Good girls don't go snooping where they don't belong.
But Lady Delia Scarborough never claimed to be a good girl.
Lady Delia Scarborough wants her sister back from the grave.
Since that can't happen, she'll settle for the next best thing...
Making...
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Delia returned to her room, checking on Alice one more time before she went to lie down. The little girl slept the sleep of the innocent, face softly flushed on her pillow, completely innocent of the things her father and her governess were doing.
The very people trusted to care for her. Delia's thoughts were guilty, and then she reminded herself that that was not what she was there for at all.
In her own room, the summer air had left the chamber stuffy, so she went to the tiny window and opened it, letting in the summer breeze.
I must go to bed, or I will be good for nothing at all in the morning.
Still, she knelt at her window, elbows on the sill, looking up at the dark summer sky.
What am I doing?
Her cheeks were still flushed from the sheer thunderous heat of being so very close to Kieran, and her body was filled with sweetness from his kisses and his touch. She should have refused to enter the study again at all, but yet she had.
I am lucky that he did not realize what I was truly doing.
Every night that Kieran was meant to be out of the house, she had started wandering the manor. As the governess, she did not have ridiculously early hours, nor did she have other servants working with her. She could seek as she pleased, and this time, she had been in his bedchamber.
I suppose I am lucky that he did not find me there.
The shiver that shook her body at that thought was not entirely fear. He might have decided that she was a thief and that the constables needed to be called in, but she didn't think so. Instead, what had happened in the study would have happened there instead, and in that wide bed...
With a soft sigh, Delia lay down in her own narrow bed, oddly grateful for the plain sheets and hard mattress. It reminded her of the real world, where the midnight whispers and sinfully pleasurable touches that Kieran gave her were unthinkable.
Her mind drifted as it had almost every night to the day that she'd wept in the meadow. The look of compassion and kindness on his face was real, she knew that, but could it possibly mean that she was wrong? Could he be innocent of the crime of seducing her sister?
Sometimes, Delia thought that she would surely perish under the pressure of discovering the truth. She had thought that the truth would free her, but now she wondered if it was only a slightly more cunning chain.
* * *
The next day dawned bright and lovely, and as Delia had promised Alice, they went out to see the horses.
Brixby Hall kept a fine stable with some bloodstock that was fit for the finest hunts in the land. However, far more numerous were the matched carriage horses that commanded an incredibly high price at Tattersall's and the stocky carthorses that saw to the hall's needs for food and material.
