But Malcolm needn’t know that.
She played her part well. When Malcolm brought her food twice a day, she pretended to be sleeping, or delirious with pain. When he touched her ankle, poking with cool fingertips, she cried out as if he’d whipped her with a riding crop. Her ruse seemed to be working.
On a particularly frigid day, when every joint ached from the cold, she heard Malcolm’s step outside her room. She decided she was ready. She arranged her filthy hair on the pillow to make it look as if she had been sleeping. When he opened the door, dragging a triangular shaft of amber light behind him, she sat up, pretending at feverish confusion. Her heart thumped with excitement. He’d left the door slightly ajar. This was her chance.
“I’ve brought you beef tea, darling. For the baby.” Malcolm set the tea tray with its tureen of soup on the bed, then settled on the edge of the mattress. He began swiping butter on soda crackers, chattering away about the weather and the war.
Eliza didn’t waste another breath.
She lunged for the tureen and flung the hot broth in Malcolm’s face. He gave an enraged roar and covered his eyes with his hands. “You little whore!”
Eliza scrambled clumsily toward the door.
It was a foolish mistake.
Malcolm recovered more quickly than she’d bargained for. With grasping hands, he shoved her back onto the mattress, then extended his leg, slamming the door shut with his foot. Now that her egress was blocked, she’d have no choice. She’d have to fight.
With a scream of righteous rage, Eliza pounced on Malcolm’s back like a jungle cat and began clawing at his neck. He spun in a circle as she wrapped her legs around his hips, locking herself to him and pounding his shoulders with her fists. He backed toward the bed, laughing, and lay down on top of her, crushing her beneath him. She thrashed and bucked her hips until he rolled off. He pinned her wrists to the mattress with his hands and crouched over her on all fours. Broth dripped fromhis ears and hair onto her face. The skin over his cheeks was angry and scalded. His neck bore her scratches, oozing scarlet lines of blood.
At least she’d wounded him. There was some satisfaction in that.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” he spat. “Try that business again, and I’ll have to tie you up.” He bent and kissed her neck, his tongue hot against her pulse. She recoiled in disgust. “You’d like that, I think.”
“Get off me!” she screamed. Her knees strove to find his groin. He wedged himself between her legs and crushed his hips against her own. Eliza gathered her saliva in her mouth and spat it in Malcolm’s face.
He stood, wiping the viscous gob from his forehead, a look of disdain snarling his lip. “You’re so very lucky you’re with child. But women often die after childbirth, just like my grandmother. Or stumble in front of carriages to be trampled by horses.” Malcolm smirked. “Or they drown with their pockets full of stones. Tell me, darling, which would you prefer when the time comes? I know you’re rather fond of water.”
A blade of panic cut through Eliza, but she wouldn’t give him the pleasure of seeing her fear. “I hate you, Malcolm.”
He backed toward the door with a contemptuous sniff. “I assure you, Lady Havenwood, the feeling is quite mutual.”
CHAPTER 44
That evening, Eliza rose from a fitful nap and looked around the room, her eyes straining as the spare sliver of moon replaced the sun. She needed a weapon—something that would give her better odds than a bowl of hot soup. Malcolm wouldn’t be letting his guard down around her anymore. Her mind raced. What sort of weapon would a woman have in her bedchambers? What unconventional method of defense could she concoct in a room full of half-used toiletries and moldering lace petticoats?
As if her baby sensed her unease, it turned and kicked within Eliza’s womb, sending flutters through her abdomen. She rubbed her belly through her dingy trousers. “There, little one. All is well.”
It was so dark. She needed light to find something to defend herself. Eliza rushed to Ada’s dressing table and rustled around inside the drawers. There was nothing within but a few handkerchiefs and underthings. She felt around the edges of the drawers to see if any of them might have a false bottom. No such luck. Finally, tucked beneath a stack of folded stockings in the last drawer, a familiar shape met her touch. It was a tin of matches and a few stale, hand-rolled cigarettes. Ada had been a closet smoker, too. This made Eliza smile. At the very least, she’d get to have a cigarette, even though finding a candle to see by would have been better.
She lit one of the rustic fags. The ember glowed dully in the mirror as she took a tug of smoke into her lungs. The tobacco was bitter with age, but it served to calm her trembling hands and made the cold funneling through the window seem less keen. She sat on the foot of the bed to order her thoughts, her shoulders slumping. She couldn’t let despair overtake her. She had to find a way out of here. Tonight.
After a few more rallying puffs, Eliza stubbed out the meager butt against the footboard and went to the wardrobe snugged against the corner of the room. She opened the mirrored doors and searched its compartments, running her hands over the surface of the shelves and along the top. Nothing but dust. She could break one of the mirrored panels, but she’d be just as likely to injure herself in the process. And Malcolm would see the broken mirror upon his next visit and know immediately what she intended. There wasn’t a thing in the entire room that she could remotely fashion into a hidden weapon meant to kill or wound.
Or was there?
Eliza’s heartbeat picked up its cadence. She remembered Lydia’s prescient worry on the night she and Malcolm had gone on their first ride, and the two pins she’d used to fasten her hat to her hair—something all women had at the ready to fend off street harassers and beaus who attempted to take liberties. Hatpins. Surely Ada had them, too! With renewed determination, she searched beneath the mattress and behind the headboard, then pawed through the drawers of the vanity once more, but it was futile. There wasn’t so much as a brooch remaining in Ada’s jewelry cases. “Dammit!”
And then, just as she was about to lose hope, the silk dressing screen came to mind. Eliza crossed the room and pushed the pleated panels of the screen closed. A pile of carelessly discarded clothing lay on the floor. Eliza knelt and sorted through it, sending dust flying into the air. When she found a wide-brimmed hat at the bottom of the pile, she couldn’tcontain the shriek of joy that burst through her lips. Sticking out of its crown was a single pearl-tipped hatpin.
Eliza pulled the pin free and clutched it in triumph. She brandished it like a tiny sword, stabbing the air. This, this was a way to improve her odds ever so slightly. She could go for his neck. Or his eyes. Even if she couldn’t land a mortal wound, she could at least blind him or cause him enough pain to give herself a fighting chance at escape. She practiced her routine a few more times, then threaded the pin into the leg of her filthy dungarees, hidden from sight, its pearled head against her fingertips.
Tomorrow morning, when he brought her breakfast, she’d be ready.
As midnight chimed in the main part of the house, the tolling of the clock as empty as a death knell, Eliza nestled under the covers, shivering as she fought for rest and warmth. Just as she was drifting off, a thread of sound filtered through the room.
Eliza sat up.
Someone had just said her name. She was sure of it.
