“Timothy,” Mara corrected automatically.
“—you’re not a farmer, you’re a duchess. You should be sipping tea in the parlor, not digging in the dirt in the garden!” A sprig of coiled yellow bounced across Kitty’s cheek as she gave an agitated toss of her head. “Why did you bother to marry Southwick if you’re just going to act as you always did? In case you haven’t noticed, we needn’t forage for our supper anymore.”
A pang went through Mara.
A pang of loss. Of loneliness. Of lingering regret.
“You’re right,” she said, for often it was better to simply agree with her sister than try to argue. If Kitty said the sky was purple, you could either waste your breath trying to change her mind or you could smile, nod, and go about your day. “Would you like to go inside? We’ve a fresh delivery of figs. If you pair them with—”
“What I’d like,” Kitty cut in, “is for you to explain why Lady Graham toldmethat Lady Bishop toldherthat the Baroness of Halifax overheard Lady Cartwright and Mrs. Shipley saying that you are planning to have an affair!”
“What?” Her head spinning—she must have been out in the sun longer than she’d thought—Mara placed her shears in the pail and rose slowly to her feet. She could have sworn she’d heard her sister say... but no. No, that wasn’t possible. “They saidwhat?”
Kitty grimaced. “Please don’t make me repeat it.”
“But...” She bit her bottom lip, a habit born of a childhood in which staying silent was the difference between a careless knock on the side of the head and a bruise that stayed black for days. “But I didn’t tell anyone.”
Her sister’s jaw dropped open. “You mean it’strue?Marabelle!”
“It’s not true. But it’s also notuntrue. I... I need some water.” She went inside with Kitty trailing behind her, firing off a litany of questions that she was incapable of answering. Finding a pitcher of freshly squeezed lemonade in the parlor, she excused the maid and poured a glass for herself, then one for her sister. “We should probably sit,” she said, gesturing at a set of matching blue velvet armchairs. A partially open window admitted a light breeze that cooled her flushed cheeks as she contemplated the best way to explain herself... and her decision.
Adultery, the sheer betraying act of it, was not something that Mara would haveeverconsidered under normal circumstances. But there was nothing normal about being rushed into a marriage to a man who intimidated her, enduring a wedding night that had terrified her, and being subsequently abandoned at a castle that had never felt like home.
For nearly two years she’d waited here.
She’d grown lonely here.
She’dwitheredhere, like a rose left too long on the branch. Yearning, though yearning for what, precisely, she couldn’t say. But she knew in her heart, in the depths of her being, that it wasn’t this. That whatever she was meant to do with her life, itwasn’t this. She had not survived the death of her mother and the abuse of her father to settle for isolation and desertion. For long days and even longer nights. Alone. Forgotten.
Forsaken.
“He never should have asked me to marry him,” she said quietly, scratching at a spot of dirt on her skirt with her nail.
“What? Speak up,” Kitty demanded. “You know I hate it when you mumble.”
“Ambrose.” Just speaking his name out loud made her tongue thicken and the tiny hairs on her nape tingle.
Ambrose Pierce Nathaniel Buxton, 6th Duke of Southwick.
A more domineering man she’d never met. When he had first approached her at the Glendale Ball, she’d assumed it was some sort of jest. Even a cruel prank. Then he’d asked her to dance, and who was she to refuse a duke? Swirling around in his arms, with every pair of eyes in the room pinned on her, she’d felt curiously weightless. As if her feet weren’t quite touching the ground. Before she was able to fully catch her breath, the dance was over and he was gone. Until he materialized at her doorstep the next evening, an enormous bouquet of tulips in hand, to take her to the theater. They sat high in a box where more people watched them than the stage, and after the play was over, he kissed her.
Her, Lady Marabelle Holden, of average appearance and little to no social consequence.
It happened again the next day when he invited her on a carriage ride through Hyde Park. Kitty had come along as chaperone and had chattered away like a magpie the entire time while Mara had stared nervously at her lap, hardly daring to lift her chin and steal a peek at the man across from her for fear that if she did it would all turn out to be some elaborate illusion. Except it wasn’t, and it didn’t, because he kissed her once more in Kensington Gardens, the memory of which still made her blush whenever she summoned it. Finally, he kissed her on their wedding day. Right on the mouth, for everyone in attendance to see. Hardly more than a brush, really, but oh, how her knees had quivered! In part from the shock of what was happening, but a little bit... a little bit because back then, she’d still fancied herself half in love with him.
Now she knew better.
“You’re talking nonsense,” Kitty scoffed. “Of course you should have married him. He’s aduke, Mara.”
Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she brought the lemonade to her lips and took a sip. “But he doesn’t love me. I don’t think he haseverloved me. Nor I... nor I him. Not in a real way. Not in a way that counted.”
“Love?” Her sister’s laugh was sharp and far too cynical for a woman of her age and beauty. “What does love have to do with marriage? Absolutely nothing,” she replied before Mara could respond. “It’s a fairytale spun up by those who didn’t have to hide when they heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. Love is useless. Love is weakness. Love is what we should avoid, not strive for. Father loved Mama, and what did that get her? What did that getus?”
A rush of chills pressed ghostly fingertips down the length of Mara’s spine. “Nothing,” she whispered, but that wasn’t completely true. Love, or at least their father’s ill, twisted version of it, had got them plenty.
Bruises. Beatings. Brutality. Cowering behind doors and under beds with her hand pressed flush against Kitty’s small mouth so that her sister wouldn’t scream out and reveal their hiding place. Biting her tongue so hard that it bled and then crying herself to sleep with the taste of blood, wet and metallic, flooding her mouth. Silent tears, she reminded herself. Always silent, or elsehewould come.
The monster who had killed their mother in the name of love.
