by Mia Vincy
I’ll make an even better widow, Arabella didn’t say.
No. She did not have the luxury of speaking her mind. She must parrot the right words, or lose everything. One did not vex the man who held one’s future in his hands.
“You are too kind,” she did say.
Over his shoulder, Arabella spied her mother, ostensibly in conversation with a friend, but one eye on Arabella and Sculthorpe.
Dear Mama, so lovely in her ermine-trimmed Queen of Hearts costume, her face serene under the red-and-gold turban perched on her dark hair. Arabella didn’t want to disappoint her parents, or scheme and manipulate and lie. She didn’t want to stay unmarried. She asked only to be granted her birthright, and to choose her own husband, someone who respected her for what she was, in contrast to those who criticized her for what she was not.
Then she would pretend, she decided. She would pretend that Sculthorpe was not Papa’s choice. And as for Sculthorpe’s whisper during a waltz a few months ago, those words that made her skin crawl so she could scarcely bear to think of them? Perhaps she had misheard or misunderstood. It was one thing to pride herself on solving her own problems; it was quite another to invent problems that were not there.
“You were speaking with Lord Hardbury,” Sculthorpe said. “You know that he and I do not get along.”
“I am aware,” Arabella replied. “But it seemed preferable that Lord Hardbury and I deal with our history immediately, that we might leave it in the past.”
“Admirable,” he said. “You are a very admirable…”
He paused, as though seeking the right word. Arabella’s breath caught. Don’t say it, don’t say it.
“…lady,” he finished.
He hadn’t said it. She was mistaken.
“Your mother was telling me that your hobby is producing books,” Sculthorpe went on amiably. “A publisher here in London prints them at your commission.”
“It is very satisfying. I began by creating my father’s ornithology journals when I was sixteen.”
“As she said. Every bird-fancier in the world is familiar with your father’s journals, but I had not realized it was you who edits and compiles the convention papers. You truly are an accomplished…”
Don’t say it.
“Lady,” he finished. “What are you working on now?”
“My first color book: An Illustrated Guide to the Vindale Aviaries. Papa’s aviaries have become famous, and we receive many visitors and requests for information.” After a pause, she added, “I have a fondness for reading essays, and mean to commission writers on a variety of topics for future books. It is my belief that every lady should engage in a worthwhile pastime.”
“I agree. I look forward to whatever books you publish in the future.”
There. Sculthorpe would not be an interfering husband. She studied her wineglass, turning it between her fingers. Her forearm still bore traces from the ribbon, the lingering sensation of Guy’s callused thumb soothing the pink lines.
Something caught her eye: the end of Sculthorpe’s cigar, falling to the grass. He ground it out under one boot heel. When she lifted her head, she found herself looking right into his eyes, blue-gray and flicking back and forth.
“Miss Larke, you will forgive my directness, but I am a direct man, and you are a practical lady, and neither of us is given to foolish sentiments. I am too modest to make a scene in public, and too impatient to wait until we can be alone. Might I ask if my hopes are to be realized, and you will do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
As proposals went, it was what she might have expected. She did not want him, but neither did she want to lose everything. So, ignoring the sick hollow in her gut, Arabella looked her fate right in the eye, and said, “Of course, my lord.”
He lifted her knuckles to his lips. Arabella let him do it. She did not throw her wine in his face, or smash her glass over his head, or punch him in the jaw. She was doing very well.
Without releasing her, he twisted toward Mama, who looked at him right away.
Lord Sculthorpe bowed to Mama.
Mama glanced at Arabella.
Arabella nodded at Mama.
Then Mama nodded at Sculthorpe.
And like that, it was done.
Arabella was engaged.
“You are not pleased?” Sculthorpe still held her hand, a small smile playing around his lips.
“I am excessively pleased.”
“You don’t smile.”
This was true: She did not smile.
His own smile broadened. He really was very handsome. More handsome than Guy. Lucky her: a handsome husband.
