The Hidden Empress Stripping Her Secrets After Divorce novel Chapter 624

Penelope Lancaster looked up at him. Tears welled in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

"What others think stems from what you do. At your age, you shouldn't be making a fool of yourself and dragging the Lancaster family name through the mud," she said, her voice trembling but laced with fierce conviction. "I've already been humiliated enough lately. Between Christian's scandal and Lyra Langford's mess, do you have any idea how the other wives at the club laugh at me behind my back? And now you're going to add fuel to the fire?"

Lawrence's lips parted, but no words came out.

His fingers slowly released their grip on her phone. Penelope snatched it back, clutching it tightly in her palm.

"There is no other woman," Lawrence said, his voice dropping so low he sounded like he was trying to convince himself. "There is no mistress. Stop letting your imagination run wild."

Penelope simply stared at him in heavy silence.

"Why are you in my study, anyway?" Lawrence asked, abruptly shifting the subject. He tried to project the commanding authority of the household's patriarch, but his underlying panic was palpable.

"The housekeeper made some soup for you." Penelope glanced down at the shattered porcelain on the floor, then back up at his face. "I came to bring it to you. Since when do you keep a rug right by the door? I tripped over it and nearly broke my neck."

She pointed toward the floor with the tip of her slipper.

Lawrence followed her gaze.

There was indeed something on the floor. It wasn't a rug. It was a pile of cigarette ash he had mindlessly flicked onto the carpet, kicking it into a dark smudge while pacing back and forth. From the doorway, the shadow it cast did resemble the thick edge of a floor mat.

Lawrence's brow twitched.

His mind raced. Did she actually trip, or did she drop the bowl on purpose? If it was intentional, what exactly had she overheard before letting it slip? If it was an accident...

He glanced down at Penelope's foot. Her expensive slippers were splattered with the spilled soup, and a faint red scratch marred her ankle where a piece of porcelain had grazed her.

"What happened to your foot?" he asked.

Penelope glanced down. "A piece of the bowl scratched me. It's nothing."

She bent down to pick up the jagged fragments. Lawrence quickly grabbed her arm.

"Leave it. The housekeeper will clean it up in the morning."