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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"No, that cannot be! Did you look along the edges of the hall or under the bed?" Delia cried.
The maid shot her a look that was confused and fearful at once, and Delia realized with a pang that she must sound like a madwoman.
"Please..."
"I did check, Miss Jones. Believe me, please, I walked up the hall twice, and then I looked all over the nursery. I saw no sign at all of the bag. Was it possible the burglar took it?"
"That's enough."
Kieran's voice cut through like a scythe through wheat.
"Kieran..."
He nodded curtly at the maid to dismiss her, and now her eyes were as wide as dinner plates. Delia thought that this would be all over the servants' hall by noon, and she winced. Kieran waited until the door had shut behind the maid to return to her.
"Delia. enough. You are addled, and your head has been jumbled by what happened to you. If I hadn't seen the open window, I might have wondered if you simply fell and came up with... all of this."
She looked at him with an emerging horror.
"You don't believe me. You don't believe any of this."
Instinctively, she reached for him, only to have him draw back. The look he gave her was so cool that it froze something in her right to the core.
"I believe that you are Delia Scarborough. I believe that you have come to my house under some mad errand of folly to avenge your sister. I had heard that she died after a long illness, but I can see that is far from the truth."
"We saved her reputation as best we could..."
"Yes. You did well there. However, your scandal might be harder for your family to bear, and the stress of your sister's death will only cover it so far."
She stared at him as if he had suddenly started speaking a different language.
"What are you talking about?"
"I am talking about this mad escapade, Delia! You came here, you faked your way into my household as a nurse, you went looking for evidence that you fabricated."
"It was there! I had my bag with me, and the burglar must have taken it!"
"And what was your proof? What proof did you have in that bag that tied me to a woman that I have never met?"
He was enraged, she realized belatedly, fury birthed out of worry and fear and the realization that he had let a faker this close to his daughter, this close to the heart of his home.
"There was a snuffbox, full of Lissa's things. A lock of her hair, a button from her dress, lover's tokens..."
