“I’ve put her in the blue parlor, miss.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed, but Brinkworth’s facade never cracked. He might have been pure marble, a stoic and high-moraled Senator from the glory days of Rome. “The blue parlor?” she asked pointedly.
“Yes, miss.” He bowed, and held open the door.
There was nothing to be gained by delaying. Lucy shoved herself to her feet and all but stomped down the hallway.
The blue parlor was the room nearest the front door, and rarely used. The countess preferred her own cozy sitting room at the back of the house, where the light streamed through filtered by garden leaves to gild all her heirlooms. The blue parlor faced the street, tall windows stretched high like mouths open to the sight of anyone passing by on the sidewalk just outside. The decor was neoclassical, all Grecian restraint and painful elegance: thin-legged chairs, stiff and spindly, with a slender tea table between them.
Pris was perched on one of those chairs, her muslin walking dress embroidered with sprays of white work blossoms. She looked angelic, the dress glowing in the stark light, almost blinding Lucy after the comforting dimness of the library. Her gaze flicked once to Brinkworth as she rose and stepped forward to clasp Lucy’s hands. “My dear Miss Muchelney,” she said, her smile just the right shade of pleased without shading into a too-revealing eagerness.
Lucy couldn’t avoid the kiss Pris pressed to her cheek, but was acutely conscious of Brinkworth standing behind her. “May I offer you some refreshment, Mrs. Winlock?” The name sat like a stranger’s on her tongue, as Brinkworth rang for the maid to bring tea.
Lucy and Pris made empty conversation until the tea came, and then Lucy thanked Brinkworth and dismissed him with only the barest wince.
“Always happy to serve, Miss Muchelney,” the butler replied. For a moment his gaze was searching, but then he caught himself and his expression went polished again. “Let me know if there is anything else you or your guest require.”
There was some message here, but Lucy’s wits were too strained to unravel it. Every instant of struggle only pulled the knot tighter. “Thank you,” she said, and watched thoughtfully as Brinkworth shut the parlor door behind him. Then she turned to Pris—who smiled with all the old warmth, dimples appearing in her cheeks and the heat Lucy remembered so well brightening her eyes.
Once not too long ago Lucy’s heart would have leaped to see it. But Lucy then was not the same woman as Lucy now, and instead she only folded her arms and asked: “How’s Harry?”
“Oh!” Pris squeaked, and squirmed on her uncomfortable chair. “I know, I have been very churlish to you—but you have forgiven me, haven’t you?”
She stretched out her arms to Lucy and leaned forward, lips parting—but stopped when Lucy frowned and held up a warning hand. “What do you want, Pris?”
“You, of course.” Pris cocked her head, a teasing smile playing about her rose-tinted lips. “You did get my letter?”
Lucy bristled. “I am not a pet, to come when called.”
“Don’t be crude.” Pris sighed. “Of course you’re more than that. You have every right to be angry. I hurt you very badly, I know. But I have every intention of making it up to you, if you’ll only let me—”
“Why now?”
Pris blinked, brought up short by the sharpness of Lucy’s tone.
Lucy took a bitter satisfaction in the puzzlement on her former lover’s face. More words spilled over her tongue, a fountain-jet bursting out of the rock. “Two weeks ago you behaved like a proper new wife. Six months ago you couldn’t even tell me you were marrying Harry—and now you think you can just crook your finger and I’ll come running back, as though nothing at all has happened since then?” Lucy shook her head. “The ink on your marriage license is hardly dry, and you’re already throwing your vows aside like—like you threw me.”
“It was a mistake.” Pris’s mouth was set in a sad pout, but Lucy could see the color starting to rise in her cheeks. She hadn’t expected resistance, and it was beginning to frustrate her. Pris never had liked being thwarted. “I thought if I finally were married, my mother and father would feel they had done their duty by me and would leave me alone. Would leaveusalone. I have my inheritance now, so I don’t have to work so hard to please them.” She sniffled, but if there were tears falling from her eyes, Lucy couldn’t see them. “I thought we would finally be safe.”
“Safe!” Lucy cried. “You left me for a husband you barely cared about! Did you really expect me not to feel hurt by that?” She narrowed her eyes. “Especially since you didn’t ask me about it in advance. You let me find out when the banns were read, in the family pew, with the whole village around me to take notice of how I reacted.”
“All you had to do was keep a calm head,” Pris snapped, “and we could have carried on as before—only better. But you couldn’t wait for that, could you? You ran away to London straight off, like a coward.” She sniffed again, out of pique this time. “A married woman has a deal more freedom than an unmarried one. People ask fewer questions, people forgive a bit more eccentricities.”
“Oh, was I to be an eccentricity, then?” Lucy retorted. “How flattering. Dare I ask if you informed Harry of this arrangement when you agreed to his proposal?”
“Don’t be absurd—Harry has nothing to do with us.”
“Pris, he is yourhusband.” Lucy took a deep breath, trying to keep her volume somewhere beneath a shout. The walls would echo here. “And he loves you.”
“But I don’t love him. My heart is full of someone else. How could you doubt it?” Pris reached out for Lucy again, eyes wide and limpid with unshed tears.
Lucy snatched her hand away, and leaped out of the chair for good measure. “You were wrong to come here, Pris. I thought we could talk, that we could come to understand one another, but you aren’t listening to me. What we had is gone now. It died the day you stood up in church and vowed to spend your life with someone else.”
Pris waved this aside with one graceful hand. “A man.”
“A person—who you chose,” Lucy insisted. “You took his ring, you took his name, you live in his home. You never told me what you hoped for us after the wedding, and you scoff when I ask if you’ve told him.” Pris’s cheeks were flame red now, and Lucy knew there would soon be an eruption, but she barreled onward regardless. “He made his vows in earnestness and sincerity, as you apparently did not.”
Pris sprang up from the chair, head high. “If you’re just going to be cruel, then you’re right, I should not have come. We’ll talk again when you’re back home, after you’ve had some time to come to your senses.”
