Mercy and Felicity had sent word that they were only allowed to call around once per week.
There’d been no word from Honoria. And Pru had not spoken to Amanda since that day in Hyde Park. All her other acquaintances assumed she’d escaped her despair to Italy.
But no. It was right here. Screaming at her through the silence and loneliness that pressed her down from all sides as she stood between two locked doors.
Dammit. She’d had enough.
Prudence waited until Ester had gone out to the market, and went below stairs to pilfer the master set of keys from their hook in the pantry. She’d done this before, on day three, and discovered that none of the master keys matched the locks for the two mysterious doors.
Morley probably kept them upon his person.
The master set did, however, grant her access to his office.
Out of respect for her husband, she’d not disturbed the room past a curious peek that day. What if he somehow discovered that she’d snooped? She’d no desire to incur his wrath.
Today she was past caring. She needed a diversion. She needed to know.
It took her an hour and a half of rifling through his office to find what she’d somehow suspected would be there. He was so tidy for a man, so orderly, so comprehensively methodical. If he thought of everything, then he’d keep in the house just exactly what she’d been searching for.
Spare keys.
They’d been tucked into a file of legal papers in a drawer marked “security.”
Clever.
They burned her palm as she raced back up the stairs. Her heart trilled in her chest like a captured sparrow as she stood in front of both doors.
She selected the left one first. Inhaling a bracing breath, she slid the key in the lock and turned it, unlatching the door.
Upon first glance she was disappointed. She hadn’t really known what to expect, but in her more fanciful moments she might have conjured a lair befitting the so-called Knight of Shadows. Uniforms maybe. Weapons. Masks and the like.
Unsurprisingly, it was nothing more than an immaculate bedroom. Even the dust motes that’d danced across her open windows didn’t seem to dare venture into his space. The bedclothes had not a wrinkle. The shaving implements gleamed in a row on the curio as if they’d been shined with the silver.
But the faint scent of shaving soap clung to the air as the opaque water in the bowl had yet to be refreshed. That and other aromas drew her deeper into the room as if she’d been summoned by a spell. Cedar and fresh linen.
And that masculine spice that was distinctively him.
The rustle of her skirts disrupted the almost mausoleum-like silence as she drifted to a high-backed chair where a dressing gown had been neatly draped but obviously discarded after use.
Lucy hadn’t laundered it yet or changed the pitcher, which meant that Morley, the master of the house, had straightened his own bed and shined his own shaving accoutrements.
What a bemusing man.
Unable to stop herself, Prudence lifted the robe to her face and inhaled. Since her pregnancy, she seemed to have the nose of a bloodhound. She’d never forget the warm, wild scent of him. It taunted her now, surrounded by his things as she was.
It might be the only appetizing aroma she’d encountered for weeks.
Belatedly, she looked around the room and noticed something amiss. The paper on the walls was decidedly feminine, little forget-me-nots wrapped in ribbons. There was no view on this side of the house, and the space was decidedly smaller than her chamber at the end of the hall.
Her sound of wonderment snagged the air as the robe slipped from her fingers back to the chair.
He’d surrendered the master suite to her. The room with the best view, the largest bed, and the most comfortable furnishings.
An awfully considerate gesture, for a man who couldn’t bring himself to share a meal with her, let alone a conversation.
It first occurred to her to offer the gesture back to him. To tell him she didn’t want it, that she’d take the smaller room so he could once again enjoy his own accommodations.
If he’d only come home.
She’d have to figure out how to offer without him finding out she’d snooped.
Heaving a morose sigh, Pru left and locked his room, burning with curiosity about the next door. She fumbled with the key twice before opening it, and when she finally managed, she stood in the doorway for several moments while tears