Instead she straightened her shoulders and took a deep, steadying breath, and…she climbed into his waiting carriage. Either she understood her predicament better than he thought, or she had more mettle than he’d expected of her. She sat, stiffly, staring straight ahead, and for all that she had managed to smooth her features into something approximating polite disinterest, he could see the rapid flutter of her pulse at her throat. She had to be terrified, but she was hiding it better than he’d expected.
Somehow it wasn’t that awful scene in Andover’s library that had affected him. It wasn’t the way her face had paled as she had realized exactly what it was that he’d demanded. It wasn’t even the brief flinch she had given as Andover had disclaimed her.
It was the tense set of her shoulders, the perfectly proper arrangement of her limbs beneath the bland white muslin of her gown, and the effort she put into pretending that nothing was amiss. Like a dignified little queen going to the gallows, and he had looped the noose about her neck. Or her father had—but the distinction was irrelevant. In any case, it created an awkward and unwanted sort of pressure in his chest. Not guilt, precisely, but more the distinct impression that the stains upon his soul had just grown a full shade darker.
It didn’t matter, of course. But he swore beneath his breath as he climbed into the carriage, slinging himself into the seat across from her.
She did not look at him. Though her eyes were fixed in his direction, they looked through him instead, as if she could simply ignore him straight to perdition. Still, she started when the door closed, and when the carriage lurched into motion, her eyes darted to him as if she thought to defend herself against an inevitable attack.
“For God’s sake, I’ve no intention of ravishing you in a carriage, Mouse,” he found himself snapping, unreasonably irritated. He watched her steel herself, recover her briefly-shattered composure, pin her shoulders back anew. In the low light, with just slivers of sunlight peeking through the window curtains, her grey eyes glowed silver.
She said, “Serena.”
“What?”
“My name. It’s Serena. Lady Serena Tyndall.” Her chin lifted, and this time she looked him in the eye. Her gaze was clear and uncompromising. Even though her pulse still pounded in her throat, even if her hands had knotted in her lap, somehow she managed to summon up enough courage to look him straight in the eye. More men than she could possibly know had tried and failed to do just that, but she—the woman whose life had just minutes ago crashed down around her at his hand, as easily as nudging a vase off a table—she looked him in the eye and did not flinch.
Interesting. It had been more than a handful of years since last he had been wrong in his estimation of anyone. But he suspected there was a chance that he just might have been hasty in his judgment of Lady Serena Tyndall.
“I apologize if I’ve given you the impression that I care what your name is,” he said. “I don’t. You’re a means to an end, Mouse. Nothing more.”
The minutest of frowns etched itself between her wheaten blonde brows. “Fair enough,” she said. “Still, I won’t answer to Mouse.”
“I beg to differ. You’ll answer to anything I choose to call you. That’s the purpose of a mistress, Mouse. To be obliging—and anything else I desire of you.”
“Then you should not have chosen me,” she said, and he was again surprised by the snap in her voice. Perhaps he could attribute it to the stress of her situation but...he suspected that it had only loosened the reins, freed that flare of temper that under normal circumstances she might’ve been able to smother to mere embers.
She continued, “As you said yourself, my lord, I have no particular skills. I have no experience with…with this”—a careless gesture of her hand, which he assumed was meant to encompass the entirety of their situation—“and you don’t even like me.”
“I don’t need to like you for that, Mouse.” But he thought he might have acquired just the tiniest shred of respect for her. Which was damned uncomfortable. He leaned back against the seat and inquired, “Would you care to plead for your virtue? Appeal to my better nature?”
“I don’t believe you have a better nature, and would it do me any good?” she asked, caustically now, warming to her mood.
“No.”
“Then I shall spare myself any more humiliation, thank you.” And she turned her head sharply away—a direct cut.
Grey cleared his throat to camouflage an astonished laugh. How long had it been since he had last been tempted to laugh in genuine amusement? He doubted it had been her intention—not in her present, well-deserved pique—but she had done it all the same, and he wondered what she would think if she knew of it.
Not much, likely. Still, even if her present demeanor was all contrived bravado, she was…interesting. He held her life in the palm of his hand, and she had snapped at him—which had been as surprising as being bitten by a butterfly. And people, in general, had long since ceased to surprise him. The guise of the timid little mouse might mask something else altogether.
She might not bend. And he wasn’t altogether certain how he would manage her if she did not.
The thought was sobering. What the hell had he been thinking? Of course she would bend. Everyone bent, eventually, given the right provocation—he had only to ferret out her weaknesses, and she, too, would crumble beneath the pressure.
To allow anything else would be a weakness on his part.
“Listen well, Mouse,” he said, lounging back in deliberate insouciance. “You’ll be treated well enough if you endeavor to please me, but do not make the mistake of thinking that you hold any power. Your value to me is in the shame your ruination brings to your father. I expect that you will play your part well, and I can personally guarantee that you will not like the results if you fail to meet my expectations. Am I understood?”
