The Secret Wallflower Society - Jillian Eaton Page 0,81
best hostess, the best duchess. And if she wasn’t…
Well, she didn’t think about that when she was painting.
She’d just begun to add depth to the clouds floating lazily over the pond when she heard it. The distinct crack of a stick. It was a small sound. Insignificant to most. But for Percy, it might as well have been a gunshot.
Her heart leapt into her throat.
An icy chill swept down her spine.
He’s found me, she thought.
For that was what she always thought.
He’s found me, and this time he’s going to kill me.
She wished it was an unfounded fear, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t because she knew that the crack of a stick sounded exactly like the crack of a bone. She knew that pain could literally bring a person to their knees. And she knew that Andrew would never stop trying to find her.
He didn’t search for her out of any sense of love or obligation. Oh, in the beginning she’d believed he loved her. In the beginning, she’d believed he had hung the moon and all the stars along with it. But she’d quickly learned he could no more love her than he could love a plant or a plate.
She was a possession.
His possession.
Trembling from head to toe, Percy spun towards the shadows prepared to fight for her life…or die in the process. Because she wasn’t going back on that bloody shelf.
Not now.
Not ever again.
Lucas Black was a man who procured things.
When he’d been a young orphan stuck under the thumb of Mastiff Brown, a mean bastard with an even meaner right hook, that had meant purses and watches and whatever else his quick, clever fingers could swipe off the rich toffs as they took their morning strolls through Hyde Park.
When Lucas changed into a man full grown and put Mastiff into the ground where he belonged, thus earning himself the title of the Devil of Duncraven, those purses and watches evolved into priceless jewelry and works of art. But with the rise of the Bow Street Runners, stolen goods became harder and harder to sell. And Lucas, never one to overlook an opportunity, had adjusted his business model accordingly.
Now he recovered what had been stolen or gone missing. For a pretty penny, of course. Then he took that money and invested it in any manner of ventures. Some lucrative, others not so much. But despite his lack of a formal education, Lucas had always had a knack for finances, and he’d rapidly turned enough of a profit to live–and travel–in comfort.
He’d been drinking wine in the middle of Sussex when none other than the Duke of Glastonbury came knocking at his door. Generally Lucas reserved any talk of business for London, but it wasn’t every day a duke had need of his services, especially one with such deep pockets.
The conversation had been blunt and to the point. A good thing, as he’d found Glastonbury to be annoyingly condescending. But the duke hadn’t batted an eye when Lucas told him what he required for a retainer, and the job itself seemed simple enough.
Find the Duchess of Glastonbury, and return her to her husband.
Typically Lucas was hired to search for objects instead of people but there’d been nothing typical about the astronomical fee the duke had agreed to pay, including a bonus of a thousand pounds if the duchess was returned before months end.
He’d returned to London the very next day to begin his search. A search that had taken him from Mayfair to Grosvenor to Winchester Manor, before ultimately leading to a brick townhouse in Berkley Square.
The sun was beginning to set off the Thames as he bypassed the front door and went around to the rear garden, blending seamlessly into the shadows that slithered away from a long hedgerow dividing the home from its neighbor. The rough edge of a leaf caught on his jacket as he slipped between two holly bushes. With his sole focus on the delicate fairy sitting partially obscured behind a tall wooden easel, he wasn’t as careful as he should have been, and the branch that had snared him broke with a loud crack.
Like a deer startled by a wolf in the middle of the wood, the fairy leapt up out of her chair and whirled towards the line of shrubbery, her eyes wide and fearful as she searched the encroaching darkness.
Lucas sucked in a sharp breath.
So this, he thought silently, was the missing Duchess of Glastonbury.