Do I write that I’m looking forward to it?No, best leave it like this, it sounds more like me. How do I sign off? How does one sign a letter to one’s unexpected future wife whom one has never really courted?
Talbot stared at the paper for a long time before writing
Yours, etc., Duke Colin Talbot.
Talbot was mightily pleased with himself when he handed the note to Stevenson. Everything was working out in his favour today. This time tomorrow, all his problems would be solved. But first, there was some furniture that needed to be ordered.
Two
Chapter 17
As her brother was, for lack of a better word, dragging her out of the Pearsons’ home, Elizabeth imagined she was floating above the two of them and re-examining an old memory from a distance. She calmly noted that she’d never seen Nicholas so angry before, and that she herself appeared rather frightened and pale.
“What were you thinking?!” her brother asked her in a cold, stern voice.
“I wasn’t, Nicholas, I... didn’t do anything!” Lizzie managed to say, even though her throat was closing up from panic and desperation.
“It may seem like nothingto you, but in our circles, a young woman’s reputation is everything! I thought I had made that abundantly clear to you, and everyone around you did their best to teach you how to behave,” he raged as he flung the carriage door open.
“But I guess one truly cannot escape their breeding,” he concluded, then clamped his mouth shut and looked at Elizabeth apprehensively.
They were both instantly aware of what he had done.
Elizabeth pressed a palm to her stomach to prevent her insides from spilling out through the wound her brother had just made. That was how real it felt to her.
She wordlessly entered the carriage and said nothing during the brief ride home. Her back was damp from sweat, her gloves were somewhere on the floor of the carriage, and she was struggling to breathe. Nicholas just stared at her while chewing on the inside of his cheek.
Lizzie struggled to make sense of everything that had happened tonight. One moment, she had been alone in the cloak room, the next she looked up and there Talbot stood, his eyes more naked than she’d ever seen them.
Elizabeth didn’t know which knot to untangle first: Oliver’s hurt and angry face, Nicholas’s fury and disappointment, the mocking disdain and arrogance on the faces of Lady Helena and her coterie? Or perhaps the shameful frisson of excitement she’d felt when Talbot had stepped between her legs? Lizzie buried her face in her hands.
The carriage stopped in front of her house, and she ran up the stairs, throwing her shawl at a confused Robert, who’d opened the door for her.
When she reached her bed, she fell to her knees, pulled out the chamberpot from underneath it, and retched into it until there was nothing left inside her but snot and tears. That was how Mary found her.
“Where is she?” Her brother bellowed downstairs.
“Do you want me to tell him you’re asleep?” Mary offered.
“No need,” Elizabeth wiped her face with her palms, but it didn’t really help.
Seeing herself in the looking glass gave her a fright. Her eyes and nose were red and swollen, and her complexion was sallow. She walked downstairs feeling like a lifeless marionette whose strings were being pulled so it moved like a real person.
Her brother’s eyes travelled her face, most likely noting all the signs of distress on it, while Elizabeth looked at him and only saw Charles Hawkins’ heartless features.
Suddenly, Duke Talbot entered her drawing room.
“Lizzie,” Nicholas said in a conciliatory, imploring tone, but Elizabeth’s gaze was now focused on the flowers on the carpet.
He then turned his fury on the newcomer, “What doyouwant?”
Talbot stood a little straighter, his eyes trained on Elizabeth.
“Let us talk outside, Nicholas.”
Her brother nodded darkly, and they both left. Elizabeth still stood in the same spot, but she felt like she was sinking into the floor.
She wondered whether this was what her brother had thought of her the entire time: that she was a girl oflow breedingwho could never be truly reformed.
