Sibyl often offered the servants what remained of dinner. After all, her husband was not there to enjoy the food. She hated waste.
The men moved towards the generously filled plates, and she flew forward, throwing herself in front of the main wooden table.
“Please do not take the food,” she begged, even as two of the men started emptying the cupboards, the pantry, every shelf. “Please.”
Laughter filled the kitchen, and one man looked back at her as he grabbed a basket of bread and cheese she had asked to beprepared for a walk through the park tomorrow with Phoebe, Hermia’s stepdaughter.
“Your husband should have thought twice about leaving you with such debt,” the man sniggered, tucking the basket under his arm. “Now, you’ll go hungry, Lady Kerrington, and I do hope he will enjoy coming home to an empty house and kitchen, for he certainly does not have the money to replace it.”
Sibyl stood there, stunned, staring as they emptied everything else and piled it on the table. With each thud of food, her heart cracked a little further.
No money to replace it? Her husband had debts?
She had not been made aware, and she should have known that was why debt collectors had turned up on her doorstep, but terror had clouded her reason.
“He… My husband does not have debts,” she said quietly, not wanting to believe it.
“Oh, he does. And they’re quite a bit,” Mr. Vance sneered. “And we intend to get back every penny. Bywhatevermeans.”
In front of her, one of the men opened the prepared picnic basket and started eating the cheese right from the block. The sight of the large bitemark in the chunk and the saliva that coated it turned her stomach. She looked away.
It is just cheese.Hermia can replace it, if need be, but these men… Surely they are lying. Surely…
Terrified, she could only stagger backward, thinking about her husband’s prolonged disappearances. While she did not care that he disappeared often, she had never known why.
A mistress, perhaps.
The thought only made her bitter, for she had been stuck at home while he gallivanted about. Chained to a man she did not love while he enjoyed other options. And now, he had donethisto her.
Sibyl pressed a hand to her chest as the men stood around the table. She tried to snag the bread for Phoebe’s picnic, but the man held it above his head, far too high for her to reach.
More laughter rippled through the men, horrible and grating. A hand fisted in the folds of her skirt, yanking her back. Her foot slipped, and she stumbled back into Mr. Vance.
He stared down at her, grinning. “And just how do you think you will stop us? Is your precious bread really so important?”
Next to him, one of the other men tore a chunk of meat off the bone, and she looked away, sickened.
“You cannot stop us, Lady Kerrington.” Mr. Vance’s lips grazed the back of her neck, and she froze. “But you can offer yourself, if you are truly so desperate to keep what is not even yours.”
The wet sounds of chewing from the other men only made Sibyl feel sicker, but her mind drifted. Suddenly, she was back in the hedge maze with Lord Grenford, his wandering hands tearing her dress, his face leering.
She could have faced worse horrors, but what she hadfaced had been bad enough.
Her hands shook, and her breath came too fast.
No.No. No, I am not there. I am not back there. I am not a scared young lady anymore. I am the Countess of Kerrington, and I have come too far to let fear control me.
Mr. Vance’s hand slid to her waist, and she made a choked, distressed noise in the back of her throat.
“I need you to leave,” she demanded. “I need you to leave,now.”
Her thoughts went to her daughter upstairs, unaware. Rosie was a light sleeper, so prone to waking up crying at the littlest noise. Sibyl’s heart pounded at the thought of her baby waking up to the sound of intruders, even all the way down in the kitchen.
I will keep her safe. No matter what it takes, I will keep her safe.
“Leave?” Vance sneered, laughing roughly. “Foolish little Countess, we are not leaving until we get what we paid for.”
Sibyl knew she had no true way out of this, even as fear clawed up her throat. Her eyes flitted behind Vance’s body, eyeing up the cook’s knives, the scissors—cataloguing anything she could use as a weapon.