“How proud you are,” he murmured, each word slinking from his mouth, and that lewd gleam she recalled—it slithered into his eyes, and he was not handsome, not anymore. Arabella tugged at her hand, but he clasped it tight, slid a fingertip over her palm. If only she had worn gloves, but Roman goddess costumes did not come with gloves. If only her skin did not crawl. If only the silver snake on her arm could come to life and tear out his throat.
No. She was being melodramatic. That was foolish. Arabella was never melodramatic. Or foolish.
But that look did not leave Sculthorpe’s eye, as, at his leisure, he dropped her hand.
“Such a proud…”
Don’t say it.
“Fierce…”
No. Stop.
“Willful…”
Don’t say it.
“Virgin.”
He said it. The same word he had murmured months earlier, during a waltz.
It’s a harmless word, she told herself, but her prickly body ignored her, for the unease came not from his words but from his eyes, from that knowing, possessive leer that crawled over her, as if her bracelet truly had come alive, a real snake coiled around her arm, its cold-blooded scales slithering over her skin and down her spine and into her swirling gut.
Around her, the party grew oppressively loud. Arabella escaped Sculthorpe’s leer by looking into the crowd, where flames rose in hellish columns and an acrobat cartwheeled past, his grinning face a mask of horror. A pair of female rope dancers leaped up—high—so high—too far—they’d fall. Her breath caught, awaiting disaster. No disaster: They landed on the rope, their feet sure.
Arabella breathed. The noise receded. The snake bracelet was just a bracelet, and the crowd was just a crowd, and Sculthorpe was just a man. She had not eaten enough; that would account for the nausea.
If Lord Sculthorpe had noticed her reaction, he gave no sign as Mama joined them.
“Lady Belinda, I do hope that you and my betrothed will not run straight back to the countryside,” he said. “It would be my great pleasure to escort the pair of you to the military review next week. Miss Larke will enjoy watching the soldiers, as she is about to marry one.”
“Of course, my lord,” Mama said.
“I shall send ’round a note.”
With a gallant bow and a “Good evening, ladies,” he left them.
Arabella did not watch him go. Instead, she sipped her wine. The nausea eased. Perhaps she would take up drinking. Something to look forward to.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mama said.
Arabella sipped more wine. “No.”
“Lord Sculthorpe assured me that he will never interfere with your interests or movements. No ladies report ill of him. The exception is that matter with Lord Hardbury all those years ago—though neither of them had their titles back then—but the woman in question was a courtesan, and she entered into a contract with Lord Sculthorpe of her own will.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
Papa would have checked his finances. Mama was checking his social standing. Sculthorpe would not mistreat her.
And it was only a word. Arabella was a virgin, and had always expected to remain so until marriage. Sculthorpe would be her husband; therefore, her virginity was for him. Technically, he was not wrong in calling her his virgin.
Yet he spoke as if the fact of her
virginity excited him, as nothing else about her did.
Guy had looked at her lips and she had looked at his, and she had enjoyed his closeness, though the Spanish Inquisition could not impel her to admit it. Guy had insulted her, and she had insulted him in return, and not once had she felt diminished or demeaned.
Yet one true word from Sculthorpe left her unsettled. How could she allow a man to exercise such power over her that a single look could make her sick with fear? Surely, she should be able to laugh him off, deliver a set-down, put him in his place, as she had done to so many other men over the years. Her rational mind told her this, but it seemed another, less rational part lurked inside her. Her rational mind could insist that Sculthorpe was honorable, charming, and heroic; this secret part of her stepped out of the shadows to insist that he was not. What was this hidden part of her mind, and how did it know things that the rest of her did not?
The wine was no longer helping, so Arabella handed the glass to a passing servant and willed herself to touch the bracelet on her arm. Her eyes drifted back to the rope dancers, their feet on the ground, resting after their finale.
“Arabella?” Mama said, seeing too much. “Lord Sculthorpe has not given you cause for alarm?”
