“I gave neither of you permission to meet,” Milton stated coldly. “Yet you have done so behind my back, and even now?—”
“Milton,” Elizabeth cut in, “for God’s sake, listen to yourself.” Her small frame shook. “Before you fell … ill, I wrote to Mr. Kilpert asking him to instruct you in dance, as you had agreed. When I replied to his response, I informed him you were unwell. He only stopped by to enquire after your health.” She paused as if to steady herself—or embellish her tidy story. “Had youdeigned to speak with me, I’d have discussed his letter with you, but instead you’ve spurned my every attempt to?—”
“Instead, you thought only of your own interests.”
“No! That is the—that is the very opposite of what I?—”
“Elizabeth, you may cease with your excuses, and Kilpert, I no longer require your services.”
“Jasper.” The man tried again. “Lady Milton speaks the truth, for had I known you disapproved of our meeting, I should never have?—”
“You’ve had your eye on her since the Denbigh ball, sir, don’t try to deny it.”
Kilpert’s blush confirmed as much. “Baron.” He defended himself. “I admit your wife is an exceptional woman, but I would never be so bold as to?—”
“But you have, and you’d be bolder still, no doubt, with time. So let us do away with pretense and speed things to their natural completion. Lizzie, on your knees.”
Her face blenched as Kilpert’s eyes widened into saucers.
“Did you not hear me?” Milton’s gaze pierced Elizabeth. “I have her trained, you see.” He glanced at Kilpert’s horrified face. “She obeys my every order.”
His words were foul, but the beast inside him demanded to be fed. “I’ll let her give you payment, as it were, for services rendered.” He pushed Lizzie to her knees before Paul. “And since she remains my legal wife, it’s best I watch the transaction, to ensure payment is received in full.”
Elizabeth struggled to rise but Milton held her down, gripping her shoulders as he pushed her toward Kilpert’s crotch.
“Jasper,” Paul hissed, fists balled at his sides. “Do not do this. The man I know you to be, the man I admire, would never demean his wife in this manner.”
But Milton’s hands only tightened on Lizzie’s frame, digging into her dress. “Elizabeth will service you in my presence, rather than do so behind my back.”
With a look of pure disgust, Kilpert stormed from the room.
Elizabeth wrenched herself free. “Bastard,” she hissed from the floor. “How could you be so cruel? To your own friend, tome!”
Her pain mirrored perfectly the ache in Milton’s breast. He stared at her, at a loss for words.
“How could you treat me so abominably,when for weeks I have worried myself sick for you! WhenallI longed for was your safe return, your health and well-being.” She backed away from him on the floor like a wounded, cornered animal. “You are despicable to treat me thus. You are the very worst of humans, Jasper Audrey, to turn the love and respect of marriage into something so hideouslyugly!”
Elizabeth fled the room in tears.
Milton stood a moment longer in his parlor, frozen in place. Had she saidlovein regards to their marriage? Had she uttered the wordrespect?
He walked right out of his lavish townhouse. Not once did he look back.
Elizabeth stumbled to her room, to her bed, tears stinging her eyes. She could neither forget nor forgive what Milton had just done, whoring her to another man on his parlor floor. She was not a wife, she was chattel.
And her husband was no better than Hieronymus Finch. Whatever tortures Milton had endured, whatever evils others had inflicted to make him into the monster he was, did notabsolve him of this crime. She had obeyed him in marriage, denied her own needs, compromised her own morals and judgment as his wife, but this crossed a line.
Now, she could hope only for survival. She would wall herself into her room with her books and her writing and avoid him at all cost, simply suffering his existence. She would destroy all hint of feeling she’d ever held for Jasper Audrey and resign herself instead to the brute he’d just savagely shown himself to be.
Elizabeth physically recoiled from her thoughts, a wave of nausea overcoming her so fast she rushed to her bedroom washstand to lose the contents of her stomach, as if she purged her husband from her soul.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Milton wandered the streets, the park, the Thames all night. He walked the city he knew, where he’d lived all his life, in better or worse hellholes. Where he’d lied and cheated and thieved and yes, even killed. But never in all his years on London’s streets had he felt so bereft as this.
He no longer knew why he’d done it. He’d been angry, of course. He’d wanted to punish both Lizzie and Paul but more, perhaps, he’d wished to punish himself. Because now she’d leave be. Surely now Elizabeth would cease her ridiculous attempts to reconcile, to make him into a respectable husband. What lady in her right mind would love a man like him? Li hadn’t, and Elizabeth was even more righteous and principled. He’d been a fool to hope. Worse still, he’d let Lizzie down—he, who’d sworn to protect his family, had let them all down when he’d allowed Finch to snatch him from Winthrop’s house as if he were a boy and not a grown, goddamned man.
The moment that devil had put him in irons, he’d been lost.
