“My present?” For the first time, his wife looked up. “I am sorry,
maman
. I no longer have it.”
“
Non
?”
His wife gave the tiniest of shrugs. “He is dead, I suppose.”
Troy’s jaw dropped.
What?
She went on, her voice cool and uncaring. “I left him in the garden somewhere, chained to a tree. He must have died after a few days. The chains were strong,
non
?”
Troy could hardly believe his ears. What kind of tale was his wife spinning now?
“Is that so?”
la Veuve Noire
asked slowly.
“Did you think I would have taken him with me? With his lame leg and everything?”
“You left him so the crows could pick his eyes out and chew the flesh from his body?” Disbelief tinged the Black Widow’s voice.
His wife stood unmoved, her back ramrod straight. “If you search the gardens, you might still find the bones.”
A slow smile started to spread over the woman’s face. Gently, she patted his wife’s cheek. “Very well,
chérie
, very well.”
Warily, Troy rubbed his hand over his face. He did not mow what kind of game his wife was playing right now, bat he intended to put a stop to it here and now.
He rolled his shoulders, his head, and straightened to his full height. Placing a nonchalant expression on his face, he stepped out of the shadows onto the landing. “Ahhh, there you are, my dear,” he said, giving his voice a hint of faint surprise. “We have already been missing you.” Idly, he started to walk down the stairs.
At the sound of his voice, his wife’s head whipped around. She stared at him as if she were seeing a ghost, her eyes round, her face suddenly deathly pale.
“And who might this be?” breathed the Black Widow in accented English.
He could see his wife swallow convulsively. He remembered how he had wanted to witness her fear all these past months. What he had not achieved then, happened now: Stark fear was written in her expression, flickered in her eyes.
In the past, he would have exulted in her terror.
Smiling, he turned to the Black Widow. “I am the lady’s husband.” He put his arm around his wife’s waist and picked up one of her hands to place a kiss on its back. “Isn’t that so, my dear?” He smiled down at her, tightening the grip on her waist, when he felt slight shivers racing through her body.
“
Son époux? Enchanté!
” the woman simpered. Obviously she did not recognize him. And why should she? She believed him to be dead!
Out of the corner of his eye, Troy caught a fleeting expression of amused surprise on the face of her companion, and his own wife, standing transfixed. Very slowly, the Black Widow’s golden shadow lifted an eyebrow.
Troy’s wife jerked against his body, once, then stiffened.
The Frenchwoman tittered. “Don’t you want to introduce us,
chérie
?” Despite her strong accent, she managed to infuse her words with malicious disdain.
“
Oui,
maman
.” His wife’s voice was faint. “
Maman
, Lord Ravenhurst. Lady Camille Abberley, my… stepmother.” She looked up at him, and what Troy saw in her eyes made him think of a cornered fawn.
“Delighted, my lady.” He bowed. “Much as I wish to talk to you further, I am afraid our hosts would send out a search party if we were not to return to them soon. May we call on you tomorrow instead?”
The woman smiled, a smile Troy remembered quite well. This time, however, it was directed at his wife, not at him. “That will not be necessary, my lord. I will call on you,
n’est-ce pas,
chérie
?”
Troy bowed again. “As you wish, my lady.”
“Indeed.” And with that, she swept around and walked back to the entrance hall, her man following on her heels like a pet dog.
Only when Troy heard the entrance door close behind them, dared he to relax. “I did not fib,” he said quietly. “We really should go upstairs.” He felt strangely empty, as if the encounter with the Black Widow had frozen his mind and soul.
“Yes,” his wife murmured.
She let him guide her up the stairs, back into Lady Holland’s crimson drawing room. “Ah, there you are!” Luttrell greeted them. “Your husband feared you met with some mishap, my lady.”
Something like a laugh bubbled from the lips of Troy’s wife. “I should think not.” When he looked down at her, surprised at her show of gaiety, Troy saw that her eyes glittered feverishly. “After all, what kind of mishap should befall me here in this house?”
“Who knows?” Luttrell shrugged, a droll expression on his face. “You might have been kidnapped by Lord Holland's Royalist forebear to be kept prisoner in the famous priest hole.”
“To make her his ghostly bride,” Drake added with a groan. “Dear God, Luttrell, don’t tell me you’re into these gothic novels where one horror stumbles over the other to come crashing down onto the poor, insipid heroine.” His grimace transformed into a wide grin. “Don’t you just love Mrs. Radcliffe’s tales of horror?”
The rapping of Lady Holland’s fan on the wooden arm of the settee cut into their conversation. “Lady Ravenhurst, you must come here and join us for one of Mr. Foscolo’s delightful stories. Are they not delightful, Ibby?” she asked Miss Fox. “Mr. Foscolo, do tell us again what you did with that sausage.” Impatiently she patted the empty seat beside her. “Do come, Lady Ravenhurst. Lord Ravenhurst, you can get your wife another cup of tea in case she wishes for some refreshment.” Like a queen, the woman resided on her black and buttercup-yellow settee, overseeing that all her commands were followed in due course.
Troy accompanied his wife to the empty chair Lady Holland had indicated. Her delicate dress rustled as she sat down, hands demurely folded in her lap. Her cheeks were still pale, and Troy thought that a brandy would probably work more wonders than a mere cup of tea ever could.
Yet Lady Holland did not care for his lingering. She sent him off with shooing sounds. “The tea, my lord. The tea!—Now, Mr. Foscolo, tell us again about the sausage.”
