A groom, unsmiling and taciturn, ran up to snatch the bridle as Jordan stopped alongside the sweeping stone stairs which led up to the heavy front doors. Though a stranger, the man's grim expression was coldly familiar. Clearly little had changed with the demise of the old Earl - Cliffside was still managed with the iron hand that left little room for cheer or any display of human warmth.
Jordan shrugged, as if the gesture could somehow dislodge the chill that settled around him, a cold that had little to do with the snow falling softly into the gathering darkness.
The doors swung open even as he approached.
"Selby. Good to see you." Jordan forced a lightness into his tone as he shrugged out of his greatcoat and handed it to the butler.
"And you, Mister Jordan, Sir." The old face, lined with the tales of many years, managed a broad smile for just a moment before it settled once again into the imperturbability of long practice. Yet... Jordan caught an odd look, a quick expression of disquiet.
"Is something wrong, Selby?"
"Oh no, Sir. Not all all." Selby turned quickly to close the doors with a quiet thud, and when he turned back he had his butler mask firmly in place. Only his eyes darted away, then back, and fixed themselves firmly on a spot somewhere beyond Jordan's shoulders. A sense of disquiet, of unease, settled around him, but he bit back the instinctive question. No point in pressing the man. Selby was nothing if not the model of the perfect butler. Jordan suppressed a sigh.
"Jordie!"
He turned towards the sound of her voice, a part of him smiling, another part registering the incongruity of it here in the cold marble hallway of what should have been home.
"Annette. What are you..." She paused three stairs from the bottom, her small hand resting on the balustrade, slender fingers tight around the smooth wood. Her face, oddly pale, flashed a myriad of emotions - surprise, fear, discomfort, joy... His eyes caught hers, held them, and he read the growing distress in their wide, honest blue depths. Instinctively, hungrily, his gaze swept over her, down to the tiny blue slipper that peeped out below the hem of her gown, then back upward, driven by a discordant sense of unease.
"Annette?" He heard the harshness, the disbelief, in his question and saw her flinch. A part of him - some deep, primitive part of him - reveled in it, wanted her to feel the same pain that knifed through him as reality struck home. He wanted to look away, wanted to tear his gaze back to the perfect blue of her eyes and the memory that had been his truth for so long but, perversely, his eyes remained drawn to the impossible, the soft lines of silk that clung to her swelling abdomen.
"Jordie... I..."
"Don't." He drew a shuddering breath, the motion buying time as he struggled to regain some measure of sanity, to escape the escalating sense of implosion that sucked the life from him, that left him stranded in some desolate place of pain.
"You must understand..."
"Understand what? You're carrying another man's child, Annie. How do I understand that? You gave yourself to another man...to someone else...to...to who, Annie?" Somehow he knew, knew with a certainty that crushed the breath from him in an aching rush. He turned, slammed his fist into the wall, the pain of it swallowed in the greater sense of loss and anger and despair. "Who, damn you? Who?"
"Her husband."
The cold, clipped tones penetrated the haze and struck home. Jordan sagged against the wall, fighting the rage, fighting the urge to hurt, to maim... yes, even to kill. All his experience, all his years of discipline and rigorous training in the field... he drew on it now, held on to it like a drowning man to a single, fragile rope. His hands clenched and unclenched, his breath rasped with the effort of fighting down the nausea and the frenzy of hatred that threatened to engulf him. Silence brooded hard and long and frightening.
Then, when he had finally gained mastery, imposed control beneath a layer of relentless coldness that settled around him like death, Jordan turned back to face his brother.
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