-CHAPTER 28-
Thick varicose veins crawled up the side of her neck, haunting in their rise. They yanked at her tissues, pulling tight and stretching the fabric of her skin until she choked down a cough. Her head dropped slightly below her shoulders, her breaths coming winded. Shutting down her need to let out a few wheezes, she padded up the bend by way of the wall and followed after him.
Estella clutched a hand to her dress—hard. Her grip tightened against her chest from supposing what awaited her at the end of the pin-drop-quiet passage. She was hanging on for dear life, as it were. Her brows wrinkling and then flattening out were the least of her concerns. Her nose scrunched up in lieu of the thick smell of secrecy hovering all about them that landed a tight kick to her gut, grounding her in her dread. That queasy feeling really started to get to her when the man in front quickened his stride, almost as if he needed to hurry and get her to where she was wanted ASAP. Either that or something along that line so the Duke wouldn't berate him for late-coming. Estella understood that last part, but it still did not make any sense to her.
Where was she being walked to, and why did she suddenly feel like a sheep being led to the slaughterhouse gates?
Slam!
A door creaked violently open, startling her so that her shoulders jumped, sharply. The man in front tilted his head to the side then, sizing her up and down as if bidding her to hasten her steps. She did so, not necessarily hastening her walk but maintaining her stealthy stride, which was now fueled with fresh purpose as she wondered what held behind that massive door.
She reached it just in time as Bach pushed the door open further to let her through. Estella chewed the inside of her mouth, a subtle frown forming near her browbones. Ignoring the wild, vicious kicks to her gut, she drew in a long, sharp breath and walked right through.
It didn't take a pint-size minute to fully register where he'd brought her to. Her coffee-brown eyes easily fell out of their sockets, her jaw clenching hard as the skin around her hairline slackened into folds.
What was the meaning of this? She shuddered mildly. Why were they here?
Not only did the space stretch nearly a mile, using up the entire third floor, but the lion-carved canopy bed with ducal finials, a fluffy feather mattress her hands were itching to touch despite herself, and embroidered see-through curtains draping down its four corners was a dead giveaway. Even before she caught the cobalt blue Persian rug at the bed's foot, which landed her the final slap of what had become her new reality, she could sniff the Duke's essence everywhere. A blend of civet and sandalwood trickled down her airways, leaving a taint of nostalgia in their wake.
She wanted to tilt her head toward the one who'd brought her here and ask him a few questions. She had a couple of them, a gazillion in fact, spinning inside her head and causing her a splintering headache. But her eyes moved faster than her mouth, and so did her limbs.
In an instant, the baroque ornate frame that housed a thick glass mirror at the far distance, adjacent to the bed stand, grabbed her by the throat. She remembered seeing something similar but not quite the same in her father's bedroom once. But then, the Duke's taste was of a class of its own.
Letters with wax seals, some unopened, some half-opened, splayed out neatly on a high desk by the tall double doors leading out to an arcade balcony.
But that did not impress Estella like the gold-pleated swords stationed side by side in a scissor shape. It planted on a sturdy sword holder carved into a wall. She was long gone in awe of it, her legs carrying her faster than her mind could chide her for wanting to indulge. Her fingers were already grazing the thick glass, the only thing stopping her from touching the artefact as she would have liked.
"Miss Grimalde."
Bach's voice slapped lightly like a gentle tap on her shoulders, but she had panicked all the same. Turning to him, she had the eyes of a thief who had just been caught red-handed in the act of doing the deed.
"I see you are quite enjoying the view," Bach said somewhat stiffly.
Estella swallowed.
"But His Grace is not typically in the habit of letting just anyone fondle his things, might I add."
Wrestling the tightness in her throat, her brow ridges flared outward from her nose bridge.
Bach said, "If you'd like, you can make yourself comfortable by the chair that way."
She followed the direction of his chin and found it at a twenty-degree angle from the vanity desk. It was an upholstered dual-seater with inlaid buttons fastened into the leather. A K-legged ceramic tabletop stood at the center. How had she not noticed it before?
Bach continued, "You can make yourself at ease while I go downstairs to get some tea, biscuits, or whatever else you'd like. A fruit juice, perhaps, fresh from the press, depending on your choosing. Which would it be?"
Estella heard him but wasn't quite following because he couldn't possibly have brought her here, away from her father's watchful eyes, to drug her and then do something terrible to her, had he? Was that the Duke's intention? Was he in cahoots with her father to finish her off?
Shaking her head vigorously, Estella debunked either thought. The last time Félix was at their house, he did not seem to be on good talking terms with her father. And yes, she had eavesdropped a little of their conversation in the dining room while sneaking into the house then. It almost felt like Duke Félix had recently had a fresh falling out with her father, the Baron, judging from how sternly he'd spoken, dismissing the Baroness's chance of showing off her daughters to get him interested.
More so, her father couldn't possibly want her harmed now that Viscount Alistair had requested to see her the following day—so there was that. But that did not negate the fact that her being currently in the Duke's space was as fishy as it sounded.
"Seeing as you haven't signaled you want anything, I may now take my leave."
Wait! That word hung at the rims of her lips, never making its way out into the light. Bach turned just as swiftly as she'd thought that, and after a few quick strides, he had reached the door. Turning the knob, Estella felt her heart twist open with it. A gasp tore out of her.
But Bach did not stop. He marched out military-style leaving her hand reaching for his ghostly shadow.
Her legs wouldn't cooperate, drained of the will to chase after him, even if she had to run until she reached the door and bolted out. She needed to ask him what she was doing there, why he had brought her, and if she wasn't being framed by staying there so a case could be made about her venturing into the duke's private place and stealing something else from him. The stigma of the alleged first theft still rubbed off on her the wrong way. She could not shake his accusations out of her head and mind.
What she would give to go back in time to when she was still in Cleverview, driving in the baron's cart and headed for the seaport. So what if the roads had been heavy and slicked with mud? She should have jumped out regardless. Falling face-flat into the sludge, the mud slipping in her throat wouldn't have been a huge enough deal to deter her escape plan anyway. Why had she cleared out the meagre savings she'd stashed away in all her seventeen years of living with her father and his family if not for a time like this? She'd hid all that money in her underskirt pocket before leaving the house, thinking she could board a cart with it, anything to get her down to the nearest town. Certainly not where the duke lived. Especially not there. She would have opted for a train also, but those cost an arm and a foot, and she needed her limbs intact to make her escape plan a reality.
Let the records show that she didn't just wish to flee her father's house but to go to a place that would erase every memory tied to her experience of living there. And that included the Duke. She wished to forget ever meeting him. His accusations of her stealing from him had brought on a barrage of consequences, punishments she had not quite recovered from. Remembering her time in that dark hole seized her firm like a seizure, a cold chill creeping up her spine.
Estella heaved out a sigh. A long overdue and tired sigh. Her breath had drawn in the entire time the butler was there, and she had been too tense to notice it.
Turning her shoulders in, she dragged her feet toward the bed. Pausing, she took one long, drowsy look at it. She then let her butt glide gingerly onto the bed.
Just as she was finally able to settle down, enjoying the fluffy feel of the bed covering. Feeling the cold tension ease off her shoulder caps and her stilted breathing return to its normal regular beating. A deep, sonorous voice spoke up from somewhere she could not quite place, fastening her stomach in a clutch.
"After a lifetime of dutifully hiding away from me, I finally get to meet with you again, Estella."
Her head snapped up at once, eyes rounding out.