Howard’s smile vanished. He lifted his hand, then let it fall, as if the effort of striking were too much for his throbbing head.
“Leave me,” he barked. “Both of you. I have a headache. I do not have the energy to deal with your antics.”
Gwen did not move immediately. She felt her mother trembling at her shoulder, heard the small intake of breath that meant relief, fear, love, and old habit embracing one another within the same fragile chest.
She reached behind her and took her mother’s hand. “Come, Mama,” she said softly, pulling her into the corridor.
She kept hold of her hand until they reached the small morning room, where a tray of weak tea waited.
Cordelia sat and pressed a handkerchief to her eyes. “He did not mean to frighten me,” she rasped, already making excuses for the man. “He is not himself after wine.”
“It’s first thing in the morning. He is precisely himself,” Gwen argued.
She hated herself for the thought, because hatred burned and left nothing behind but ash.
She poured her mother a teacup with steady hands. “Drink a little. It will settle you.”
Cordelia obeyed. The china rattled against the saucer. “I am sorry,” she said. “I know I should not speak when he is in a foul temper.”
“You should speak whenever you like,” Gwen scoffed. “A husband is not a jailer. Nor is he a lash.”
Cordelia’s lips trembled. She nodded, but it was the nod of a woman who wished to agree and could not quite persuade her mind to follow. “When you are married, you will find that marriage requires forbearance.”
“IfI am ever married, I shall require respect.”
Gwen should not have said it, for her mother flinched. It felt like a blow to her pride.
She turned away and stared at the garden beyond the window. The hedges were green as polished jade. A thrush scolded at the far wall.
We must leave. We must run and never look back. If only there were a way.
Therewereways. But they cost money.
A hired coach. Rooms in a lodging house where no one looked too closely at names. A small cottage far from London, where her mother could rest and William could visit in the holidays. Money could be turned into safety if one were clever and quick.
Where would she find it?
Her mind drifted, reluctant as a decent girl at a hedgerow kiss. It reached for last night’s garden, for the man who had stood unmasked in the shadows as if the world itself were his confederate.
The Duke of Greystone had looked at her and found her. He had warned her and then pressed his thumb to her mouth as if she were an instrument he meant to tune. He had taken his pleasure with a widow in a public garden and had not bothered to hide his face.
He could pay to keep that face untroubled by gossip.
Gwen closed her eyes. The thought sat in her mind like a viper in a basket, quiet and deadly and useful if one knew the tune to charm it.
I cannot. I should not. It is vile.
Cordelia’s soft sob tore through the room.
Gwen opened her eyes and found her mother’s shoulders shaking, her glove pressed hard to her mouth. There were no bruises today, but there might be tomorrow.
There would be next month. There would bemany.
Gwen set the tea aside and knelt before her. “Mama, look at me.”
Cordelia looked up.
Gwen saw the woman who had once laughed at summer storms and danced with her little daughter on the terrace when rain cooled the pavers. That woman lived within this frightened lady. She could be saved.
