A Duke For All Seasons by Mia Marlowe Page B

traitorous heart did a little jig. Forceful and lordly. Sebastian was there. Who else would know she was coming home today? Maybe he couldn’t live with the idea that they were finished and had come to amend their plans.
         “Yes, Mrs. Burnham,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “You acted correctly.”
         Arabella fought the urge to lift her skirt and run the rest of the way to her upper floor. When she pushed open her door, she found all the drawers in her bureau pulled out and the contents upended in the middle of the room. Sheet music was scattered across the floor. The bust of Mozart that had lived on her piano was lying on its side with its marble nose broken clean off.
         Fernand de Lisle was lounging before her small, cold fireplace, one booted leg draped over the arm of her chintz-covered wing chair. He leisurely ripped pages from a libretto of the Marriage of Figaro.  
         “Bon jour, chérie,” he said without a glance in her direction. “Do you like what I have done with the place?”
         Arabella set down her valise and advanced to the center of the room. The door to her bed chamber was ajar. Fernand had pulled her mattress from the frame for a thorough search. White feathers piled at the end of the bed like a downy snow bank. The Aubusson carpet was rolled to one side.
         “At least you haven’t ripped up the floors,” she said, trying to project a calm exterior despite the fact that her insides were leaping about like tree frogs.
         “Not yet.” He punctuated his words by quickly tearing out another page.  
         “There’s no need to destroy my things.”
         He bared his teeth in a feral smile. “My poor Arabella. No chance of replacing them with new ones, eh? I saw from the window that His Grace did not return you to London in style. You kept that man for even less time than usual. Or perhaps, he was the one who would not do the keeping.”
         “My personal life is none of your affair,” she said tight-lipped, irritated that Fernand read the situation as accurately as she could sight-read a cadenza. “I have what you want.”
         “Ah, and I think I have what you want as well, non ?”
         “Yes.” Arabella forced herself to sit in the chair opposite him. “It has come to my attention that you have taken a closer interest in your daughter.”
         “You give me too much credit. My feelings toward the child are far less patriarchal than you suppose.” He dropped the tattered remains of the libretto and leaned toward her. “However if you give me the envelope, she will be returned unharmed.”
         “I have only your word that she is unharmed now,” Arabella said, her spine like steel. When she was onstage, she sometimes erected a barrier in her mind between herself and the character she portrayed. It was for her own protection. The mind could not tell the difference between real and pretend and if she must die nightly, a little distance between her real self and her character was essential. She erected the same barrier now. If she let herself actually experience the fact that her daughter was in danger, she didn’t think she could do what she must in order to free her. “I demand to see Lisette before I give you the envelope.”
         “Do you have it with you?” Fernand asked in the same beguiling tone the Serpent must have used when he told Eve she would not surely die. “Bear in mind I would not find searching you distasteful in the least. I can be most thorough.”
         “Give me credit for knowing that much about you, Fernand. You may believe me when I tell you I do not have it in my possession, but I know where it is. Now, where is Lisette?”
         Fernand narrowed his eyes at her, clearly weighing her for veracity. “ Tres bien , we shall grant your request. For sake of the old times, non ?” He offered her his arm. “Come, chérie. ”
         She