Page 59 of A Lord Apart (The Way to a Lord's Heart 2)

Miss Pendleton replaced the gowns and repeated the process with a second similar trunk. She looked through a box of shoes, gloves, handkerchiefs, and reticules, turning out the latter and shaking each one. She sorted through ornaments from his mother’s room and mementos from her travels. Her enthusiasm appeared to dim as she found no sign of what she wanted.

The last two trunks held hatboxes. She looked inside them all, and the hats. “Nothing,” she said. She sat down on a closed trunk, surrounded by sheaves of tissue paper and ornate headgear.

“Her dressing case and more personal items went down with the ship,” said Daniel. He was ready to leave this shadowed room and the weight of the past.

“She wouldn’t keep the key with her,” declared Miss Pendleton.

“Why not?”

“That would have defeated the purpose of a code. Anyone might have found it and deciphered the journal she carried. No, the notebooks were hidden here at Frithgerd. The key would have been, too.”

“You may be making far too much of this. Perhaps my mother just had an addiction to…inane scribbling.” Had the contents of her mind been as jumbled as the estate records, Daniel wondered. Was his heritage nothing but muddle?

“I don’t think it can be that. Ifeelthe notebooks are important.”

Conviction and curiosity lit her face. She wouldn’t give up; she wouldn’t turn away. Daniel felt as if he could look at her forever.

She sighed. “But there isn’t even a scrap of paper.”

He roused himself and looked around. “My mother had a writing desk. Its contents should be with the rest of her things.”

“Oh!” Miss Pendleton spread her hands. “We’re idiots! We had all the papers taken downstairs. Whatever was in her desk must be among them.” She grimaced. “If only we’d known from the first, this might have been much easier.” She wrapped tissue around a hat, nestled it in its box, and replaced the lid. When she bent to place the container in the open trunk, she said, “What’s this?” Setting the hatbox aside, she reached into the bottom of the trunk, coming up with a small flat case covered in velvet.

“Looks like jewelry.” Daniel held out his hand. “That should have gone to the strong room.” She handed it to him, and he opened it. A sapphire and diamond necklace sparkled in the candlelight. He’d never seen his mother wear this. But then he’d seen so little of her. Daniel looked up. The sapphires were just the color of Miss Pendleton’s eyes. “This would suit you.”

Penelope’s frustration flamed into a violent revulsion. She wasn’t angling for jewels. Mistresses got jewels, were continually greedy for them by all accounts. Did he suppose she was helping him to augment her fortune, to cajole rich gifts out of him? “I don’t want a necklace.”

“I merely observed that sapphires are your—”

She barely heard him. “I need no largesse from you.”

“Largesse? What sort of word is that?”

“The sort used by sanctimonious prigs who patronize the poor anddowntrodden.” She’d been looked down upon by too many insulting men in the last year. She wouldn’t tolerate any more.

“What the deuce is wrong with you?”

“I don’t want your necklace!”

“I wasn’t offering it to you!”

“But you said—” She broke off in confusion.

“That sapphires would suit you. Not that you could have my mother’s necklace.”

Penelope felt the blush spread from her cheeks down her neck and across her chest. She was certain the crimson was visible even in the dim light. She’d allowed unhappy memories to control her. She’d vowed never to do that. Still agitated, she said, “I decide what suits me and whether I shall have it. Not you.”

“Undoubtedly. But that does not give you the right to—”

“Mydesiresare not your responsibility.”

Whitfield blinked.

She’d silenced him, Penelope saw, enjoying the sensation. And yes, this was about far more than a necklace. It was about a year of being chivvied about and mistrusted and frightened, whenever her captors could manage that. They’d intimidated her for quite a time. Perhaps they meant to try again, by sending someone to lurk in her new neighborhood and spy on her. She couldn’t stop them. But she could refuse to follow the steps they laid out, like the lines of a dispiriting play.

The light in Whitfield’s dark eyes shifted as she gazed steadily into them. Her past trials weren’t his fault. But her future wasn’t his responsibility either. Her decisions were her own. He would have to learn that.

She stepped closer and set a hand on his shirtfront. She could feel his heart beating against her palm. She moved closer still.

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