This deserved more than the scornful snort Lucy gave it. “You will be waiting a long time.”
Pris narrowed her eyes. “How long?”
Lucy thought of Catherine’s face, and anguish chimed through her. “I cannot say.”
The other woman clucked her tongue at this, blond curls bouncing with the movement. “Come now. You’ve made your point, and I have apologized. To drag this out for pride’s sake would be childish.” Pris stepped forward again, reaching out, shafts of sunlight from the street outside making the pale muslin of her dress flash like lightning.
Lucy recoiled as if struck. Anger flared up, all the stronger for having gone so long unspoken. “You think I’ve stayed away half a year because of pride?” The selfishness of it shocked her, and Pris’s wide-eyed confusion somehow made it all the worse. As if Lucy just stopped existing if she weren’t standing at Pris’s side, or mooning over her, or scheming how to get her back. “I have beenbusy, Pris. I have been working. I have been making a life here—it may have looked to you like I was running away, but in fact there was something I was running toward.”
“And what was that?” Priscilla was seething now, the white work flowers on her dress trembling like apple blossoms in a spring storm.
“A future,” Lucy replied bluntly. “A life—and a happy one. A home where I can put my talents to use, for people who will appreciate them.”
“People like your Lady Moth?”
The barb struck home; Lucy couldn’t hold back a revealing wince.
Pris laughed, a harsh and horrid sound. “Oh, I noticed the way you looked at her in Lyme. You’d have a time seducing such a noble old matron as that—I doubt the idea that women can enjoy it would ever occur to her.”
Lucy bit hard on her lip to keep silent.
Pris cocked her head, scenting weakness, as she always had. Her eyes weighed every one of the words she spoke. “I doubt she’s ever thought about it beyond spreading her legs for her dead husband and hanging on until he starts snoring. I bet she’s glad widowhood removed that chore from her list. I bet she’s never pulled up her own skirts and slid her hands—”
“Stop it!” Lucy cried.
“Oh, this is rich.” Pris was at the full peak of her venom now, a sight Lucy hadn’t seen since their school days, and had hoped never to see again. “You expect me to believe you really prefer a woman who’s just a duller, withered version of me?”
“Withered? Good lord, Pris, she’s only ten years—” Lucy cut herself off, with some effort. When she spoke again her voice was very soft. “I love her. That’s the plain truth of it. I love her and I won’t leave her for you.”
Pris’s smile uncurled, a small but venomous serpent beneath a rose leaf. “Maybe you won’t want to,” she said. “But have you considered that maybe your Lady Moth won’t want to keepyou? You’re exciting now, with your youth and your brilliance and the fuss about your little book. But what happens when your lady’s tastes wander?” She smoothed down the skirts of her gown, hands skimming over the delicate knots of buds and blossoms. “You can throw my marriage in my face if you must, but I have something you and Lady Moth never will. I havecertainty. Harry can never leave me, not even if he wanted to—which he doesn’t. He is bound to me, until death, in a way you could never be.”
“I might have tried, if you’d asked,” Lucy said gently. “But you chose someone else for that.”
“And now you’re doing the same thing, just to hurt me.” Pris delivered this conclusion as though it were a crowning triumph. Because of course, she must be at the center of everything important. In her own mind she was the magnet the whole world’s compass turned toward.
Suddenly Lucy was sick of it. The sparring, the dramatics, the way every argument spiraled deeper and deeper with never an end in sight. Victory by these terms could only ever belong to Pris—and Lucy was tired of playing a game she could not win.
Her anger and hurt evaporated, replaced instead by a solid, steely certainty that seemed to hone the edge of every surface in the room.I don’t have to play by these rules any longer.
She didn’t even have to finish the argument—though Pris was clearly waiting eagerly for a heated reply. Lucy turned instead and walked to the door, deeply proud of the way her hands remained steady as she pulled it open. What she saw in the hallway made her smile sincerely. She pulled the door wide and folded her hands, every inch the demure young hostess. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Winlock. I hope the rest of your stay in town is pleasant.”
Pris leaped forward, a cutting remark upon those rosy lips—but the words died unheard. Brinkworth was waiting in the hallway with her bonnet and gloves at the ready, a perfectly helpful expression on his face and a dagger’s glint in his eyes.
Pris thanked him readily, and he bowed with all evidence of polite obedience. Pris pulled on her gloves one finger at a time, mouth set in a mulish line.
With a flash of clarity, Lucy realized she didn’t have to play out the last part of this farce, either. “I believe I’ll return to the library, Brinkworth. Do have one of the footmen summon a hackney for Mrs. Winlock.” She could imagine the look on Pris’s face at that, but didn’t stop to see it. Instead she proceeded up the stairs as gracefully as she could, leaving her jilted lover to gape silently at her retreating back.
Five minutes later, Brinkworth found her again, though she was having no more luck with her book now than before. The gust of audacity that had sent her sailing upstairs had died out. Her hands were shaking as she relived the argument, agonizing over what she ought and ought not to have said.
The butler bowed, his brows knitting together with unusual concern. “If I may be so bold, miss?”
Lucy blinked. “Yes?”
“Lady Moth often found it helpful to sip a little brandy and lemon, after a conversation like the one you have just had.” He held out a tray with a tumbler: three fingers of amber liquid, the gold clouded with citrus.
Lucy knew if she cried, the butler would be appalled, so she swallowed back the lump in her throat and offered him a brilliant smile as she accepted the drink. “Thank you, Brinkworth. It’s very kind of you.”
The butler coughed as he straightened. “Lady Moth has been more than kind to me and my family,” he said softly. “She deserves everything kind in return.”
