The words fell into the confined space of the carriage like stones dropped into still water. Christina's hands went cold, her fingers numb where they gripped the cushion.
"I cannot," she answered, hearing her voice tremble and despising it. "I cannot and will not, Pennington."
"But you have loyalty to your family, do you not?" He lifted an eyebrow. "And I am family to you. This inheritance of yours must be kept within the family structure, and I am the only one who can do such a thing by marrying you."
The shiver that ran from the top of Christina's head to her toes was so great that she could not speak for some minutes. She shook her head, closing her eyes as she pushed back the rising panic. "I am engaged to Lord Coventry."
He snorted. "No, you are not. He stepped back from you once, Christina. He will do so again, be assured of that."
But his composure was fraying. She could see it in the way his hands trembled slightly where they rested on his knees, the way color had begun to climb his neck. His eyes had taken on a glazed quality — not the look of a man in control but of one being driven by something larger than himself, something desperate and consuming.
"I require your fortune, Christina. You will marry me."
"I will not."
"So you have ascertained that it was I who wrote to you both, then."
"And the most present note."
Lord Pennington shrugged his shoulders as if what he had done was of no importance whatsoever. "If you will not end your connection with Lord Coventry willingly, then I shall make certain he will step back from you regardless. No gentleman wants to be tainted by the stain of a lady's reputation." His mouth curved into a mirthless smile. "I, however, care nothing for that since your inheritance will do more than satisfy me."
It felt as if something were clawing in Christina's throat. "You cannot force me to marry you."
With one swift movement, Lord Pennington reached into his coat.
Christina froze, blood turning to ice in her veins. The knife caught the afternoon light through the carriage window, its edge narrow and glinting.
"I told you that you would marry me, cousin," Lord Pennington said in such a gentle tone that it was as if he were trying to woo her. "You will come with me now, and you will make no complaint."
Christina stared at the blade, her breathing sharp and shallow. Every instinct screamed at her to reach for the door, to cry out, to throw herself from the carriage — but the knife was steady in his hand, his arm extended just enough that flight would bring her within its reach.
Lord Pennington's gaze cut sideways to Sarah, and his voice did not rise. It did not need to.
"And you, girl. You will sit where you are, and you will hold your tongue. If you stir from this carriage, if you attempt to cry out, if you disappear from my sight before I have your mistress where I intend her to be — this blade goes into her shoulder before you have reached the corner. Do you understand me?"
Sarah made a small, strangled sound in her throat and nodded, her whole frame shaking.
"Good."
Christina's stomach turned. Whatever she might yet attempt, the shape of it had just been fixed: Sarah could not simply go. Whatever was done would have to be timed, concealed, executed within the single breath in which Pennington's attention was entirely elsewhere.
Think. Do not panic. Think.
"You were watching me from the beginning," she said, her voice thin but deliberate. She was buying time — every second hetalked was a second she was not in his carriage, a second closer to rescue. "You used that footman, George. Why?"
Lord Pennington rolled his eyes. "Are you truly so simple? I saw you in the gardens that night at Ashbourne House, Christina. I had danced the quadrille with you only hours before, and I had been certain — absolutely certain — that you had received my attentions with something more than courtesy. I followed you out of the ballroom to press my suit, and instead I found you in the arbor with Lord Coventry, your hand already in his. I heard him propose. I heard you accept." His lip curled. "My humiliation was such that I could hardly see straight as I left the gardens. I went directly to Whites, and it was there, at the card table, that Lord Coventry was foolish enough to speak of you aloud — not by name, but clearly enough that I knew whom he meant. By the time I left that club, the shape of what I would do had already formed."
Christina kept her eyes on his face while her hand moved slowly — imperceptibly — to her left, reaching for Sarah's fingers beneath the fold of her skirts. Her maid was trembling, one hand pressed over her own mouth, tears running silently down her cheeks.
"The footman?" she asked, buying time, her fingers finding Sarah's and squeezing once, twice, the pressure steady. She did not look at the maid. She could not.
"Already one of Coventry's, as it happened. A man with gambling debts I had, through a certain intermediary, come to hold. I had only to apply the pressure. He copied the hand well enough, and I had your own letters" — his mouth twisted, a small, ugly movement — "from a previous exchange on some family triviality, so that I could produce one to Coventry in turn. Then the footman was redeployed to your household, where he could tell me what I wished to know. I had placed myself in a position from which every outcome was to my advantage."
"Every outcome?"
"If Coventry had pursued you despite the letter, I would have exposed the footman, revealed what I took to be his forgery, and presented myself as the relation who had uncovered the plot. You would have been grateful." His voice took on the faintly pedagogical tone of a man explaining something he had given great thought to. "If instead you retreated in sorrow — which you did — then time and a cousin's kindness would bring you to me in the end. I did not require haste. I had expected, in truth, to have you within a year. Two, at the outside."
The cold precision of it — the fact that he had laid out each branch like a chess player considering his openings — was somehow worse than any rage. She forced herself to keep pressing Sarah's hand, her fingers brushing toward the carriage door.
