Their Wicked Ways (26 page)

The lie did nothing to ease
her fears.  As foolhardy as she knew it must be to act hastily, she was fairly
certain that her nerves could not withstand the wiser course, to wait and see. 
She must think of something.  She couldn’t help feeling that her situation
could only worsen if she did nothing.  But what
could
she do?

On reaching home, she was
greeted by her mother before she’d gotten fully inside and removed her cloak.

Excited and breathless, her
mother clasped her hands agitatedly.  “Winter, you will not believe the news I
have heard this day!  Come, sit in the parlor with me.  I must tell you at
once.”

Winter couldn’t imagine what
her mother could have heard to discompose her so.  They never had visitors. 
Whatever friends they’d had before had disappeared in direct proportion with
the money the debt collectors had accumulated from her father’s accounts after
his death.

Naturally enough, her first
thought was that her mother had somehow heard about the painting, and she
thought for several moments that she might faint.  Fortunately her sense of
guilt and fear had not totally deprived her of her wits and she realized that
her mother actually seemed excited by her news, not hysterical.

She was able to regain a
measure of composure as she hung her cloak up by the door before following her
mother.  They entered the small room they referred to as the parlor and settled
themselves near the iron brazier, the glowing coals banishing the unseasonable
chill they had never grown accustomed to even though they’d lived here for the
past eleven years.  At times, she sorely missed Savannah’s warmth.

“Do you remember that
gentleman from a few years back who wished to call on you—Mr. Cordell?”  Mrs.
Abigail Stevens asked excitedly of her daughter.

Winter nodded, unable to
speak.  Had he already set the next step of his plan to ruin them in motion? 
Had her mother discovered what her only daughter had been about?

“Your father thought him an
unworthy suitor and you gave him the cut-direct, as any obedient daughter would
have.  I confess, he did not seem low bred to me, as your father accused.  I
worried that we would suffer repercussions from your father’s actions, but
naught came of it, and I never gave it another thought.”  She paused for effect,
and Winter gritted her teeth in suspense, maintaining her ladylike facade of
cool interest with a supreme effort.  “As it happens, and I hate to admit this,
but your father was wrong in his thinking.”

Winter stared at her mother
blankly for several moments before she could think of the response she knew her
mother was waiting for to continue.  “I’m afraid I don’t understand you,
Mama.”  Where was her mother going with this?

Abigail Stevens patted her
daughter’s hand.  “Forgive me.  I’m rambling, I know, and keeping you in
suspense.  It has just shocked me so much.  To think we have an English lord in
our midst!  For it transpires that that is exactly what your Mr. Cordell is, my
dear!  A lord!  Your father never trusted the English after the war, you know. 
I suppose he must have thought Mr. Cordell a spy, even though the war had been
over so long.”

Winter felt her jaw drop. 
Resolutely, she snapped it back in place.  “No.  No, it cannot be true. 
Someone has played you false, Mama!”

“I would have thought so,
too, my dear.  But Mrs. Moxley has always given me sound information.  ‘Twas
she who called today.  Apparently, when Mr. Cordell was in England settling his
father’s affairs, he was also being instated as the new Earl of Remington.”

Blood rushed to Winter’s head
as her pulse raced, sickening her with dread.  She had wronged Logan Cordell,
and all because of a prejudice instilled upon her by her father.

No, she thought, striving for
honesty, the fault could not be laid entirely on her father’s doorstep.  She
had accepted his judgment unquestioningly.  She was just as guilty for her
part.  Her predisposition toward recklessness lay at the root of most of her
problems—it was why she always strove so hard to be the perfect lady.

Yet time and again, she
failed.

Winter worried her lip,
listening vaguely to her mother as she babbled happily about the prospect of
having an English lord among them, too caught up in her own private drama to
manage more than token responses.

It was too late even to
consider tendering her apologies.  He would see any attempt to do so as nothing
more than a play to gain his sympathy now that she had placed his means of
revenge in the palm of his hand.  That he would exact a measure of justice from
her for her part in his humiliation, she had no doubt.  The question was, when?