her way to the mailbox before the waking of the servants, only just managing to reach it and return to her bedroom before she heard the hammering of a fist upon the front door.

Having watched from her bedroom window as the messenger departed the porch steps, she could at least rest assured that it was not the Comte banging the door down to expose her. Instead, she’d turned her attention to the letter she held in her hand, a second letter addressed to her or at least the her she was pretending to be. It had said:

I know what you did.

And those simple words had turned her veins to ice and her stomach to water. She had been forced to hide her terror when she was surprised by Cartwright’s knocking on her door, holding her breath as she awaited him to tell her that the duke wished to see her, that word had come that she was not who she claimed to be.

Instead, he had announced the duke’s plans to return to London imminently, and she had at least been able to breathe a sigh of relief in the thought that she might have a few days of hiding before whoever was sending such letters learned of her change of address.

Though being back in London was frustrating, leaving her unable to help those who truly needed it, like the villagers of the duke’s estate, she found herself turned to another task.

Having been joined in their townhouse by the duke’s sisters along with his close friend Jonathan Sweetings, Penelope found herself distracted by the budding romance she had noticed between Jonathan and the duke’s youngest sister, Emily.

Welcoming the chance of distraction from her own twisted existence, Penelope took it upon herself to encourage them at every chance, entirely certain that the two would make the perfect couple. In fact, in part, she was quite jealous of them, though she hoped they would succeed where so far she had failed.

The duke's reason for being in London kept him busy for several days, so she spent her days chaperoning her younger sister-in-law and her husband’s best friend, pleased to see them flourish like two blooming roses before her.

On their last night in London, Penelope found herself so utterly distracted that she allowed her guard to slip. In a rare moment of anxiety-free bliss, Penelope attended a ball upon the arm of her husband. Though she had been loathed to join him, fearing that somebody in attendance might actually know the Comte and his niece and know that she was not who she claimed to be, she was most relieved to learn that it was a masquerade ball.

Feeling utterly free for the first time since arriving in England, she allowed her walls to slip and merely enjoyed herself, relishing the sensation of Lord Chatham’s arms around her as he guided her around the dance floor. It was a magical night filled with joy and laughter and free of any expectation.

The duke did not make her feel as though he wanted anything from her, though he looked at her with such affection that she lost herself in the moment, and when he announced to her that his important business was concluded and they could return to the countryside, Penelope was astonished at her own relief.

She was surprised at how much she enjoyed the thought of returning ‘home’ with her husband, returning to where she was happiest and able to actually make a difference.

In those moments on that dance floor, acting as though she were merely a wife in sheer bliss with her husband, Penelope realised she was truly becoming that person. She would have given anything to remain in that moment forever.

Their short time in London had been so magical that by the time they returned to the countryside, Penelope had almost entirely forgotten the sheer magnitude of the mess she had got herself in. That was until she returned to her usual routine of checking the mail well before dawn.

She had received no letters while in London, yet the moment they returned to the countryside, she found they arrived almost every morning, growing more and more threatening yet never giving away anything specific.

They had been back in the countryside little over four days when Penelope began to feel as though she could take no more. She was almost at her wits’ end when the duke met her at the bottom of the staircase early in the morning wearing his finest riding attire and a charming smile.

Trying her hardest to hide her anxiety and the sheer stress she was under, she forced a smile onto her face and asked, “Husband, why do you look so excited?”

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