“No,” she whispered.
Howard straightened. “Yes. And until I secure the match, you will not leave this house. Not for air. Not for company. Not for a ball. Not for church. Not even to walk through the gardens.”
Her breath came too fast. “You cannot imprison me.”
“Watch me.” He seized her wrist in a vice-like grip.
Cordelia surged forward. “Howard, please. Gwendoline.”
But Howard dragged Gwen toward the stairs, unmoved by the tears streaming down her mother’s face.
Gwen stumbled up each step, her cheek throbbing, her wrist aching, terror and fury warring beneath her skin.
“You will stay in your room,” Howard ordered. “And you will think long and hard about obedience. And the hand that feeds you.”
They reached the landing, her heart hammering still. He shoved her through the doorway of her bedchamber.
“Howard, please!” Cordelia cried from the hall. “Do not do this. I beg you.”
“Silence, Cordelia,” Howard snapped. “I am handling it.”
He turned to Gwen. She stood in the center of her room, her breathing ragged, her hair disheveled, her cheek blazing red. He looked at her as one might look at a horse that needed breaking.
“You will be married,” he said. “Until then, you belong to this house.”
Then he stepped out, pulled the key from the outside lock, and shut the door.
A metallic click echoed through the room.
Then another.
Then silence.
For several breaths, Gwen did not move.
The bolt clicked, and the sound went straight through her, too loud, too final. For a heartbeat, she simply stood there, staring at the closed door like it might rattle open again.
It did not.
She bolted across the room and seized the handle. The metal bit into her palms. She yanked once, then again, harder. The door stubbornly refused to give so much as a shiver.
A small, helpless laugh escaped her. “Of course. Why would it ever be easy?”
Her wrist throbbed where Howard had gripped her. She wrapped her fingers around it gingerly, feeling the heat beneath her skin, the deep ache that promised a bruise by dawn.
For one wild instant, she pictured Victor on the other side of the door, shoving it open, dragging her out.
Ridiculous.He was nowhere near her. Why would he be?
The room felt wrong. Too dim. Too still. The shadows from the dying fire stretched long across the carpet, and the quiet prickled at her nerves until she rubbed at her arms, trying to shake it off.
Do not be weak.Weakness helps no one. Least of all Mama.
Gwen crossed to the window and shoved aside the curtain, letting in a strip of moonlight. The street below lay empty save for a single lamplighter making his way down the row. No carriage. No guards. No movement from Fenwick House at all. The world continued as though she were not imprisoned behind a locked door like a troublesome child.
Her throat tightened.
She paced, hands clasped behind her back, the way she did when she tried to reason her way through something difficult.
