“How you and Beth deal with the pain is your business, but I did my time. I let that woman stomp all over my heart, twice. I won’t do it a third time.”
Gwen blinks and before she can formulate another argument, before she can say anything, he stands and tosses his napkin onto the table.
“You’re a good girl, Gwennie. I love you very much. But leaveme out of this. I won’t have us utterly destroyed by the Demerovens again. We will move forward with our lives, and someday this will be just a painful memory, I promise you that.”
He turns and strides out of the room, leaving Gwen alone, for the second time today, heartbroken and winded.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Beth
Beth runs her fingers over her engagement ring, spinning it on her finger, trying to let the hypnotic motion drown out the world around her. She sits across from her mother, watching her poke listlessly at her dry chicken while Lord Ashmond bloviates. They’re here for a consolation dinner one day before the wedding, one day after the MCA vote, which passed. And Lord Ashmond is still a livid purple.
Beth hasn’t had time to let it sink in—to know she does have an escape if she ever needs one. If she ever wants one, she can argue her case, can escape the Ashmonds, can go find Gwen, can disappear into the slums and live a happy life with her lover.
But then she looks across at her mother, jaw tight and back straight as Lord Ashmond continues to rail. She cannot leave her mother here with these people. They are either in misery together, or they leave together. And while Beth thinks she could live a life of poverty with Gwen, loved and cared for, even without a single luxury or comfort, she cannot doom her mother to a loveless poverty.
And so they’re here, listening to her father-in-law-to-be go on and on about the evils of women, while his wife and sonnod absently along. Beth still doesn’t know if Lord Montson believes a single word his father says, but she knows he never fights him on it.
She knows, too, he’s as powerless as she is to defend the act. His whole inheritance depends on acquiescence to his father’s every opinion, as does hers by proxy. But still. Still, he could say something on her behalf.
“Any woman who would abandon a husband simply on the cause of... what did they say, Harry?”
“Emotional distress,” Lord Montson says around a mouthful of potatoes.
“Emotional distress,” Lord Ashmond sneers. “Women are in emotional distress at the drop of a hat, literally. Didn’t you weep the other day, dearest, when your hat fell in the mud?”
Lady Ashmond nods placidly, her eyes distant and a bit empty. Beth wonders if her mother isn’t the only one to have dipped into the laudanum.
“How could a woman differentiate between the average distress and something deeper then, if all it takes is a hat?” Lord Ashmond continues. “Preposterous. How a man behaves with his wife is no business of the courts’.”
“Unless he’s beating her,” Beth feels herself say, clamping her lips shut as the whole table turns to look at her.
She hears Mother sigh quietly, but has more pressing matters now, with Lord Ashmond glaring at her. Lord Montson looks on in surprise.
“I only, well, I only mean that, in some extreme cases, I suppose it is the business of law enforcement if a woman fears for her life. But, ah, that was covered before the MCA in extremecases, wasn’t it? So I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . . anything by it,” she peters off, unable to stand tall in the face of the earl’s glower.
“I’m sure Beth understands the difference between petty words and assault,” Mother chimes in.
“Right,” Beth says quickly. “I only worry for those young ladies married to much older men, who might have different... customs, that’s all,” Beth defends meekly.
Lord Ashmond works his jaw, not wanting, it seems, to insult his son’s bride-to-be. He really might think it’s the right of the husband to beat a wife bloody if he wants. Barbaric.
“Beth knows her place,” Mother says.
“That she does,” Lord Montson agrees, glancing at his father before sending Beth a strikingly winning smile. “And that she never needs to worry about such things from me.”
“Yes, yes,” Lord Ashmond says, apparently mollified by his son’s promise not to beat Beth senseless.
Which seems like faint praise to her, the very least he can do. But she returns Lord Montson’s smile anyway, grateful at least to be out from his father’s scrutiny.
“Beth knows her place,” Lady Ashmond repeats. “And understands what it means to be in this family. Dirty laundry should never be aired, publicly or privately. Marriage is a sacred bond.”
The whole table turns to look at Lady Ashmond. That implies—
“Quite right,” Lord Ashmond agrees, patting his wife’s hand, a little too hard given the way the silverware rattles. “Disputes should be settled privately, and family business is just that—for the family. Don’t you agree, Lady Demeroven?”
Beth watches her mother take in the tableau of theAshmonds—his heavy hand on Lady Ashmond’s frail one, his bravado, his insistence that all ills and disagreements are settled in-house—by him.