“He seems to display an interest in my…virtue.”
Mama frowned, considering. “Of course a peer requires virtue in his bride to be sure his sons are his own, but I am surprised he would insult you by questioning it.”
“He did not question it. He rather took it for granted.”
“If a man describes a lady as virtuous, that is a compliment. I would not expect him to mention it directly, but Lord Sculthorpe is a directly spoken man and he admires your practical nature.”
“Yes, he said that too.”
Arabella didn’t know what else to say. No doubt she was overreacting, some childish trick of her fancy because she resented not having her own choice. Perhaps these were the small intimacies that developed between husband and wife. She had educated herself in the mechanics of intercourse, but she knew nothing of intimacy or desire. She hated not knowing. She hated that Sculthorpe knew something about her that she did not. She hated that no book would provide an explanation.
“Lord Sculthorpe is a good match,” Mama said. “Had you formed an attachment to another man, it might have been different, but you have only ever insisted that you were promised to Lord Hardbury, although your mutual animosity was clear from a young age. And just think,” Mama added, a radiant glow stealing over her face, “the sooner you and Lord Sculthorpe marry, the sooner you could be a mother. I would be a grandmother.”
Arabella liked the idea of having children, of watching her mother with them. “Yes, Mama.”
Mama squeezed her hand and returned to her friends. Arabella moved inside, in search of her own friend, but first, she slid the silver snake off her arm and presented it to the rope dancers as a gift.
Neither Freddie nor Miss Treadgold seemed to notice Guy approaching the fountain where they were seated.
Miss Treadgold was chatting, apparently to herself, for Freddie was staring at nothing. Her expression was reassuringly familiar: odd, dreamy Freddie, the child who rarely listened and was always wandering off. Sometimes, she would forget to wander back, and they had to search for her. Once, they had found her up a tree, and Guy needed all his ingenuity to get her down again; when he had asked her how she got up there, she shrugged and said she didn’t know.
Fondness swelled his chest. She was a young woman now, true, and a stranger of sorts, yet undeniably his little sister. Freed from their father’s tyranny, they’d be a proper family at last.
Miss Treadgold noticed him first. Her big brown eyes widened in her pretty, heart-shaped face and she fell silent, her lips forming an O. When Guy bowed, she jumped to her feet and curtsied, her cheeks turning a becoming shade of pink, her brown ringlets bouncing.
Courtesy out of the way, Guy turned to his sister. “Freddie.”
She didn’t respond.
He tried again, more loudly, arms wide, ready for her to grin, to squeal and launch herself into his arms. “Freddie?”
“Yes?” Freddie turned toward him, smiling vaguely. “Oh, good evening, Guy,” she said, and went back to her thoughts.
Guy let his arms fall. Well. No embrace then. Right. He nodded, managed something like a laugh.
“Lord Hardbury, we are honored that you joined us,” Miss Treadgold said. “Lady Frederica has been so looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Yes,” he agreed dryly. “Her enthusiasm is evident in the way she greeted me as if we last saw each other at breakfast this morning.”
“She does tend to daydream, and we always— Oh, but we’ve not been introduced!”
She slapped a hand over her mouth, looking as mortified as if she had stumbled into his bedchamber at night.
“It hardly matters.” Guy leaned toward her and added in a conspiratorial tone, “Let’s pretend.”
“But the rules of etiquette, my lord! Whatever must you think of me?”
“What I think, Miss Treadgold, is that your aunt married my father, so we do not need an introduction. I also think you are very becoming.”
Even her coquetry was becoming. Perhaps it was simply her pleasant sweetness in contrast to Arabella, so vibrant and demanding and ruthless. He was uncomfortably aware that Arabella was right: Miss Treadgold nicely matched his image of the ideal bride.
She blinked her long lashes. “My lord, you and Lady Frederica have much to discuss, after so many years apart. I shall leave you together.”
