Kitty glanced up with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry, Mister Mclintock, but I really mustn’t tarry.” She cast a quick look right.
Jasper followed her gaze to Clementine’s door. Was Kitty afraid to be overheard speaking to him? The idea was ridiculous. Madelina made him imagine things. “I thought you wished to become a seamstress. I’ve already arranged a place for you at Second Hope.”
She darted another glance at Clementine’s door. “Oh no, sir. I’m very happy here, sir. I’m doing so well for myself. I shouldn’t wish to begin again yet. Maybe when I’m older and I’ve lost my looks. I want to save more first, sir.”
Jasper nodded. “Yes, well, if that’s what you wish. Come see me the moment you change your mind.”
“I will, sir. Thank you, sir.” She hurried off down the hall after the other girls.
Jasper pushed open his office door, strode in and closed it behind him. Kitty had seemed so eager to leave, so full of enthusiasm. He would have checked on her sooner if not for his preoccupation with Madelina. Still, it hadn’t been that long since she’d come to him, asking to go. When had Kitty changed her mind?
Her red-rimmed eyes came to mind. Her fearful glances at Clementine’s door. Surely, the product of a misunderstanding. Clementine could be assertive, overbearing, but her heart was good. Of that, Jasper felt certain.
Or did he?
Chapter Thirteen
Madelina pressed her eye to the crack, taking in the tableau of her parents at the top of the staircase. As she’d watched them do countless times, they began their argument. Each angry gesture, each word, indelibly engraved on Madelina’s mind.
“I’ll bed who I will, when I wish, just as you do, and there’s not a thing you can do about it, old man,” her mother spat, voice dripping venom.
Her father laughed. “I’ll have you know, William’s mother still lived when I wed you. I can cast you aside whenever I choose. You, my dear, are no marchioness. No lady. You’re a bigamist and a whore, and your precious Madelina is a bastard.”
Then the gasp, the push…the scream.
Her mother’s scream mingled with her own. Her father turned. His eyes narrowed. He charged at her bedroom, her death in his eyes.
Madelina scurried back. She fled into her bathing chamber and yanked open the door to the servants’ stairs. Blacker than night, that rectangular maw gaped before her. She would never be able to descend quickly enough in the darkness. She would fall. Die like her mother.
She whirled, searching, frantic. Sighting the tub, she dropped to the floor and slipped between the cold iron and the wall. She pressed clenched fists to her mouth to hold in her sobs.
Her father burst into the bathing room. He saw the open door to the servants’ stairs. But unlike that first time, unlike every other time, he stopped. He didn’t charge down the steps, giving her time to flee back into the hall, to find William. Instead, he turned, so slowly, until his gaze found her.
“I see you, you little bastard,” he snarled. He lunged for her.
Madelina’s eyes flew open. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She pressed a hand to her pounding heart.
Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. She’d been a fool to return to this house. She should have listened to her brother and rented a different place. She would never fight free of the memories here. Never walk down that staircase under her father’s menacing gaze.
She should add doing so to her list of failures. The only thing she’d succeeded at in coming to London was the one thing she hadn’t been trying to do, the thing everyone thought she’d come to do. She’d attracted a man.
She didn’t want a man. Her decision to follow in Lord Lefthook’s footsteps had never seemed like a sacrifice because she’d always assumed she would end up alone like her aunt. How, after all, could she begin a relationship—forge a life—when her standing in society was a lie? She couldn’t start by confessing her lack of proper linage to a gentleman but waiting to do so would squander time and trust. No man would be pleased to discover the woman he courted and the connections he sought weren’t what he’d bargained for.
Except Mister Mclintock. He wouldn’t care that Madelina had been born out of wedlock. He’d empathize.
Or would he? Did his interest in her stem from a need to regain his footing among the peerage? To wed a lady? Had he hoped that, since she was newly returned to London, he could capture her heart before she found out he was a social pariah?
She shook her head, sitting up. That couldn’t be his plan. She had William, and Lanora, and Miss Birkchester. Anyone would expect them to inform Madelina of Jasper’s lineage.
She stood, crossed to the window, and tugged aside the curtains. Light filled the horizon in streaks of color, but the ball of the sun still hung out of sight.
If Miss Birkchester proved correct and the Earth was flat with the sun circling around it, the sun must also warm the bottom side. Did anything grow there, soaking up that warmth? Would they ever dig deep enough to poke through and find out?
Madelina went to her basin and poured out cold water to begin her morning ablutions. The hour was much too early, she knew, but she couldn’t return to sleep now. Instead, she washed, dressed herself, and attempted her hair.
Her brother hadn’t warned her of Mister Mclintock’s lack of legitimacy. William must know. Did that mean he didn’t care, or that he didn’t think she and Mister Mclintock were in danger of forming a connection? Even if William believed the latter, he regarded Mister Mclintock well. William had specifically called the man his friend.
Her arms aching as she struggled with her hair, Madelina bit her lip. She considered her brother a good judge of character, but had she any basis for that belief? Simply because he disliked their father? Only a dedicated sycophant or someone of extremely limited intelligence could view the late marquess as anything but one step removed from the devil.
