Madam adjusted Elizabeth’s cracked spectacles on her nose. “I know.” She looked her in the eye through the mirror. “But you will. You’ll marry my boy tomorrow, because Jasper Audrey always gets his way.”
CHAPTER NINE
Madam Audrey herself escorted Elizabeth home in a hansom, having shown her how a little powder could readily hide a bruise. The Baron’s mother thought of everything—except, of course, Elizabeth’s desire to stop this marriage.
The moment she entered her father’s house she marched to his study and laid forth Milton’s character in starkly honest terms. But when this failed to move Papa in the slightest, she decried her betrothed outright, which only seemed to harden her father’s resolve. Before she knew it, Elizabeth was railing at Papa, her nerves sapped of all control. By the end, she fell to her knees to beg him outright, and it was not in her nature to beg.
Still her father refused. He repeated in anger that she was promised to the Baron and nothing she might do or say would change that simple fact.
She suspected he had squandered her blasted bride price already.
Thus, Elizabeth did the only thing left her. She bolted from the townhouse, but her father’s uncouth, new footman dragged her back upstairs, where she was shamefully locked into her room.
In despair, she fell to her bed, Madam Audrey’s words echoing in her head:You’ll marry my boy tomorrow, because Jasper Audrey always gets his way.Only what of her own dreams and desires? Why could Elizabeth never get her way?
When Annabelle was allowed in later with a plate of dinner, the footman locked her inside as well. The awful fellow now stood guard outside Elizabeth’s bedroom on Papa’s purported orders.
She refused the tray of food, scoffing when her sister proclaimed starvation never aided escape.
“Lizzie,” Annabelle leaned close enough to whisper, “I shall come for you tonight after the footman falls asleep. I shall steal his key and release you so we maybothflee Father.”
Tears sprang to Elizabeth’s eyes. “Oh Bella, how I wish…”
Her sister patted her arm with false assurance. “But now tell me of your day, of all that came before Papa locked you up. What is the Baron’s mother like, Lizzie? What did she serve for luncheon?”
Elizabeth wiped dry her tears. “I admit I rather liked her, Bella.”
“That is wonderful news, sister! Only why, then, did you?—?”
“Attempt to call the wedding off?” Elizabeth snorted. “Because I cannot marry that man. He is … horrid.”
“But I thought at times you had enjoyed his company this week?”
“Bella, you cannot imagine how base the Baron is. And I cannot even tell you any details lest I—” She broke off.
Annabelle’s eyes were twin moons of concern. “Lizzie, what are you not telling me?”
Elizabeth shook her head and Bella’s moons slivered into crescents. “What has he done that you cannot tell me, of all people? And why are you wearing powder on your face? What happened to you today? I will not rest until you?—”
“It matters not.” Elizabeth sighed, resigned. “What matters is that you will not be forced to marry the Baron. You will find a better husband than the bastard who will be mine.”
It sounded like a line lifted directly from her story. Did life now imitate art? Had she written her own assault?
Elizabeth shuddered, all appetite fled.
In the dead of night, a form slipped into Elizabeth’s bed, hushing her with lips and hands before she knew her up from down. Her betrothed’s muscle overpowered, but her tongue could still protest, “You’ve no business being here!”
Milton enveloped her more tightly in his arms. “I’ve come to apologize, Lizzie, before it’s too late.”
“Too late?” She harrumphed. “It is indeed too late for you to?—”
He silenced her with his mouth, his kiss sinking deep into her bones, settling there a sweetness that scalded. Then he wrapped his lean frame about her own, tucking her head beneath his chin as he radiated warmth. She was again struck by the same odd sense of safety she’d experienced just that afternoon. Only this time she was not reeling from a stranger’s violence. She was reeling from her betrothed’s molten kisses.
“Elizabeth, I must apologize on the eve of our wedding, because you’ve passed every test I gave you with aplomb. And I was not gentle in my testing. My mother has berated me enough on your behalf for my conscience to burn, yet the trials I set you were necessary.”
Trials?
“The moment we wed, the world will treat you with as much disrespect as it does me, and you shall have to be very braveto withstand it—braver still once children are born. You must defend them against society’s cruelty.”
