“Elizabeth!” Milton bellowed five minutes later from her father’s foyer. “Elizabeth Winthrop!” He blew right past the upstart footman. “Out of my way.” He pushed aside her simpering papa, who withdrew at once, the coward.
Yet when he reached a door blocked by Elizabeth’s sister, Milton stopped short.
“Miss Annabelle,” he stated, “kindly step aside.”
“Baron,” she leveled at him, “Lizzie does not wish to see you.”
His nose twitched as he stared down at her from his height. “Yet see her I must.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that, sir.”
Courageous,he thought, but she’d soon cave. He tried a different approach. “I assure you not a hair on Elizabeth’s headwill be hurt once I enter her room. I wish only to converse with her.”
“It is improper.” Her face was too pretty for her frown. “A gentleman may not visit a lady’s bedroom unaccompanied, even if she is his?—”
He stepped so close his waistcoat brushed her chest. “In case you hadn’t noticed, miss, I am no gentleman.”
She sucked in her breath.
“I can, however, give you my word no harm will come to your sister.” The sheer proximity of his body made her finally step aside.
If only it were that simple with her sister, Milton thought as he pushed past Annabelle Winthrop straight into Elizabeth’s room.
He took in her private space before he noticed her person, gazing out the window, back turned to him. His betrothed’s bedroom was filled with books. In fact, the room looked remarkably like a library. Perhaps it had even been this home’s library once. Books lined shelves which lined two mirroring walls, stacks of even more books piled upon every surface. Correspondence, too, lay about the space, amidst piles of parchment and ink.
Was she some would-be scholar or secret novelist?Never in his life had he seen a bedroom so decidedlyunfeminine. Its sole womanly touch was a small dressing table in one corner, pushed up against more bookshelves, with but a silver hairbrush and hand mirror laid atop.
“You aredespicable.” She spoke without turning, her posture ramrod straight.
“Come now, Elizabeth, surely you did not expect me to?—”
“I expected you to be a man and not an arse!” She whirled about.
He took a step toward her. “I did nothing but speak the truth.”
“Oh yes. After we’d agreed in advance to but a mildly colorful story to set them all aflutter.” Her chest heaved with fury. “Instead, you chose to divulge the infinitely more scandalous, wicked truth. What a lovely wedding gift you have given me, sir.” Her voice dripped venom. “What a ruinous gift you have given my sister as well,” she seethed. “For now all future suitors will undoubtedly consider her justas willing to whore herself in marriage as I so clearly whored myself to you, for your rotten purse!”
Milton hardened. “Do not speak flippantly of whores, Elizabeth, given you are about to marry one.”
Her eyes turned into saucers.
“I also advise you see your intended for how theTonsees me: a degenerate, illegitimate bastard who purchased his title outright, a man so debased he must also purchase himself a wife. And then, Elizabeth, I urge you to imagine such talk as had Inottold Lady Stanton the truth. Imagine, instead, I’d spun some sweet little lie about sweeping you off your feet, of making you fall so in love with me that you were blind to my defects, blind to my very origin. Imagine the rumors then as to your character, Lizzie, for surely theTonwould but deem you an ignorant chit, more foolish than even the lowest scullery who knows better than to allow a man as depraved as myself to seduce her silly.”
He steadied himself. “Would you not rather they know the truth instead? That you acted nobly, honorably, in self-sacrifice to your family? Would you not rather theTonsee you as I did that day, as a woman of character and strength? For I have no intention of allowing society to degrade my future wife, Elizabeth. I warned you marriage to me would not be easy. I would rather be honest now and suffer both your scorn andtheirs, than spin tales that will only come back to hurt our family worse, in years to come.”
***
Elizabeth collapsed onto her bed, her hand gripping her bedpost as the magnitude of his words sank in. She was indeed marrying a degenerate, a scoundrel of the worst sort, and theTonknew it, would letherknow it, and would unfailingly judge and abuse her sister in kind. He was doing her a favor to be so brutal now, even though it hurt like the devil to know she’d be an outcast, Bella treated little better. She’d agreed to this marriage to spare her sister, but it seemed she could not save her. Annabelle would bear the stain of this union too.
Bitter resignation swept through her.
“Lizzie…” He took a step closer.
“Don’t.” She shook her head, refusing to look at him.
“I amsorry,” he told her softly.
“No.” Her eyes met his, her insides quivering. “You are far from sorry, sir. You knew exactly what you were doing when you swindled my father, just as you knew precisely what to say to Lady Stanton and her sisters today. Everything you have done thus far has been calculated with intent. You may be some nobleman’s by-blow, but you clearly have an agenda, and a wicked one at that. I don’t know what it is you intend to accomplish with this marriage, but you care a deal much what society thinks, else you’d not be orchestrating things in such a backhanded manner. And I do not understand your need for what is beginning to feel decidedly like, well, revenge.”
