To Wed His Christmas Lady (The Heart of a Duke #7)(6)

This, however, was the first time she’d been so forgotten during the holidays. She blinked several times as a sheen misted her vision. Dratted dust. Odd, she’d never noticed the immaculate establishment was so dusty, and yet, how to account for this odd blurring? “A duke is very busy with matters far more pressing than his children.”

To those powerful noblemen, all matters were more important than his children. With the exception of his heir, of course. She’d spent years hating Cedric for their father’s favor. Then she’d spent the other years hating him for being as coolly indifferent as their sire.

“It will be a short carriage ride and then she will continue on to the duke’s estates for Christmas. I consider this matter concluded, Lady Nora.”

Blast and double blast. A carriage ride with Lady Nora, a girl who despised Cara and would delight in her misery? Perhaps being summarily forgotten and forced to dwell in the lair of the other dragons was preferable. She rapped once.

“Enter.”

Cara pressed the handle and swept inside. Carrying her shoulders with a stately bearing even her father would have been forced to find pride in, she pulled the door closed and ran a cool, condescending look over Lady Nora. A flush stained the girl’s cheeks and by the way she tightened her hands into balls at her sides, she was as prepared to resume the physical blows they’d come to six months earlier when Cara had single-handedly seen their instructor, Miss Jane Munroe, tossed out. Guilt knotted her belly.

“That will be all for now, Lady Nora,” Mrs. Belden said in dismissal. She thumped her cane once in a manner more befitting a witch wielding the magic of her broom that would see the other girl vanish.

The two young ladies eyed each other a long moment. Cara met the vitriol and loathing teeming from the other lady’s gaze with an icy derision. She’d not allow Nora the triumph of knowing her words and sneers had wounded like a well-placed barb.

“I said that will be all for now, Lady Nora,” Mrs. Belden gave a tellingly furious two thumps of her cane.

As Lady Nora passed closely by Cara, the young woman yanked her skirts back.

The spectacle-wearing dragon spoke as soon as the door closed loudly behind the other student. “Your father failed to send ’round his carriage to collect you, my lady.”

She’d known as much. The already eight departed carriages and the barren halls indicated all those slightly aware parents had sent for their daughters. While her own power-driven father, consumed by his own lofty status and advancing his wealth, could not be bothered to even send his servants to collect her. For Christmas. Having the headmistress utter those words aloud only made the truth of her circumstances all the more real.

Cara stood stiffly, silent as Mrs. Belden moved around her desk and claimed a seat at the head of the immaculate, broad, mahogany piece. She eyed her over the rims of her thick spectacles. “Most ladies would be in tears by such a fact, my lady.” She eyed her with a pride better reserved for a mother to a daughter. “I am pleased with your absolute dignity and reserve in the face of your father’s inactions this day.”

It was an ill-testament to the person she’d become in her eighteen years that this headmistress, as hated as a venomous serpent, should find pride in her. “You summoned me, Mrs. Belden,” Cara said with the ducal chill she’d heard in the handful of exchanges she’d had with her absentee father. “Say whatever else you’d say so we might,” she dusted a speck of imagined dust from her puffed white sleeve, “conclude our business here.”

The other woman froze a moment but then another one of those cold, dark smiles hinted at her pleasure. She no doubt applauded Cara’s frigidity. “Will you please sit, my lady?”

She eyed the hard, wood chair at the foot of the desk, filled with a childlike urge to hurl that piece across this hated office, into the fire, and then take off running into the world outside, running as far and as fast as her legs could carry her, away from this world and into another where she ceased to be this and managed to be someone else—

“My lady?” Mrs. Belden eyed Cara standing there like she was an oddity on display at the Egyptian Center.

Except, after her mother’s death, she’d spent her life being the perfect, ducal daughter and knew no other way. With wooden steps, she walked with a long-practiced calm over to the proffered chair and sat.

“Lady Nora is to leave today. She has graciously agreed to allow you to accompany her. From there you will then be given leave of the earl’s carriage to return to His Grace for the holiday.” For the holiday. That last part may as well have been nothing more than an afterthought. Holidays were not celebrated in the Duke of Ravenscourt’s home. As they did not advance his power or prestige, he’d never allowed those festivities and inane affairs. All they were, anyway, were artificial moments of false happiness.

The leader of the dragons steepled her fingers and rested them on her desk. She stared at Cara, expecting, what? Thanks for being shuffled off, humiliated and shamed, in Lady Nora’s carriage? A promise to speak favorably to the powerful Duke of Ravenscourt? Alas, the woman still did not realize the duke preferred his hounds and horses to his one daughter.

Cara spoke and when she did, she stripped all emotion, all hint of caring, and even the disdain she felt for one who’d bow before an almighty duke for his total alone. “Is there anything else you wish to speak with me about, Mrs. Belden? I would oversee my maid’s packing of my belongings.” It was a blatant lie. By now, Alison had likely already clicked the trunk closed.