She ignored him a fraction of a second too long, and he leaned forward once again and seized her chin, turning her face toward him. “Am I understood?” he asked again, and this time he let a thread of menace seep into his voice.
“Yes,” she snapped at last. Beneath his fingertips he could feel a fine tremor take her, a fearful reaction she could not mask, could not control. And still her eyes blazed at him, her fury no less incandescent for her fear.
Another unwilling sliver of admiration, surrendered to her despite himself. God help him, he didn’t want to end up liking the chit.
The moment he released her chin, she jerked her face away once again, muttering something beneath her breath that sounded suspiciously like “definitely eats babies.”
Absent her attention once again, Grey allowed himself a ghost of a smile.
∞∞∞
The carriage slowed to a stop outside a stately townhouse, all mullioned windows and graceful columns, and Serena found herself somewhat surprised by it. Her mind had envisioned a darker domain for the marquess—a decrepit castle, perhaps, shrouded in an eternal fog and wreathed in constant lightning. Perhaps there would be a colony of bats, and a general aura of depravity.
And perhaps evil wears prettiness as easily as ugliness.
She could still feel the imprint of his fingers on her chin, her cheek—a touch that had seared her even through his gloves.
The marquess didn’t bother to hand her down; he simply grabbed his hat—which had seemed a superfluous accessory to her, since he had not bothered to don it—in one hand and stepped down from the carriage, leaving her behind to fend for herself. She could not decide whether he was ignorant of etiquette or simply chose to disregard it—though both seemed equally likely as well as alarming. He seemed to occupy a nebulous space between feral and civil, listing toward one or the other depending upon his mood.
“Mrs. Hathaway!”
The booming shout startled Serena, who had only just alighted from the carriage. Currently, feral seemed to be winning out, given that she knew absolutely no gentleman who would even think of raising his voice in such a manner.
Rather than risk catching the attention of any passersby who happened to be lurking around the residence, Serena scampered toward the door and into the house, past a baffled butler, and out of the line of sight. Pressing one hand over her heart in the hopes that it would settle into a normal rhythm once again, she took a deep breath and looked around.
“This is your home?” She blurted the words out without thinking, and regretted it when his attention was drawn to her once more.
“Had you imagined I would take you to someone else’s home?” the marquess inquired acidly.
“No, I—I only thought—well, it’s quite lovely.” But the charm of the gorgeous mahogany balustrades lining the staircase and the intricate wainscoting that marched across the baseboards quite lost their luster when she weighed their allure against the demon to whom they belonged.
He made a noncommittal sound in his throat. “I suppose you expected something more dour. A castle, perhaps, half in ruins.”
With a great number of gargoyles and a rusting wrought-iron gate, situated upon a lonely moor and stewing in its own rot and decay. But she could hardly admit as much.
As she struggled for an appropriate response, he turned once again and bellowed a second time, “Mrs. Hathaway!”
Serena winced, her gaze sliding toward the butler, who pointedly looked down at his feet. A moment later, a harried-looking woman bustled into the room.
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “My apologies. I was in the stillroom—”
“Please show Mouse to a suitable room,” the marquess interrupted, flicking an indifferent hand toward Serena.
“Of course, my lord.” Mrs. Hathaway dipped a curtsey. “Miss Mouse, if you please—”
“It’s Miss Tyndall,” Serena said, and then flushed at having allowed herself to be flustered enough to make such a stupid statement. “It’s lady, actually—Lady Serena Tyndall. And I shan’t be staying, so there is no need.”
Everyone froze—everyone but her, as if a winter chill had slid through the room and encompassed the lot of them.
“Mouse,” said the marquess, his voice deceptively light. “I believe you’ve just countermanded me before my staff.” Peril hung thick in the air, the tension pervading the foyer impossible to ignore.
There should be a general air of pathos, and a ghost or two—perhaps of prior ill-fated mistresses—bemoaning their fates as they stalk shadowed halls at midnight.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, forcing the words out between clenched teeth. “It is only that I shouldn’t like to make more work for your housekeeper.”
Silence. He canted his head to one side and looked at her—only looked, but she felt the weight of it as if it had been a blow. “I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning,” he said at last.
And all at once it occurred to her—he intended for her to stay here. In his house. She had assumed he had planned for the sort of arrangement that ladies were not supposed to know about, where he would put her up in a tidy little house of her own and visit her at his convenience. Where she might have days and days to herself, weeks, perhaps, between visits.
She took a reflexive step backward. “You cannot mean to house me here.”
“Can I not, then?”
“It isn’t done.” She had never heard of such a thing, never imagined that anyone would step so far beyond the bounds of propriety.
He said, “Feh.” Just that, a scathing little sound. And then he turned his attention back to the housekeeper, Mrs. Hathaway. “As I said—show Mouse to her room.”
Mrs. Hathaway nodded, her coppery hair bound in a bun at the back of her head bobbing enthusiastically along with her. “Of course, my lord. My lady, if you will follow me?”
There was nothing for it but to follow along, then. But she had put only one foot upon the stairs when the marquess cleared his throat, demanding Serena’s attention once again.
