There would be time to fight.
But not now.
Not while Eleanor watched her with such worry. Not while Norman’s absence throbbed like a bruise in her chest.
She would endure.
For now.
The faint sound of rustling fabric accompanied her every step as she crossed the drawing room floor, spine straight, head high, though her skin crawled. The hem of her muslin dress brushed the polished floorboards like a ghost, and in her hands she clutched the marked-up script as if it could shield her from the man seated beside her.
Grewin looked as he always had—impeccably dressed, insufferably pleased with himself. But there was something in his expression that made her want to retreat, something wolfish behind the charming mask.
Kitty took her place beside Grewin like a woman led to slaughter.
“Ohhhh, darlings—” Lady Mulberry’s voice oozed like spilt honey, her feathered fan fluttering with exaggerated emphasis. “We simply must begin with Act Three, Scene Two. That delicious little lovers’ exchange—so fraught with passion, don’t you agree?”
She paused, letting her gaze slither toward Kitty with reptilian delight, the corners of her rouged lips twitching. “Or… is there some objection to Portia and Bassanio’s tender love declaration?”
The question hung, while her rings glittered in cruel emphasis with every affected gesture.
Of course it would be that part.
Kitty stood with her legs tightly clenched together, her hands trembling slightly as she unfolded the pages.
Never had she longed for Norman’s presence with such desperate intensity. The absence of his familiar figure in that moment struck her like a physical blow—how cruelly the drawing-room air thickened without his steadying presence to anchor her.
However tangled her sentiments toward him might’ve been, he remained her harbor in this storm of Mulberry’s making.
And Grewin.Grewin.
Her gloves strained against her whitening knuckles, as his laughter slithered through the room.
Every fiber of her being recoiled—from the oiled smoothness of his voice, from the way his gaze lingered too long on her body.
That he should be here now, of all possible men, while Norman was conspicuously elsewhere?—
It was nothing short of torture.
She did not feel safe now.
Grewin’s voice slithered into the air with his first line—Bassanio’s declaration of love. It was too smooth, too practiced, as if he’d memorized not just the words but how to stain them with his own intent.
“You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand—such as I am...”
Kitty responded, her eyes fixed on the page. “You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand...”
Her voice was a shade too quiet, a tremor behind the syllables. She tried again, this time firmer.
“You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, such as I am, though for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish...”
He leaned closer than he ought to, his thigh brushing hers. Her breath caught in her throat.
“...to wish myself much better,” she continued, forcing herself not to move away, not to give him the satisfaction of seeing her recoil. “Yet for you I would be trebled twenty times myself.”
He murmured, too low for the others to hear, “If only you meant it, dearest. You and I could be trebled together.”
Her eyes snapped to him. His smile was the same lazy twist of the mouth she remembered from that awful night in the courtyard.
