He studied her face as if he were seeing it for the first time. "Where did you learn to mend books?" he asked suddenly.
"From my father."
"Was he a bookbinder?"
Clara hesitated. "He loved books," she said carefully. "He said a torn page was like a broken promise: you cannot always undo the damage, but you can try to hold things together."
The Duke went very still. "My father used to say something like that," he said softly, looking up at the portrait again. "He kept every promise he ever made—every single one, even the ones that cost him dearly." Then he stood, brisk and cold again, as if a door inside him had been shut. "In four days, I will stand in a ballroom and announce my engagement to a woman I do not love, because my mother tells me the Marlowe fortune will protect our family name. That is what Dukes do, Clara Bell. They do not marry for love; they marry for their name."
"Then I am sorry for the Duke," Clara said quietly.
He looked at her for a long moment; nobody had ever said that to him before, she could see it in his eyes.
"Go back to bed," he said at last. "I will not tell anyone you were here." He paused. "But do not come back to this room. Do you understand me? It is not safe."
"Not safe? Why?"
"Good night, Clara."
He turned away and stood at the dark window with his back to her.
Clara hurried to the little servants' door behind the tapestry, her hands shaking, her heart racing. The leather diary was still hidden in the folds of her skirt; he had not asked for it—had he even seen it? She slipped through the door and pulled it shut behind her, then ran silently up the dark stairs, all the way to the top of the house and into her room. Betsy was snoring. Clara leaned against the door and closed her eyes. *Not safe. What did he mean? Not safe for whom?*
She reached up to take off her cap, and her fingers stopped: the dark blue silk ribbon was gone.
It must have caught on something—the tapestry, or the door, or the corner of the desk. It was lying somewhere down there in the dark where anyone could find it. Clara's whole body went cold, because there was only one housemaid at Ravenshire Hall who wore a dark blue silk ribbon. Everyone knew it; everyone had seen it.
And at that very moment, two floors below, a slender hand in a white silk glove bent down beside the hunting tapestry and picked something up from the floor: a dark blue ribbon.
Lady Cecilia Marlowe wound it slowly around her fingers. She looked at the little servant's door half-hidden behind the tapestry, then along the corridor toward the room where the Duke of Ravenshire's candle was still burning. Her gray eyes were as cold as winter.