Her husband had been too cruel; Elizabeth’s life would nevermore be hers. Week two of her ill-begotten marriage and already all hope dashed. Destroyed.
Yet she’d weep no more, because Baron of Milton did not matter anymore. Nothing he could do or say to her would matter, for she was done trying.Done.
She rolled over in her bed to ease her aching buttocks. The Duchess of Allendale had been absurd to think love might ever enter into such a union as was hers, for her husband was beyond redemption. He’d beaten her with the same implement he used to underscore his sums, as if she were but another line in his accounts. Which she undeniably was.
There was no coming back from such an act. She had to find another way to exist in this world—hisworld. A way which excluded him from her day-to-day life as much as humanly possible.
Yet what world was that?
She pondered her predicament while she shifted her sore bottom once again. Her writing—books—might offer her salvation. They had with Papa. She might escape her rotten husband not in defiance of his orders but by escaping intoworlds he could not touch, stories he could not bend to his will. Journeys she, alone, might travel in her mind, where the awful Baron could not follow.
Elizabeth willed herself to get out of bed and start the day. Before breakfast even arrived she stood—rather than sat—at her escritoire to write. She must find a way to withstand the brute, because she was too weak to withstand his beatings.
Milton owned her flesh, but he would never own her soul.
She focused on her story, making the brooding villain pay for his evil ways. She tortured him with ink, the only weapon she might wield. He would pay for his transgressions, suffer for all his sins, before he died an ignoble death mourned by none. He’d not harm the heroine again, because in the end, she would save herself, brilliantly.
As she scrawled words across the parchment a fat tear smudged her ink. Elizabeth blotted it with a curse, but then another fell,plop.
She used her kerchief to wipe her eyes, then sniffed and squared her shoulders. Once the page dried, she would simply write over the stains.
“Jasper, you are a blighter and a cad.” Li glared at him, her ink-black eyes matching her indigo-black hair. “You cannot take a ruler to a blueblood’s backside and think she will forgive you.”
“Now that is not entirely true, Li,” Milton answered. “I’ve taken a cane to many a?—”
“Jasper, I am talking about an innocent young woman, not those depraved sods from theTonwho beg you to beat them so they feel something again. Your wife feels in abundance, allthe time, in ways you clearly found appealing until you had the terrific bad sense to beat all feeling out of her.”
Milton winced.
“This will require a deal more groveling than gifts. Frankly, she may never come back to you after such mistreatment. I warned you not to marry the eldest. I told you to?—”
“Yes,yes!Li, I married the wrong goddamn girl and now I’ve injured the wrong goddamn girl too. That is not why I am here, and it is not the first I’ve had to eat humble pie before your royal highness.”
Her frown became a scowl, because very few people on this continent would darecall her that, and he was unfortunate enough to be one of them.
“I will admit you are a loyal idiot, else I would not tolerate you at all.” Li’s mouth pinched. “I will speak with her, as should you.”
“And say what? That I am sorry I beat her like I’d not beat my own dog? That I can’t promise it won’t happen again?” He snorted his disgust. “That I am a man so broken and despicable I cannot bear to tolerate the very spirit of defiance which draws me to her like a moth to flame?”
Li coolly stared him in the eye. “Yes, to start, you might say exactly that. And a good many other things. You married her, after all, so you are stuck with her. And if you’d rather not spend the rest of your life in icy détente with a wife youchose, Jasper, then revealing something of yourself, your past, is the only way she might begin to thaw.”
Milton shut his eyes, in pain.
“I have known women like Elizabeth Winthrop, and they cannot be bought with expensive, pretty baubles. Woo her with depth, with the language of the books you say she admires. You may have mastered her flesh, but to master her soul requires more nuanced work.”
“I do not want a wife to bework, Li.” He ground his teeth.
“Then you chose unwisely, natterhead.” She smacked him hard with her fan.
“Ow!”
“Go home, Jasper, and determine your own way out of this mess. I’ve my own messes to deal with. I don’t need you complicating my life.”
“Li, surely I do not complicate. Surely I do but?—”
“Amuse, sir?” She smiled so coquettishly, so like the Li he’d known once long ago, that for an instant memories flooded back.
“No,mon cher,” she told him, the moment dissolving like mist. “You no longer amuse, you abuse my counsel. Now get out of my shop and see that your wife grows to love you as I do.” She cracked her ivory fan across his nose once more, sashaying from the room in her long red skirts, just like a princess would.
