“Shh!” Cilla releases her leg long enough to swat her sister’s arm. “We’re not supposed to talk about that.”
“What does it matter now?” Stacia pouts.
“Wait, what? You thought my mother was wealthy?”
“Papa told us we were going to be filthy rich once she died.”
Once.
She.
Died.
Blood throbs in my temples, a cacophonous roar that makes thinking impossible.
Did Tremaine kill my mother? His own son?
It’s the second part that makes me question the idea. I don’t put harming my mother past him, but Tremaine did want a son to carry on his name. The baby didn’t survive the birth. His grief was as genuine as my own.
Still, it’s disturbing to think he might have harmed my mother. “Why did he think there was money?”
“Because your father invented indoor piping.” Stacia sneers. “Instead, someone else patented his idea and got rich. It’s ridiculous that our own house doesn’t have piped water when the previous owner invented the entire concept!”
I can’t disagree with her. Itissilly.
“There will be hot water for everyone at the castle.” No more hauling water for me. No more cleaning chamber pots. I’ll never feel filthy again.
I refuse to consider the possibility that I might soon miss a simpler time, even if it was horrible. The distance between my fantasies of perpetual happiness with Alex—Alistair—might once again be nothing but wisps of girlish hopes caught in the gale winds of reality.
* * *
Alistair
Tremaineand I have a long time to get to know one another during the ride back to Belterre City. By the time we arrive, I’ve taken the opportunity to probe his ambitions for his daughters. Unsurprisingly, his sole aim is to see them married well and get him out of the financial predicament he finds himself in.
While this is hardly out of line for a nobleman, I’m disgusted by the way he views his natural daughters as bargaining chips. They aren’t humans to him. They might be awful, yet I am forced to feel a smidge of sympathy for two young women with no advantages and all their ambitious father’s hopes pinned upon their thus-far unsuccessful marriages.
I hate that.
Once we arrive at the castle, I lead Tremaine straight to my empty study. I don’t offer him a room. He won’t be staying long. It’s no mystery who failed to protect Elinor from her attacker. He deserves to disappear for that alone.
I depress the hidden lever to open my secret stairway and glance upward at the tower where my precious telescope still needs to be brought down before the cold sets in. Then I turn toward the darkness, pounding down the stairs into the dank dungeon.
Within the hour, Tremaine lies pathetically on the cold stone. What I have discovered in the scant time we have spent together horrifies and enrages me.
My boot thuds satisfyingly into his stomach. He rolls to his back, starfishes, then drags himself up and heaves up stomach bile.
“I ought to cut off your manhood and force you to eat it,” I say conversationally. “No one would stop me.”
He manages a low, pained, chuckle, and spits bloody saliva onto the sheening puddle of vomit. “That little cunt has you wrapped around her finger, doesn’t she? Clever little Cinderella.”
My boot connects with his temple. Tremaine falls limp with his cheek in the mess, twitching with tremors.
Alcohol sickness. He’s had none since the sip from a flask I gave him in the carriage. Nothing to eat. No water. He’s cold and alone, and it’s still not enough suffering to make up for what he did to her.
“How old was Elinor when you started forcing her?” I ask.
Tremaine manages to push himself up to sitting. He looks beyond awful. Open wounds ooze, barely scabbed from the beating I handed him. I waited until his back was turned to me to open the secret passageway. Then I threw him down the steps and when the drunkard stopped rolling halfway down, I gave him a sharp kick in the arse for good measure. Hardly sporting of me. I feel it’s fair considering the way he preyed upon my future wife.
