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Justin had little choice but to nod and rise too. He knew the duke meant well, meant to assure his happiness and prosperity.

But he had the wrong of it this time. Justin couldn’t propose to Brook now. Not with her still settling with Whitby, not when he’d had no chance to convince her he could be more than a brother—and not with the shadow of debt over the house of Stafford. He could suffer it if the
ton
whispered that he had stationed her as Whitby’s lost heiress so he could wed her and take the earl’s estate. But if
she
ever thought it . . . no. He would never, never let her wonder that.

Which left him only one choice. He must put Stafford in order first. And trust that if the Lord meant Brook for his wife, she would be waiting for him once he had.

He trailed the duke out of Cayton’s study, telling himself not to worry. She had always waited before. Always welcomed him to Monaco with sunshine and a kiss on each cheek. Had always made it clear he was her favorite person, aside from the prince. There was no reason to think she couldn’t fall in love as he had. No reason to think another absence from her would change the bond between them, just because she was in England now.

With her family.

In a new home.

With all the nation soon to be clamoring for a peek at the princess-turned-baroness, and sure to be enamored with what they would see.

No, no reason at all to doubt.

The room felt familiar. Brook trailed a finger along the edge of a shelf as her eyes drank in the honeyed woods, the polished metals, the touches of color and play of light. It smelled of faded flowers and crisp air, of comfort.

Her mother’s chamber felt familiar, but not as Whitby Park itself had when she first saw it. It stirred no imagined memories. What it brought to mind, rather, was the feel inside the sanctuary of Cathédrale Notre-Dame-Immaculée. Reverence. Sanctity. A heritage preserved with tireless care.

The dressing table still sat in the corner, no doubt as Lady Whitby left it. A hairbrush beside a bottle of perfume, at an odd angle. A necklace glinting gold as it snaked around a pot of powder. A book still sat on the bedside table, a slip of paper marking a page halfway through.
The Count of
Monte Cristo
.

Brook smiled, though it faded fast. She had read the novel two years ago. It seemed her mother had never finished it.

She stifled the urge to peek into the armoire. Were she to do
so, she suspected she would see a rainbow of old-fashioned gowns.

Time here had stood still.

Whitby halted by her side, regarding the room with the solemnity of the sanctuary’s priest. “Mary accuses me of making it a shrine. I’ve never known how to explain to her that I did not keep it just so for my own benefit.” He moved to a chair with a length of wispy fabric draping the arm. Gathering it in one hand, he seemed to look into the past, perhaps to the ivory shoulders it had once graced. Then he let it slide back to its place. Just so. “But when I came in here after her funeral . . . or for months after . . . I felt that—that it was not finished. There were too many questions unanswered. And you, still missing. How was I to move on? It would have been wrong.”

Brook slid to the window and touched the
fleur-de-lis
pattern in the velvet drapes. She looked out but scarcely saw the maze cut into the shrubbery. Instead of the midday sun, she saw darkness. Heard thunder rumbling and felt the sizzle of lightning.

That dream had plagued her again last night.

“Are you all right, Brook?”

“Hmm?” Her hand had found her pearls again.

Her father’s gaze focused upon her fingers, and a corner of his mouth turned up. “Your mother used to do that too, when she was lost in thought.”

A thought that brought the burning back to her eyes. “With this necklace?”

He frowned. “That one?”

“Maman said she was wearing it that night.” She touched the pearls and then lowered her hand.

Her father’s face went taut. “What else did she say? Did she explain why . . . why Lizzie did not send you back to me?”

“No.” Perhaps it was in the journal. She should look, for his sake if not her own. Though—she frowned—she could not
recall seeing it among her things since she arrived. Mademoiselle Ragusa must have slid it somewhere for safekeeping, but where? “She said only that we were in a carriage accident. That my mother took this necklace off and made her swear to keep it for me. I . . . I suppose I always assumed it was from you.”

He straightened his shoulders, forcing the torment from his face, and stepped closer. Narrowing his eyes upon it, he shook his head. “I never bought her pearls. They were, at the time, more for an unwed girl than a married woman. Perhaps her family gave it to her, though. For her debut, likely.”

And why would that make disappointment seep through Brook? “You do not recognize it?”

Amusement glinted now in his gaze. “Lizzie had no shortage of pretty baubles. And I took great pleasure in showering her with more. Here.” He motioned Brook to the left, toward a door he opened to reveal a dressing room bursting with those gowns in every shade and hue, the leg-o’-mutton sleeves the height of fashion eighteen years before. While Brook let her eyes feast on the fabrics and colors, her father headed straight for a cabinet built into the corner and pulled open the drawers. When he waved a hand at them, she noted the harder rainbow within. Rubies and topaz and emeralds and sapphires, garnets and jet and diamonds.

More memories assaulted her. Not of this room, this mother.
Non
, now her mind went back to the little flat she had shared with Maman in Monaco-Ville before her death. She remembered playing with Collette’s necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. Asking for the name of each jewel. Holding it up in chubby fingers to see how it would look on her.

And Maman would laugh that crystalline laugh, would sing the names of the gems to her. Would refuse to answer her questions of where each piece came from.

Now Brook was old enough to understand that Collette had
once accepted such gifts from wealthy patrons like Prince Louis. But she had given up such a life to be Brook’s mother. To raise her with a better example.

Whitby lifted a collar necklace heavy with diamonds and emeralds. “I gave Lizzie this to celebrate our first anniversary. To match her eyes. The color of emeralds, with the light of diamonds.”

