Page 16
“Now, what is it you wish to tell me?” Mr. Rutland asked, glancing at the French gilt-bronze and pink-marble mantel clock. “My daughter should return shortly, and I’m late for a cricket game.”
Cricket?
Something very near disgust turned Purity’s belly over. Such were the priorities of the elite. She didn’t shy away from his direct gaze.
“I found Bernadine weeping inconsolably. I overheard Miss Sommerville berating her in the vilest way. She was unaware that I was in the hidden garden.”
His raven eyebrows slashed together, and his well-molded mouth lashed downward.
“What, precisely, did she say?”
Purity gazed past him, concentrating on recalling exactly what Miss Sommerville had said. She was not a tattlemonger and would not embellish the telling.
“She called Bernadine a ‘rotten little bratling. An ugly, miserable, motherless urchin who deserved to get lost.’”
With each word she uttered, Mr. Rutland’s face grew tauter and more menacing.
He was, without a doubt, livid.
Pray God at Miss Sommerville and not her.
“Is that all?” The three syllables crackled with repressed outrage.
Purity suddenly wished it were all. Nevertheless, she bolstered her courage and forged onward.
“No.”
Shaking her head, she suppressed an irritated groan when another tendril slipped free of its pin. If she were permitted to wear her hair with curls framing her face as was the fashion, she wouldn’t regularly be re-pinning the stubborn things.
“Well?” Mr. Rutland prompted in a tone that lifted the hairs on the back of her neck straight up.
What was it about this man that set her senses on high alert?
Bracing herself for his wrath, Purity said in a breathless rush, “She called Bernadine a horrid little red-haired daughter of the devil.”
Mr. Rutland said something beneath his breath that sounded very much like a vulgar oath.
He needed to know, but that didn’t make the telling more agreeable.
“And Miss Sommerville said she’d lock Bernadine in her room again for three days with only bread and water to eat because she’d been disobedient and insolent.”
At that, the angular planes of Mr. Rutland’s face turned to granite. His eyes narrowed into flinty slits as he stared beyond her toward the window seat covered in an assortment of garish pillows.
This was a man one did not want as an enemy.
A man she did not want as an adversary.
Purity almost felt afraid on Miss Sommerville’s behalf. Except, she didn’t think Mr. Rutland was a violent man. He had every right to be furious at his daughter’s treatment.
Unlike her friend Roxina Danforth, Purity wasn’t the wagering sort. However, had she been inclined, she would’ve staked her savings that Miss Sommerville would not be remaining at Mottford Hall much longer. Or in the employ of Mr. Rutland either.
As it should be.
No person who treated a child with such contempt and cruelty should be permitted near them.
“Pray tell me,” Mr. Rutland inquired with a derisive half-smile. “Why should I believe you, Miss Mayfield?”
I have told you before. I am not marrying some flibbertigibbet with a fat dowry and prestigious lineage so that you can boast about your connections. I know my grandfather was an earl. I do not care. Evidently, you didn’t either when you wed a commoner against his wishes.
