My hands flushed. My cheeks followed.
The fine tapestries of woven rust and gold silks I’d installed to give this two-hundred-year-old house new life would be torn up, discarded . . . like me.
A loud curse soared, then a clear complaint about a guest—a Rep? Reynolds? Remington?—his arrival, the servant said was imminent.
Was this a constable from London?
A magistrate from Bow Street?
Or an administrator from the lunatic asylum?
Any of these men could be coming for me.
I shook from the sole of my boots to the collar of my coarse shirt.
They dragged me, the mistress of Hamlin Hall from this place, from Lionel. My jet bombazine mourning gown, once so proper and refined, was wrinkled and stained as they hauled me away.
The servants and Markham, my late husband’s uncle, said I looked crazed, a yellow-eyed loon. I remember sobbing like a lunatic, but the hope in my heart said,Cooperate, all would be well.
All lies. All tricks. All meant to crush me.
I wasn’t going this time, not without a fight.
I was at war—one made for mothers, especially foreign-born women. I had Papa’s knife in my waistband. Forged in gold and white topaz, the pretty thing would be drawn to wave at them. I’d hurl threats and put on a menacing, crazy face.
But could I actually harm or kill anyone?
My father, the Sugar King, should’ve forged a golden gun. Something I could use with slight effort and at an unfeeling distance, not up close, not inches away where I’d see a man’s eyes.
Eyes, like my Lionel’s, were my undoing. They took my battered heart on adventures, somewhere good, where folks were decent, where I was loved for being me.
Blam.
Something fell and broke. It sounded steps away.
A vase?
An ugly sculpture that came with this house of secrets?
“Get the last of her stuff below without breaking anything else. He’ll be comin’ any day. Repington will . . .”
The knocking and man-talk sounded closer.
“Finish up, Lionel. Feed faster.” I whispered this to his thin curls. I bolstered my spine with lass-talk. “My boy, I’ll leave out like I’ve done all week. Another day closer to getting my trust documents to finance our boat trip. Safety, my son. We’ll have it soon.”
A shadow slid across the sill at the door’s bottom.
My lass-talk abandoned ship. My panic rose like the evening tide. There was no other way out of this room. I’d be discovered.
“Law and order, Repington. He’ll take care of theproblem.”
That voice, a roguish Scottish tongue—the drunk butler, one of the many servants who worked at Hamlin these past four years. Was he toying with me? Had he recognized me yesterday and sprung a trap?
The insolent man needed to be flogged with a good island switch, a thick palm frond.
I looked down at the boy suckling at my bosom. “We will win. We’ll be together.”
My babe released a yawn.
