Page 5 of A Highland Duke to Claim Her Heart
As she stepped off the staircase onto the second-floor corridor, Cassandra heard a small voice behind her.
“Papa?”
The voice was quiet and female—a girl’s voice, Cassandra guessed—and she turned at once.
“Hello?” she said, as her mother halted behind her.
Out of the shadows in the corridor to the right stepped a little girl.
She looked to be about five or six years old, in a white silk dress with a raised hem embroidered with blue flowers. She had dark hair, which fell in ringlets around her oval face, out of which blinked the most stunningly green eyes Cassandra had ever seen.
“Mistress Annabelle!” Mrs. Drummond said, hurrying forward. “What are you doing here? You ought to be readying for your supper!”
“I heard a carriage approaching,” the girl said, her eyes sweeping over Cassandra with undisguised curiosity. “I thought Papa might have returned.”
“He has not,” Mrs. Drummond said. “Now, I must ask you to return to the nursery at once. Where is Miss Ashworth? She is supposed to be watching you!”
“It is not Miss Ashworth’s fault,” the girl said, dropping her eyes to the ground. “I slipped away.”
“Well, I shall escort you back.” Mrs. Drummond glanced at Lady Pembury. “Please wait here. I will return shortly.”
And she took the little girl’s hand and led her away down the corridor, until they turned the corner and were out of sight.
“Who was that?” Cassandra asked, turning at once her mother.
“That must be the duke’s daughter,” Lady Pembury said, frowning. “Poor dear. Her mother died during childbirth. It was all very tragic.”
“That is very sad,” Cassandra murmured. “It must be hard for her to be without a mother.”
“Yes,” Lady Pembury sniffed. “But the duke is uninterested in marriage. Believe me, if he had been available, we would have angled to have you marry the duke, not his brother.”
Cassandra’s throat went dry. She turned away to hide her irritation. Her mother’s shameless social-climbing greatly disturbed her, even as she did her best to live up to the expectations that had been put on her since birth.
“Something feels very off about all this,” Lady Pembury said from behind her, unaware of Cassandra’s discomfort. “Where isthe duke? And why does his own daughter seem so concerned about his return?”
Cassandra couldn’t say, but later, once she was settled into the guestroom where she would be staying until the wedding, she decided to try and find out.
Mrs. Drummond had assigned a maid to help her prepare for dinner, and as the woman pinned Cassandra’s auburn hair up into an elaborate coiffure, she asked, in the most casual tone possible, “I suppose that His Grace will not be joining us tonight?”
The maid, a young girl with a pug nose and kind gray eyes, frowned. “I suppose not, milady. He rode off yesterday evening in quite a state. Frightened the stable boys, so he did, shoutin’ for his horse like the barn was burnin’ down.”
Cassandra’s curiosity welled inside of her, but she tried to remain calm as she said, “Oh? That sounds as if it was very urgent. The business with the neighboring laird must be serious.”
“I know nothin’ ‘bout that, milady,” the maid said. “But he did seem very vexed, I am told. They both were.”
“Both?” Cassandra repeated. “The duke and Lord Christopher?”
“Lord Christopher?” the maid shook her head. “No, milady, His Grace and Mr. Greybourne. The estate manager.”
Cassandra felt her hands curl into fists, her fingernails pressing into her palms to keep the rest of her from shaking.
“So Lord Christopher did not go with His Grace?” she asked.
“No, milady. Lord Christopher has not been here in more than a month.”
It took all of Cassandra’s self-control not to gape. Amonth?She had been told that Lord Christopher would be at Calder Castle, waiting for her, in the week leading up to their wedding. And while Mrs. Drummond had explained what had detained the duke, she conspicuously omitted the details of Lord Christopher’s whereabouts. .
Which begged the question: If Lord Christopher was not at Calder Castleorwith his brother, then where, exactly, was he?
