Howard would not leave her here forever. He would return for her in the morning. He would announce her betrothal, perhaps even drag some unsuspecting gentleman into the drawing room to examine her like a broodmare. She would be married within the month.
“No.” Her voice sounded foreign in the hush. “I will not allow it.”
Her gaze fell to her writing desk. Slowly, she went to it.
Her fingers hovered over the small stack of stationery. For a long moment, she simply stared, her mind blank. Then emotion surged up, hot and wild, and she seized a quill.
The first letter she wrote ended up crumpled on the floor. So did the second. The third, she forced herself to write slowly.
Your Grace,
Forgive me. I know I have no right to leave you words you never asked to receive…
Her hand shook. She set the quill down before she blotted the ink with tears.
She did not finish the letter. She folded the half-written sheet with trembling fingers and tucked it into her bodice. She did not know what she intended to do with it. She only knew that the words inside her were too heavy to hold alone.
Voices murmured faintly in the corridor. A footman’s step. The whisper of fabric. Then nothing.
She sank down onto the seat by the window, drawing her knees close, the moonlight silvering her loosened hair. She pressed her forehead to the glass.
“I am not afraid,” she whispered.
Images of her mother flashed before her.
Sweet, gentle Mama with her soft hands and softer heart.How will she survive alone in this house without someone to stand between her and Howard’s temper?
Tears burned, but she blinked them back fiercely.
She would escape. For her mother’s sake. For her own. But she needed a plan, one Howard could not predict.
Her pulse steadied. Her breathing slowed. Somewhere within the dark tangle of her despair, resolve began knitting itself together, small but stubborn.
Howard may have locked her in. But he had not broken her.
Not tonight.
Not ever.
CHAPTER 24
Victor had not intended to think of her again.
That was what he told himself each morning as he dressed, each afternoon as he pored over his ledgers, each night as he lay staring at the ceiling long after sleep should have claimed him.
He told himself that it had been a lapse in judgment. Foolishness that he had learned to treat as a contagion. He told himself that she was safer far from him, that their arrangement had ended, that he had done the right thing by sending her away.
He told himself all of it. But none of it settled.
Instead, he walked through the days as if through water, everything thick and slow, everything irritating, everything pricking at his nerves.
The steward asked about the timber contracts, and Victor nearly bit the man’s head off.
A letter from the Earl of Kinthrop arrived with questions about a shared boundary, and Victor very nearly tore it in half. His valet said nothing to him anymore unless it was absolutely necessary.
He could not shake Gwen from his mind. Her face when he had told her that their arrangement was over. Her quiet silence in the carriage. The way she had looked at the clouds, as if they were easier to bear than him.
And behind it all lurked thoughts of Howard Tull.
