Duchess of Seduction (Hearts in Hiding 3)

If this was the same Robert, Cressida tried to remember what she knew of Sir Robert. He was married. He had children, she thought. Though his had once been a name with which she’d been familiar, she’d not heard mention of him in years.

“I do not know if this wi! find you, or indeed where you are or whether you are married. I was saddened at news which filtered through to me in Basle, where I’ve lived the past sixteen years, of your divorce, but I hope you have found the happiness you deserve.

Throughout the fifteen years of my marriage, I have thought of you with great fondness, hoping that life has treated you we!. I have been living abroad, returning only recently a#er my dear wife, Lucile, died, and indeed I’d not have risked stirring up the past, Mariah, were it not for an occurrence some weeks ago which begs for clarification if I am ever to sleep easily again.

It is difficult for me to write this, but I have no choice for if—as I believe—I have been in ignorance these past nineteen years, then you have carried a terrible burden.

Several weeks ago, I attended Lady Sommer’s ba! where I chanced upon a girl who bore such an astonishing resemblance to you that I cried out to my "iend, “Who is that young woman?”

“Don’t you know your own niece?” he told me. “Your sister’s child, Miss Madeleine Hardwicke. S he is to marry Lord Sitherton in six weeks.”

In the intervening sennight, I have pondered the matter and my disquiet has not abated.

Mariah, you cannot know how distressed I was at our enforced separation and the lengths to which my parents went to ensure I remained at Oxford rather than rush back to see you when I heard you’d been engaged as a governess in Dorset .

As you did not reply to my letters, I did not persist, thinking you wished to close that chapter of your life.

It is strange, returning to England a#er sixteen years to find both my parents dead. I know Lady Banks was no friend to you and if I could have turned back the clock to make that chapter of my life right, I would do it.

But life is fu! of regrets and we cannot change the past, though we can atone—and, if I could, I would.

N ow, sadly, my older my older sister—whom I feel I never knew; and is the mother of a child I’ve never met and whom she believed she could never have—is to follow our parents to the grave. I have so many unanswered questions.

Perhaps you have some of the answers. Nothing would gladden my heart more than to meet with you again, so we may discuss all that happened so many years ago.

With fond memories,

Yours ever, Robert.”

Cressida dropped the letter. Madame Zirelli’s kindness toward

Cressida had stemmed from a genuine wish to supply her with the knowledge to control her own fertility, because it was this lack of knowledge that had ruined her own life.

Ruined, because she’d been stripped of a child she could never know.

Tonight, Madame Zirelli had learned that Miss Madeleine Hardwicke was the daughter she could never acknowledge. In three days, Miss Hardwicke would marry the ageing peer, Lord Slitherton. How well Cressida remembered the lackluster spirits of the apparently once-vibrant young woman as she stood beside her intended at the ball that would change Cressida’s life. The ball at which Catherine had stripped bare Cressida’s belief in her husband.

Such lies!

Cressida refolded the single sheet of vellum and tapped the table with it, unable to dismiss the uncomfortable knowledge that the wedding would be as decidedly lacking in joy for Madame Zirelli as it would be for Miss Hardwicke. And poor Miss Hardwicke would have to live with the consequences for many unhappy years to come.

Slowly, Cressida rose, tossed back her head and studied her face in the looking glass.

She could not think of Miss Hardwicke now. Cressida had other priorities. No, poor Miss Hardwicke and her unhappy state of the heart would have to wait.

So would Madame Zirelli’s.

But right here in Cressida’s hands, was surely the antidote to a great deal of unhappiness.

She dropped her hands and again stared at her reflection. Her eyes shone, her cheeks glowed. She looked like a woman in love. A woman with the world at her feet.

A woman at the height of her power and beauty .

What a galvanising thought.

Stroking Madame Zirelli’s little writing box, she ran over all the

possibilities.