The first hint she had of what was to come was the rush of air, but she couldn’t move out of the way in time. The slap struck her cheek hard.
Edith yelped across the room, but she made no plea or beg for him to stop.
Charity stumbled back, colliding with the table so hard that she knocked it over. Her hand covered her stinging cheek as she felt the pain ricochet up, stinging around her eye.
It is always the same. It is so easy for him to hit.
“Impudent chit,” Duncan spat derisively.
Charity longed to talk back, to retort just as fiercely, but her fear of being struck again stopped her. What was more, her throat was closing up with a lump, the tears stinging in her eyes.
She said nothing, but she ran.
“Charity!” Duncan snapped at her.
She ran past him with her hands outstretched and found the door, flinging it open and sprinting fast down the corridor. If there was anyone in her path, she just hoped they stepped out of the way, for she could not remember running so fast before.
I have to escape. Somehow, I have to escape this place.
CHAPTER 2
“How strange this feels,” Seth muttered to himself as he looked out of the window of the carriage. It was ten years since he had last left his home village of Axfordshire. To be in a city now, with so much activity—it niggled in his gut.
He watched carriages competing for space in the road, people wandering back and forth between the timber houses and the buildings built with yellow stone. Strangers yelling at one another in the darkness, poor and wealthy alike all scurrying to their destinations as though they were pursued by the relentless hands of fate, their padded steps echoing through the misty evening.
Seth held a hand beyond the window, feeling the cool air whip by him. He knew the rush of air from riding across his estate, but in a carriage, in the middle of a city, it felt… different.
The carriage turned onto a grander road. They passed two trees and one of the branches nicked his hand.
“Blasted thing,” he cursed, jerking his hand back into the carriage. The branch had cut his palm clean open, the blood beginning to seep out of his skin. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a handkerchief and bound the wound.
As the carriage slowed, he lurched forward sharply.
We are here.
All the anger, all the tension he’d been holding onto for so many years, started to bubble to the surface. His breathing grew fast and labored as he adjusted his cravat gently with his spare hand, pulling it up sharply around his neck and the base of his chin, trying to mask the burn mark that so obviously scolded his skin there.
So, it begins.
As the carriage door heaved open, Seth stepped down, tucking his injured hand into the pocket of his heavy frock coat. His eyes darted up and down the town street of Winchester, before his gaze settled on the house he had come to visit.
The Earl of Holmwood’s townhouse stood out as the grandest building in the street by far. Made of red brick with a porch propped up by white pillars in a Romanesque style, it was almost laughable in its ostentatiousness.
Such a man would be so arrogant, wouldn’t he?
Seth nodded his cold appreciation to the footman, then moved toward the house. He noticed a figure waiting for him on the doorstep, arms folded, face barely lit by the single lantern that swung like a crooked pendulum in the wind. As Seth walked up the last steps, a chorus of noises met his approach.
The ball was certainly underway. People chatted and laughed, and the melody of violin music drifted out of the windows.
“Well?” Seth asked the man in expectation.
“You cannot get in this way.” The man shook his head. “The corridor is full of people, and I have just seen Lord Holmwood himself marching back down the stairs, dragging his eldest daughter behind him, insisting loudly that everyone have a good time. You will be seen there.”
“I asked you to come to give me a solution, Marcus.”
“I know.” Marcus offered an easy sort of smile, just visible beneath that orange glow. “Which is why I suggest you use the back door.” He gave quick instructions to Seth.
An old friend, Marcus, a footman, had an uncanny habit of blending in anywhere he went. He described to Seth the most discreet entrance to the house's rear and what corridors to take.
