Filed To Story: Alessia Mistaken as Mistress Book PDF Free
“Perhaps there’s some mistake. Perhaps she’ll be here soon.”
He didn’t hold much hope of that. Nicholas took his mother’s arm. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“We’re going to check your jewelry case.”
“No!” she insisted.
“Then I’ll do it.”
She stood and took his arm. “All right”
He threw open her door and entered her violet- and camphor-scented room. “Where do you keep them?”
“Here,” she said, her voice quivering. She pulled open a drawer and unrolled a satin jewelry bag.
Tears began in earnest. She sobbed into her hankie.
“What! What the hell is missing?”
“M-my rings. The emerald necklace your father gave me. The diamond bracelet that you bought me for my birthday.”
Nicholas cursed and slammed his fist against the top of the dresser. “I knew it! I knew that damned woman was trouble from the minute I heard her name!”
Mother wilted onto the bed’s edge and cried brokenly. “How could she? How c-could she do this to us? And W-William!” she sobbed, sounding as though she couldn’t catch her breath. Her voice grew hysterical. “We must find him! We can’t let anything h-happen to William!”
Nicholas heard the grief and hurt and panic in his mother’s words and with deliberate effort stopped his own outraged ranting. He sat beside her and pulled her against his chest. “There, there. You’re a goodhearted person. She took advantage of that.”
He had no words of comfort for her. She would mourn her grandson as she mourned her husband and her son.
“Will you go after her?” she asked. “For the jewelry?”
He stroked her hair. “I’ll go buy your jewelry back at Grambs’.”
“I don’t care about the jewelry. I care about William!”
“I know, Mother-“
“You must find William. I want my grandson!”
Hurt and anger boiled up in him. He never wanted to set eyes on Claire again. He hoped she’d run as fast and as far as her legs and his money could take her. But his mother wanted her grandson back. “All right,” he promised. “I’ll look for him.”
“Thank you, Nicholas. Thank you. I just don’t understand.” She sobbed. “Why would she steal from us and run off?”
“A conniving mind never makes sense,” he replied.
“But what little she could get from the sale of that jewelry is nothing compared to what she could have had staying here. All she had to do was ask.”
She was right. It was illogical. “Unless she was biding her time here, and needed a few dollars to get her to a bigger and better conquest.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t believe that.”
After Nicholas calmed her down, sent for the doctor and had his mother sedated and resting, he approached Celia’s door. Claire had run out on her mother, too. But maybe the woman knew something.
Nicholas received no reply to his knock. He pushed open the door.
The woman slumped in a chair by the dormant fireplace. An empty bottle lay on the carpet at her feet, and another, half-full, stood on a nearby table. The room smelled stale.
“Celia!” he said sharply.
She didn’t move.
He opened a window, carried her to the bed and filled a waste can with all the bottles-full and empty-before he carried it out and closed the door behind him.
He instructed the servants not to bring her liquor without his permission, checked on his mother and finally closed himself in his room.
Nicholas stared at the cognac decanter on his desk, thought better of it and shrugged out of his shirt. He’d been the man of this house for many years, but at that moment he’d have given anything to have someone else make decisions for a while.
He didn’t want to find Claire.
But his mother wanted her grandson.
Even as he checked his personal belongings and discovered a diamond stickpin and a watch missing, he had to agree with his mother that Claire’s running off made no sense.
He turned down the wick in the oil lamp and leaned back on the bed. Her betrayal ate at him. He’d been right not to trust her. She’d married Stephen for the Halliday money.
And until he himself married and produced a child, she was the mother of the only Halliday heir.
She could have had so much more here.
The light burned out and darkness enfolded him.
He cared about the money. He was livid over the jewelry.
Nicholas folded his arm over his eyes.
Unbidden, an ugly nagging suspicion crept into his mind.
Milos. Nicholas tried to bury the thought deep, but it persisted until he allowed himself to examine it. The two of them had seemed comfortable with each other. He’d seen them absorbed in conversation from time to time. They’d shared private smiles.
Nicholas hated himself for distrusting his friend. Milos wouldn’t betray him. He was too levelheaded to let her steal his good sense.
But hadn’t Nicholas always believed that about himself, too? And look how easily he’d been fooled. She could fool the best of men.
No. He took control of his thoughts. He was torturing himself. Milos was a good-looking man, but he wouldn’t be rich enough for Claire’s tastes. Besides, he was decent and loyal, and would not run off with his employer’s sister-in-law.
What was wrong with him? He hadn’t behaved like himself since he’d gone to bring Claire home.
Humiliation crept over him and settled in his chest. He’d never entertained such degrading thoughts. He’d never wanted a woman so badly before. Oh, he’d fancied himself in love years ago, but that had been nothing like the all-consuming need and passion he’d felt for this woman. He’d been drawn to her from their first meeting. His feelings had shocked him, made him feel disloyal to his brother, and he’d fought them.
That was her ploy, he realized with bitterness. Whereas Judith Marcelino’s obvious seduction tactics sickened him, Claire’s had reeled him in. That air of provocative innocence was her trump. And she’d had him.
She could have had it all. He couldn’t understand why she’d fled when her artifice had been so successful.
But she was gone. And that was all he had to go by.
He never wanted to see her again. But he would honor his mother’s wishes.