"But I did not come to you," she said.
For the first time, something in his composure slipped. Not a crack — a twitch, at the corner of his mouth, quickly mastered. "No. You did not." He drew a breath through his nose. "I wrote to you. Small notes, kind ones, the sort of thing a cousin might send to a grieving girl. I made certain to be visible to your brother in London, to keep my name alive in your household, to remind you all that I was — reliably — there. I was patient, Christina. I wasexceptionallypatient."
"And still I did not come."
"No." His voice flattened. "Your letters back to me grew colder, not warmer. When you returned to London this Season, I had thought the reunion would be the thing — that London, society, the memory of your broken engagement, would make you look to me at last. Instead you looked at Coventry within the first fortnight. The very man I had removed." The wordremovedcame out with a bitter precision. "It was not to be borne."
"And your debts," Christina said quietly.
Thatstruck. His hand tightened on the knife.
"We do not all have wealthy relations who leave us vast amounts of coin," he said, and his voice cracked on the wordvast. His hands clenched briefly, knuckles white, before he flattened them against his thighs with deliberate force. "Some of us are left with dwindling coin because one's father was selfish and arrogant. I have spent two years keeping that reckoning from catching me. Two years of managing creditors, of selling quietly what could be sold, of watching my inheritance amount to less each quarter than the last. I had time, Christina. I had time so long as you did not marry another. And then you arrived in London, and you looked athim, and I found that my time had run out overnight."
For one breath — one single, treacherous breath — Christina felt something that was almost sympathy. The pain in his voice was real. The financial desperation that drove him was genuine, not performed. His father had squandered a fortune and left him with the title and the debts, and that was a burden she could understand.
Then his expression changed. The pain was still there, but it was joined by something else — a cold, calculating determination that hardened his features and turned his eyes to glass.
"I require your fortune, Christina. You will marry me."
The sympathy died. Christina lifted her chin. "I will not."
"Lord Coventry has no claim to you," Pennington hissed, his attention entirely on Christina now. "I, however — "
"You have no claim either." Her voice trembled at the fury in his eyes, but she held his gaze, her fingers finding Sarah's one final time and pressing hard. "I do not choose you, Pennington. I choose him."
His jaw worked, the skin around his mouth pulling taut. "You were warned, Christina. You were warned of what would happen."
"You would ruin my reputation?"
The smirk cast more fear into her chest. "I would ruin you, yes, but not in the way you think. There will be a scandal, certainly, but it will have no lasting damage."
"You cannot force me to marry you."
"Cannot?" he echoed with a chilling smile. "Oh, Christina, I thought you were more sensible than that. Your inheritance — and you yourself — will soon be mine." Twisting his wrist so the knife glinted, he leaned closer. "Do you understand now, my love?"
Christina's heart hammered violently. She needed one moment — one distraction — to take his eyes from Sarah completely. Anything less, and the blade would move before the maid could reach the door.
"Please, Pennington," she whispered. "Do not do this."
She let her body sway, her eyes rolling upward as she slumped sideways in her seat with a sharp cry. It was not a convincing faint — she was too rigid, too tense — but it was enough. Lord Pennington's attention snapped entirely to her, his free hand reaching for her arm, his expression twisting between irritation and alarm.
"Get up!" he demanded, yanking her forward.
Behind him — behind him, where he was not looking — the carriage door on Sarah's side opened. A rush of daylight flooded in. Sarah's small, terrified face appeared in the frame for half a breath, her eyes enormous, her whole body shaking. She looked at Christina. Christina's eyes, still half-lidded from her feigned collapse, met the maid's. She gave the smallest nod she could manage.
Sarah pushed herself from the carriage and ran.
Christina heard the maid's footsteps, rapid and uneven on the pavement, growing fainter with every passing second. Relief — cold, overwhelming relief — washed through her even as Pennington hauled her upright, his fingers bruising her arm.
He did not notice. In the fury of the moment, in the urgency of his own design, the maid had ceased to exist for him. Christina prayed it would remain so.
"Outside, now," he ordered, his voice tight. "Take my arm."
Her skin crawled as she set her hand to his. He guided her with hurried steps toward the waiting carriage on the next street, his grip too firm, his pace too quick for a gentleman walking with a lady. To anyone watching from a distance, they might have been taking the air together. Up close, the tension in his frame and the panic in her eyes told a different story.
He opened his carriage door and motioned her inside.
Christina hesitated. Every ounce of remaining strength in her body gathered itself into that hesitation — a brief, desperate stand at the threshold.
