And the screams. Always the screams.
He woke before dawn, gasping, his scarred hand pressed to his chest as though he might physically contain the violent racing of his heart. The sheets were tangled about his legs. His nightshirt clung damply to his skin.
Only a dream,he told himself.It was years ago. You survived. Others did not, but you survived, and there is nothing to be done about it now.
The words were familiar. Worn smooth by repetition. They did not help.
He rose, lit a single candle, and made his way through the sleeping house to the kitchens. The scraps for the cat had already been set aside—Mrs Holloway was nothing if not efficient—and he gathered them into the familiar dish without troubling to dress properly.
Outside, the rain had ceased. The world smelled of wet earth and new growth, clean and sharp in a manner that made his chest ache for reasons he could not name. The sky was only just beginning to pale at the edges, that thin grey line between night and day that always felt, to Benjamin, like a held breath.
The cat was waiting.
Not near—never near—but visible, a darker shadow against the hedge. Its ears pricked forward as he approached, though it did not flee. Progress, perhaps. Three months of patience, and the creature had learnt he posed no threat.
If only people were so readily persuaded.
He set the dish in the usual place. Straightened. Stepped back.
“I am to be married,” he told the cat. The words sounded strange in the morning quiet—too weighty for this small ritual, too burdensome for the delicate peace between them. “I thought you ought to know.”
The cat said nothing. Naturally, it said nothing. It was a cat.
Yet it watched him, those pale green eyes unblinking in the half-light, and for a moment Benjamin felt—absurdly, impossibly—understood.
“It will change nothing,” he continued, because he appeared now to be the sort of man who explained his life decisions to feral animals. “Whoever she may be, she shall not disturb your breakfast. I shall see to that.”
The cat’s tail twitched. Dismissal, perhaps. Or acknowledgement. With cats, one could never be entirely certain.
Benjamin allowed himself the faintest ghost of a smile.
“Same time tomorrow,” he said, and turned toward the house.
Behind him, the cat crept forward to eat.
Chapter Two
“Such a shame,” Aunt Georgiana said, watching Eleanor’s pen move across the page, “that accomplishments rarely help a woman in your position.”
Eleanor did not pause in her writing. She had learnt, over the years, that pausing invited elaboration, and Aunt Georgiana required very little encouragement to elaborate upon Eleanor’s circumstances—which were, depending upon the day and her aunt’s temper, eitherpitiable,regrettable, ora cautionary tale for young ladies who neglect their complexions.
“I find them useful enough,” Eleanor replied, keeping her voice mild. Mildness was armour. Mildness was invisibility. Mildness was the tone of a woman who had long since ceased to expect kindness, and was therefore no longer wounded by its absence.
“Useful, yes. But usefulness is not the same as advantage, is it?” Aunt Georgiana settled herself more deeply into the drawing room’s best chair—the one Eleanor was never invited to occupy—and adjusted her shawl with the air of a woman preparing to dispense wisdom. “Your dear mother—may she rest in peace—was the most beautiful woman in three counties. And what did it avail her? A modest marriage, a fading reputation, and an early grave.”
And a daughter who learnt to be invisible, Eleanor thought.Which you would know, if you ever looked at me long enough to see.
“And you,” the aunt continued, “with all these languages and accomplishments, have fared little better. Here you remain—nine-and-twenty years old, translating correspondence for your aunt and uncle’s household like a glorified secretary.”
“I prefer to think of myself as an unglorified one,” Eleanor said. “The glorified sort charge fees.”
Aunt Georgiana blinked. Humour, in Eleanor’s experience, often produced this effect—a brief confusion, as though her aunt could not quite reconcile wit with spinsterhood.
“You have your mother’s face, you know,” she said at last, choosing to disregard the remark entirely. “Not quite so striking, perhaps, but the bones are there. If only you had made more effort when you were younger—”
“The Marchetti letter requires a reply by this afternoon.” Eleanor set down her pen and reached for the next document in the stack. “And Mrs Cheswick mentioned that Lord Cheswick expects the trade summaries before dinner. If you will excuse me.”
It was not, strictly speaking, a dismissal. One could not dismiss a visiting aunt from the drawing room of her sister’s household. But it was sufficiently close that Aunt Georgiana huffed, gathered her shawl, and swept from the room with the injured dignity of a woman denied her full audience.