“I have made you a gift of my patience for this moment alone, Mouse,” he said. “Do not countermand me again.”
Serena fled up the stairs and felt the prick of that gaze like a knife between her shoulder blades the entire way, and she realized that there was no need at all for the house to cloak itself in misery and menace.
Not when its master performed that role well enough on his own.
Chapter Four
As far as prisons went, Serena supposed her room was pleasant enough. Of course she had little experience of them, but she could not imagine that Newgate would have provided its residents with anything close to what graced the room that was to be hers for the foreseeable future.
A four-poster bed, likely twice the size of her own, dominated the space, with thick bed curtains carefully drawn back to display the voluminous green velvet counterpane. The furniture was heavy, formed of a dark, gleaming wood that she suspected received a frequent, healthy polishing to maintain its glowing shine. A door on the right wall likely led to a dressing room of sorts—though what was meant to be held within, she didn’t know, considering that everything she had owned in the world had been left behind.
She had only the clothes on her back and nothing more.
The reality of her situation crashed down around her once again, and she felt her knees tremble. Staggering to the massive bed, she braced one arm upon it and sat heavily, resenting the way she sank into the counterpane and the soft mattress beneath it.
It was so unfair.
It was so unfair to have her life stripped away from her, to lose everything to which she had once been entitled in one fell swoop through no action of her own. She didn’t even know why, or how. There was only the knowledge that, barely an hour ago, she had been a lady, and now she was—something less than that. So much less.
Well. It didn’t bear thinking about. Certainly it would change nothing. She had been lost the moment the earl had called her down to his library. Or even before that, if the marquess was to be believed.
You sold her from the cradle, he had said, and she didn’t even know what it meant.
It was an unpleasant fact of life that ladies were seldom involved in anything that the gentlemen in their lives considered not to be of concern to them. Her role had always been one of subservience; she had been expected to obey first her father and then be transferred into her husband’s keeping, where her obedience would then be given unto him. Her own opinions were immaterial, unnecessary.
Now there would be no husband, and if she should chance to encounter her father in public, she had little doubt that he would refuse to acknowledge her. One did not, after all, acknowledge women of light virtue—irrespective of the fact that the choice had not been hers, that it had been made for her, just as every other decision in her life had never really been hers.
She had been taught the pianoforte because it was expected for wives to fill their husbands’ lives with music; she painted watercolors because it was simply what ladies did. She danced because grace and poise were prized among the nobility, and she toiled away at embroidery because there was little enough else to fill a lady’s hours except pointless, contrived distractions.
But the marquess had pronounced all her efforts without worth, and it had surprised her how much that judgment had wounded her. They were not, after all, hobbies that she had chosen for herself—they were simply the things that ladies were expected to do, and it was doubly unfair for him to denigrate her efforts when they had been chosen for her.
It had never occurred to her how very fragile her life had been, how easily everything she had once enjoyed could be snatched from her grasp and crushed in callous fingers. Her status, her reputation—everything—had been only a house erected of playing cards, and it had caved in the space of a single breath.
She stared down at her hands, positioned just so on her lap. Hands that had never known a minute of labor that had not consisted of brush strokes or the threading of a needle through pristine white fabric—hands that had always been soft and white, built for nothing more than turning the pages of a book or writing let
ters or producing beautiful musical notes.
And they seemed somehow so very weak. Useless, as the marquess had said. Too weak to change her fate, to construct anything valuable from the ashes of her ruined life. Too delicate even to lift herself out of despair, to snatch at some semblance of stability. How cruel it was to realize one’s deficiencies only when it was too late to correct them, too late to serve any true purpose.
Everything she had once possessed had slipped through her fingers like water, and she had let it happen. What was left to hold on to?
She wasn’t certain how long she had sat in silence, doing nothing more than pondering what was left of her, but eventually there was a knock at the door, and she realized with a start that the light had been fading for some time, that she had simply sat in silence for hours.
A wild, terrifying thought galloped through her mind—it was him, and the time was now, and every single muscle in her body locked into painful, horrified rigidity.
But then another knock followed, and a soft, feminine voice called out, “My lady?”
The tension dissolved in a rush. A reprieve—for how long, she didn’t know, but a reprieve nonetheless. “Enter,” she called back, wincing as her voice trembled between octaves.
A moment later the door opened, and an influx of light from the hallway singed her eyes, and a woman sailed into the room, silhouetted in the light behind her. A maid, Serena supposed—perhaps a little older than herself, her dark hair wound into a neat, elegant style.
“My goodness,” the woman said briskly. “My lady, have you been sitting here in the dark all this time?”
Of course she had, but it seemed too pitiful a thing to admit to. Serena scrambled for a response that wouldn’t make her sound like a hand-wringing damsel in a wretched Gothic novel, but before she could produce one, there was a curious rustling sound near the fireplace, then the sharp sound of flint striking steel, and the glitter of embers sparking to life. In just a few moments there was a bright-burning blaze, casting the room in cheery glow.
The Scandal of the Season Page 3