Bobbing another curtsy, Miss Treadgold left. Guy twisted to watch her go, but through the crowd, his eyes landed on Arabella, talking to… Hell, was that Sculthorpe? He turned back to Freddie, who was studying a pair of acrobats.
“Do you prefer to be called Frederica now?” he asked her.
“Lady Treadgold prefers to call me Frederica. Lady Frederica,” she said absently. “Freddie is a man’s name and not becoming on a lady, Lady Treadgold says.”
“You can choose what people call you,” Guy said. “You don’t have to do everything they say.”
Freddie said nothing. An indifferent stranger. Perhaps he could have done things differently, but as a confused, angry twenty-year-old, leaving England had seemed his only choice.
Guy dropped onto the wall beside her, the mist from the fountain cooling his neck and arms. He absently arranged his skirt over his knees, watching the partygoers, picking out familiar faces, reminding himself of names.
With every hour back in England, the years of his exile became more removed, his adventures as remote as if he had read them in another man’s journal. Despite everything, he had enjoyed his adventures, relished the freedom he could never know in England. Upon his return to London, he had worn out his comfortable boots rediscovering the city on foot. As for the time spent chasing Sir Walter from one country house to another— For all Guy’s complaints, it had felt good to ride through the familiar countryside. It had felt good to stop in a village inn for a pie and a pint and a chat about the crops.
It felt good to be home.
Yet still a restlessness plagued him, with his big houses holding nothing but memories of Father and a keen awareness of the emptiness of his life.
“How have you been?” he asked Freddie.
Her fierce brows drew together. “Would you like me to summarize eight years in one word, or may I have a whole sentence?”
“Good point.” A new riddle: how to converse with one’s sister when she had become a surly stranger. “Did you know our father well?”
“Indeed,” she said. “The descriptions in the newspapers were very informative.”
“Do Sir Walter and Lady Treadgold treat you and Ursula well?”
“We are family now, they say.”
“What is Ursula like?”
“She is two years old.”
“What was our stepmother like? Ursula’s mother.”
Freddie shrugged, her eyes on a pair of acrobats performing, one balanced on the other’s shoulders. “She was bored. She’d spend hours dressing or paying calls or playing cards, being bored. I think that’s why she died. Life was too boring for her to bother staying alive.”
“Who are your friends?”
“Everyone.”
“Everyone?”
“Oh yes. What with Father’s will making me rich and your return making me sister to England’s most eligible bachelor, I have become the most sought-after lady in the land.” She stood. “I’m going to ask the acrobats how they do that.”
Guy grabbed Freddie’s hand. “Sit down.”
She sat. He released her and drummed his fingers on the cool stone wall between them. She studied the crowd as if he wasn’t there, as if his eight-year absence had turned him into a ghost, and not a particularly interesting one.
“Listen. I mean to gain custody of you and Ursula. It isn’t right that Father made Sir Walter your guardian. I’ll marry as soon as possible, make us a proper family home.”
Freddie made no response.
“Freddie? Are you listening?”
“Not really. Did you say something interesting?”
“I said I hope to marry soon.”
“I like Miss Larke. She doesn’t simply repeat the same boring things everyone else says. And gentlemen are scared of her set-downs.”
Guy didn’t mind Arabella’s set-downs. He did mind her attempts to bend him to her will. After a lifetime of commands from his unscrupulous father, he was hardly going to sign up for a lifetime of commands from an unscrupulous wife.
“I shan’t marry Miss Larke. She was Father’s choice and I’ll choose my own wife. And you can choose your own husband.”
“Thank you.”
Her bland politeness irked him. Surely she would rather live with him than with the Treadgolds?
“But Freddie— Are you listening?”
“Yes, Guy.”
“If I am to gain custody of you and Ursula, I must prove that Sir Walter is mismanaging your trusts. Embezzling, for example. Have you noticed anything that might help? Any detail that seems suspicious. Something about Sir Walter’s behavior, or his spending.”