His smile widened by a fraction. “Good girl.”
Evelyn saw it. The way her sister’s shoulders slumped in subtle surrender. The way her eyes dropped to the floor. Gone was the laughing, clever sister of her childhood. What stood before her now was a shell, taught to shrink, to obey, to fear.
Evelyn’s spine straightened with the quiet authority of a queen stepping into her court.
“I will remind you, Viscount,” she said coolly, her voice cutting through the thick tension in the room, “that this is the ladies’ powder room. And if you were any kind of gentleman, you would not barge into it, especially seeing that this is the powder room ofmy ownhome. As a duchess, I believe I outrank you here.”
Laurence turned his head slowly toward her. His smile didn’t waver, but it chilled her just the same. It was the kind of grin meant to put women in their place, to humiliate, not to disarm.
“Forgive me,” he said, mock-apologetic. “I hadn’t realized that rank extended to bathrooms as well as ballrooms.”
Evelyn stepped forward as fury threaded through her voice. “It extends to any room under this roof. And I would suggest you show more respect?—”
“I’m all right, Evie,” Matilda’s voice came, soft and thin, only a breath that barely reached Evelyn’s ears. “He was only worried about me. That’s all. That’s how he shows he cares.”
Evelyn turned sharply to her sister. Matilda wouldn’t meet her eyes. Her hand, still held at her side, was trembling ever so slightly. Her face was pale, lips pinched, but she had plastered on a faint smile that screamed of rehearsed compliance.
Laurence’s smile widened in triumph.
“There, you see?” he said, offering his arm to his wife with the air of a conquering knight. “My darling knows my heart.”
Matilda hesitated, just a fraction of a second, then slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.
“Let’s not keep the guests waiting,” he added, already steering her toward the door.
Evelyn stood frozen, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. She wanted to stop them, to scream, to reach out and pull her sister back into the light, away from that sickening shadow that clung to the Viscount like a second skin.
But Matilda was already at the door, and then they were gone.
Evelyn remained rooted to the tiled floor, staring at the space they had just occupied.
Something was wrong. Deeply, terribly wrong.
Not just the bruises. Not just the fear she had seen flicker behind her sister’s eyes.
It was the way Matilda haddefendedhim. The way she had spoken with such brittle conviction, like a script she’d memorized out of necessity, not belief.
The rage Evelyn had carried for two years over her sister’s betrayal suddenly paled beside this chilling dread. Because now, it wasn’t just betrayal. It was danger.
And she knew that she needed her husband’s help.
Chapter Fifteen
“…and of course,” the Viscount of Firth drawled, swirling the wine in his glass with theatrical flair, “while my family’s title may only be viscountcy, our bloodline is unquestionably royal. My grandmother was third cousin to the Queen herself, on her mother’s side, naturally.”
Robert didn’t look up from his glass. “Naturally.”
A quiet chuckle rippled from one of the lesser lords seated down the table, but it died swiftly under Robert’s gaze.
Ashworth seemed unbothered. If anything, he took the silence as admiration. “It’s a shame, really. Had my father not been driven to an early grave by certain… unfortunate financial strains, I might have been groomed for a position at court, but alas… I vowed to make something of myself. For his sake.”
Robert raised an eyebrow. It was the first outward reaction he’d allowed all evening in that man’s presence. He could, ina different life, have respected that sentiment. A son chasing shadows to restore a dead father’s name, it was familiar enough to taste bitter. But this man…
He hated him.
Not loudly or with passion but in the cold, silent way that mattered most. Ashworth was the sort of man who twisted tragedy into narrative, who wielded charm like a knife and expected the world to bleed for him.
“I’m sure he would be proud,” Robert said evenly.
