Page 76 of The Duke of Deceit

In other words…no need for Jess to confess her embarrassment and distress. She would be allowed to keep her pain private. Gratitude made her eyes sting anew. “Thank you.”

Auntie gently tugged her to her feet and then undressed her down to her shift. Each layer of clothing was carefully laid across the foot of the bed.

“If he should pay us a call,” Matilda asked carefully as she placed a warm cashmere wrap around Jess’s shoulders, “what would you like me to say to him?”

“He won’t.” She knew that with as much certainly as she knew the sun rose every morning.

Matilda nodded slowly, then pulled back the coverlet on the bed. “You should rest now. Stay in bed as long as you’d like today. I’ll tell Amanda you have a headache.”

“And when she asks where I was last night?”

“Last night? Why, you spent the evening playing cards at your friend Sarah’s house, only to return home after Amanda had gone to bed and far too late to disturb her just to say goodnight.” Auntie placed a kiss to her forehead. “Hold on to your heart. Don’t let this stop you from holding dear the people you love and who love you. We can never have enough of those in our life.”

“And Lucien?” Her voice cracked with emotion. “Where does he fit into my life now?”

Auntie’s hands squeezed her shoulders. “Trust in him, my dear, to do the right thing in the end.”

Then she tightly hugged Jess and left, closing the door quietly behind her.

She choked down a tearful laugh.Trust in the Duke of Deceit?

Her world had inverted over the past few weeks so slowly she had barely felt it turning her head-over-heels, until she now dangled head-first above the precipice. Now bad was good, wrong was right, wickedness had become so divinely wonderful…and the only man she loved was someone who claimed to the world to be completely incapable of loving anyone at all.

How would she ever be able to set it all back to rights?

She sank down onto the bed and let out a long, tremulous breath, her shoulders sagging and her hands twisting in her shift. She was ready to crawl out of her skin! She couldn’t sit still, couldn’t find the energy to pace, couldn’t stop the swimming thoughts in her head so she could think—couldn’t bear to let herself think about what had happened. The only way she knew how to deal with the pain was to turn numb. But she couldn’t do that either. If she chased away the pain, what would be left of her heart, if anything?

Her heart.

She pushed herself off the bed and went to her pelisse. In the pocket was the folded paper she’d tried to give back to Lucien, the one on which he’d drawn a heart.

He’d given her his heart drawing. If only it could be that easy for her to accept the real thing!

She unfolded the paper, which was crumpled from when she’d crushed it in her hand. A tear escaped her stinging eyes and dropped onto the page. She tried to brush it away, but the water smeared the colored pencil outline, blurring and distorting it. A soft cry swelled up from her as she frantically swiped at it with her fingertip, but every attempt to save the drawing only made it worse.

“I’ve ruined it,” she whispered to herself, utter unhappiness consuming her as she sank to the floor in new sobs. “I’ve ruined everything.”

Only a few days ago, she thought Lucien’s heart was black, if he’d possessed a heart at all. She’d been certain nothing existed in his chest but a pile of ashes where a heart should have been, a cinder as charred as coal and icy-cold as Lucifer’s.

Now she knew better. His heart was good and warm, generous and kind.

And it would never belong to her.

*

Lucien dismounted hishorse at the front steps of Brixton House and tossed the reins to the groom who jogged forward to meet him. He nodded curtly to the footman who opened the front door for him and tossed the man his hat, followed by his gloves one by one over his shoulder as he strode through the house toward his study with its well-stocked liquor cabinet. He needed a drink.

No—he needed to drink himself into oblivion.

“Tell McGregor and Dalton to leave me be this morning,” he ordered. “I won’t need them.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

He paused outside the study door to strip off his coat and throw it to the footman. “And absolutely no callers.” Although he knew the one person he wanted to see most wouldn’t venture to his door again.

“Yes, sir.”

Lucien yanked open the door and froze. The study was exactly as he’d left it two nights ago, right down to the glass and bottle still on his desk. The windows were still shuttered, thefireplace cold…even the desk chair sat out of place where he’d shoved it away when he’d stood to leave for Ealing. Nothing had changed.