Brook’s heart ached for him. His tone was still so full of love. Of the pain of loss. How could he have survived so long without his Lizzie? “It’s lovely.”

His expression shifted, and his smile seemed lighter. “It is yours now. All of them are.”

“
Non
.
Je ne peux pas.
” She stepped back too quickly and knocked her heels into the door, sending it into the wall with a bang.

Her father looked at her as though she had spoken in Greek instead of French. “Why can you not?
I
certainly am not going to wear them.”

A breath of laughter escaped, despite herself. Still, she could not lay hold of English and spoke in French. “
Tout le mond pensera
 . . .”

He lifted a brow. “What does it matter what everyone thinks? Yes, plenty will declare that you have come back solely to inherit my fortune. But
is
that why you came home?”

He asked the question with no doubt in his tone. But with discerning eyes. Eyes that had seen through imposters, eyes that had continually scanned the horizon for his lost daughter.

Brook sighed and shook her head. “But I don’t want to bring scandal and gossip down upon you.”

He snorted a laugh and put the necklace back, picking up a shorter string of diamonds in its stead. “I am an old favorite of the gossip-hounds. Eccentric Whitby, the recluse of North Yorkshire. According to your aunt, I have been seen haunting
the abbey’s ruins along with all the other ghosts, prowling the roads waiting for your mother’s carriage to appear, and grabbing random blond children in the streets to see if they are my missing child.” He held up the bracelet, indicated her wrist.

She stretched it out and let him fasten on the clusters of diamonds.

“Poppycock, of course. I only haunted the abbey once and couldn’t tolerate the draft. I simply had to swear off it.” He put on that crooked smile again and dropped his hands with a nod. “There. It suits you well. And she would be glad to know you have it. That piece has been around, I think, since the first Baroness of Berkeley.”

Brook let her wrist fall to her side, let the bracelet come to a glimmering rest against her hand. The prince had given her jewels before, but she had rarely worn anything more than the pearl necklace. All she had ever wanted was her own place. Her own things. Her own identity.

She had never known what those were. “So long as you are certain. I have lived long enough on a borrowed name.”

He motioned her back out of the dressing room. “Then take the one that is yours—it has been waiting for you all this time.”

She stepped back into her mother’s room, surrounded by her mother’s things. And realized that he hadn’t kept the room
just so
for himself—he had kept it for her. So that when she came home, she would find bits and pieces of the mother she had lost.

And the father who loved her enough to preserve it for her. A nod was all she could manage.

He must have spoken the language of nods well. He returned it with one of his own and led her back into the hallway, to the next door down. His room, she knew, and when he motioned her to follow, she stepped inside.

In many ways it was like the prince’s chambers. That same masculine presence, the lingering scent of shaving soap, the
glass case of cufflinks bright against deep colors. But here, the windows weren’t open to a warm, salt-tinged Mediterranean breeze, she couldn’t look out to see terra-cotta roofs lining the streets. Couldn’t hear the music of shouting, laughing tourists, street performers, and bustling city life. She saw only green through the glass, heard only the muted chirping of birds.

She halted a step inside while Whitby strode directly to a chest of drawers against the far wall. Opening the third drawer, he moved aside some folded fabric and withdrew an ornate cigar box. He put the drawer to rights and was in front of her in the next moment, the box outstretched.

She knew it must be the letters from her mother. And though she still felt a little odd at the thought of reading them, it was obviously important to him that she do so. That she know their story so she could understand her own.

“Thank you.” Such feeble words. But they were all she had, so she said them again as if to seal them. She offered him a smile and lifted the box. “I shall go and put them in my room. Then we can meet in the library?”

His smile was warm, the long-borne pain hidden again under fresh joy. “Perfect.”

She hurried down the corridor, along another, along the maze of them until she reached the Green Room. Whitby had said they would move her to the family wing tomorrow, into the room that had always been meant to be hers. So she wasn’t surprised to find Deirdre in her chamber, refolding and packing all the gowns that had only been out of her trunk for a few days. With a brief smile of acknowledgment, Brook bypassed her and went to the dressing room.

The journal had been in the bottom of her trunk. But if the mademoiselle were putting it away, she would likely store it with the letters—she knew they were her maman’s, and that the book was too. It would be the logical place for them. But
no leather peeked out. She didn’t see it on any shelf, or in any drawer in here. Perplexed, Brook set the new collection of missives down and headed back to her bedroom. With her regular reading, perhaps?
Dracula
or
La Bible
? Both of those tomes rested on her bedside table . . . but no journal.

Deirdre cleared her throat. “Can I help you find something, my lady?”

Brook sighed. “Yes, perhaps you’ve seen it. I had a leather journal in my trunk, an old one. It was my maman’s.”

The maid’s face remained blank. “A journal? I can’t recall seeing it, my lady. But I shall keep an eye out for it as I repack everything.”

Brook couldn’t have lost it. She
knew
she had packed it, she had put it in the trunk first thing, before Odette had added her gowns. Casting her gaze around the room again, she nodded. “Thank you. It must be here somewhere. I haven’t even read it yet, I . . .” She shouldn’t blabber about it to the staff. Summoning a smile, she nodded Deirdre back to her task. “I’m sure you’ll find it as you pack, thank you. Will you let me know when you do? I’ll be in the library.”

With Deirdre’s quiet assurances following her out, Brook slipped into the hallway again. So much for being able to offer her father answers. Apparently they would have to wait for another day.

Eleven