She loved him.
For Felton.
Not Northwood.
He pushed himself off the wall and walked to the manor, navigated the halls he knew so well, and found the bedchamber that made his heart hammer faster. He crept inside.
Lord Gillingham sat beside her, asleep like his daughter, but at Felton’s creaking footsteps, he nodded awake. He rubbed his eyes and smiled. “I shall leave you alone.”
Then the door shut, and Felton stood over top of the barefoot girl he’d once stolen from the forest. Mrs. Eustace must have seen to her hair, because the jagged ends had been evened, and the tresses now waved, clean and glistening, above her shoulders. Light bruises splotched her face. Her lip was cut. One of her arms rested above her head, and the white bandage was already spotted with bright red blood.
But she was lovely.
In a hundred million ways, she was lovely.
He bent over the bed, and it creaked when he placed his hands on both sides of her face. Then he lowered closer, closer, closer, until his lips brushed against her still ones.
At the touch, she stirred. She blinked fast, disoriented, afraid perhaps. Then the fear fell away, and whatever pulsated his heart came to life on her face. “Felton.” Tenderly, preciously, as if she needed him.
He hoped to goodness she needed him. He needed her. He would always need her. Needed the way she looked at him and the way she spoke to him and the things she said and the way she said them and …
Another kiss. The pull of it drew him in, like a vortex, into a place where souls become one. He grasped her face with one hand. Kissed again. Breathed. Kissed her forehead, her cheek, her brow.Eliza, I love you.
Heart sprinting, he closed his eyes, drank of her lips once more, and then stood. He crossed the room and glanced back from the threshold.
She had pulled herself upright, with the bed linens drawn to her shoulders, her eyes filling with tears as his did. All the hurt he couldn’t speak was heard, understood, and felt by her too in ways he could not comprehend. How could that be?
“Rest now.” The command left his lips. He wished he had said something softer, gentler—but in answer, she only smiled.
A smile that said she loved him.
As much, if that were even possible, as he loved her.
Eliza scooted her chair nearer to the library hearth. Flames danced and crackled, drifting sparks up the chimney, as the warmth spread through her cold body.
But it did not reach her heart. Not when Felton had not visited Monbury Manor in over four days.
She turned the page of her book and tried to read the words, but they were as senseless as the doubts pouring through her. In the last three weeks, she had grown stronger. For the first time in longer than she could remember, she was not attacked every night in her sleep. The beast had no power over her. More than just her cuts began to heal.
All through the days, Felton had come. He had sat beside her while she rested, read her books that likely bored him, and taught her chess with enough grins she felt as if she’d won, even at every loss.
But between his smiles, when he imagined she did not see, a shadow came over his face. Sometimes for only a second. Other times less than that. But the looks bore so much pain it stabbed her chest, and she bled for him.
She would always bleed for him. She was as much a part of his pain as he had become of hers. Couldn’t he see that? Did he not know? How had it happened like this—feeling this way, him and her, as if they were no longer two people but one? Or had she only imagined his love as she imagined everything else?
She closed the book and drew it against her chest. Her heart thudded against the cover, and a sickening chill rushed through her veins. Was that the reason he had not kissed her since that first day? Was that the reason he was not here now? Because he sensed her own feelings and could not return them?
Behind her, the library door squeaked open. A woman slipped next to Eliza’s chair, hair pulled tight from her face, with eyes that seemed ready to dart back to the floor at any second. “Miss Gillingham?”
Eliza stood. “Miss Reay.”
The woman’s face bore no trace of bruises. Fear still clouded her eyes, but every once in a while, as she busied herself with duties about the manor, a smile or quick flash of contentment came over her.
Eliza tried to push away the images of the woman’s body over hers, the nails scratching at her face, the bitter taste of opium being shoved into her mouth.
As if sensing her thoughts, Miss Reay’s gaze dropped to the library rug. “Mrs. Eustace t–told me I ought to be t–telling you about Mr. Northwood.”
Eliza squeezed the book. “He has come?”