The Italian’s chest swelled. “It was garlic sausage. Very strong.
Fuerte
,” Troy heard as he walked away toward the sideboard.
As he had been ordered, he poured a cup of tea for his wife, the earthy aroma of the brew strangely soothing. He added some milk and put a clean teaspoon on the saucer. When he turned, Mr. Foscolo had apparently reached an especially exciting point in his tale, for he waved his hands about, this way and that, nearly knocking Miss Fox’s cup off its saucer.
With long strides Troy returned to the group on the settee. His wife looked wan, as though all of her color had been washed out. Still, her lips were lifted in an apparent attempt at a smile.
“…hit bat
devant la fenêtre
.” Mr. Foscolo slammed his fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Bang! Straight into
estómago
.” He glanced around his rapt audience. “Bat.
Chauve-souris
.” He made flapping motions with his arms, again endangering Miss Fox’s cup.
“Yes, yes,” Lady Holland swatted at his flaying arms. “A bat, we know.—Ah, Lord Ravenhurst, there you are. My dear Lady Ravenhurst, you have the appearance of a wilting flower. Do drink some tea to refresh yourself, will you?—Mr. Foscolo, go on.”
“Sausage hit se bat.
Bang!
” His fist hit the arm of the settee and made Lady Eckersley jump. “Bat fall to ers,
sin sentido
.”
Troy leaned down and handed his wife the saucer with the cup of tea. Her thank you was no more than a whisper. Nodding, he straightened.
“And sen…” Mr. Foscolo paused and raised his finger, obviously to heighten the dramatic effect. “Signore Pratchett’s cat et bat.”
Lady Holland clapped. “Brava, Mr. Foscolo! Brava! What a clever cat that was! It must have taken the bat for a flying mouse.” Her hearty laugh rolled around the room. “A very droll tale. Very droll indeed, don’t you think, Lady Ravenhurst?”
The rattle of china made Troy look down. His wife’s hands were trembling so much that tea had spilled from the cup onto the saucer.
“Lady Ravenhurst?” Lady Holland prompted.
“Will you excuse us, my lady?” Troy cut in smoothly. “It has been a long day and… Surely you understand.” He gave the mistress of the house a winning smile before he bent and retrieved cup and saucer from his wife to deposit them on a side table. When he took hold of her hand, it felt like ice. Trembling, brittle ice, ready to break any moment.
He said all the right things, made all the right excuses, declared himself enchanted by the evening and finally, finally, was able to whisk his wife out of the room, down the stairs. In the entrance hall they had to wait while the footmen brought his coat and her pelisse, and the butler sent tor their carriage.
The night air was crisp and cool when they stepped outside, yet this did not seem to affect her. Only when they were seated in the coach, warm blankets over their legs, did her trembling increase until it gripped her whole body.
The carriage rumbled down the drive of Holland House, and Troy’s wife shook like a leaf in a storm. And for the first time Troy fully realized that she was, in fact, very much afraid of her stepmother. Terrified.
Unbidden, the knowledge roused his protective instincts. Before he had given himself time to think, he scooted over to her side of the carriage and put his arm around her shoulders. “Are you cold?” he inquired.
“Cold?” To his surprise she laughed, a short, shrill sound that made his own throat ache in sympathy. “I can never be cold enough again!” She choked. The laugh turned into a sob and she covered her face with her trembling hands. “Dear God… dear God…” She bent over as if in great pain, her breath coming in laborious pants. Troy’s arm slid off her shoulder.
Self-consciously, he cleared his throat. “I take it that was not a polite family visit.”
When his wife raised her face, he was shocked to see the glittering traces of tears on her cheeks. Never before had he seen her cry.
“A family visit?” she scorned him, her voice hoarse. “She brought
Antoine
!” She said it as if this would explain everything.
Troy frowned. He remembered the man’s strange stare and his wife’s ensuing nervousness. The betraying jerk against his body. “Antoine,” he repeated. “And what is Antoine to you?”
“Antoine?” This time, her laughter bordered on hysteria. “
Mon dieu
, of course, the first thing you would think…” She halted, shook her head. In her lap, her hands slowly tightened into fists. When she turned to him again, anger had replaced the hysteria. “Antoine. You want to know about Antoine? Let me tell you about Antoine, my lord husband,” she spat.
Troy felt his eyes widen with surprise.
“When you made your oh-so-gracious offer for my hand, I told you I was no longer a virgin, did I not? You made it quite clear that you think me no better than a common—how would you put it?—a common trollop.” She snorted, an unladylike sound. “My stepmother gave me this for my birthday. Another present of hers. An
initiation
.”
Troy opened his mouth. “You—”
“It takes so little to make a girl into a woman, doesn’t it?” she cut in, her voice as hard and cold as ice. “Just a few drops of blood on white linen… She gave me Antoine, her beloved Antoine, for one night.”
“My lady,” Troy tried again.
Unheeding, his wife went on, her words cruelly precise. “At first she stood by to instruct him. Where to put his hands, his mouth. Where to lick, to bite. Where to apply pressure or not. You cannot say he took me by force, can you, when she insisted that he make me come and come and—”
“Stop it!” He took her by the shoulders and shook her. Beneath her clothes, her bones seemed fragile, like those of a small bird. “
Stop it!
” His voice sounded hoarse, even to his own ears, and his skin crawled with revulsion at the images she had conjured.
“You wanted to know!” she cried, her face deathly pale, her eyes black hollows in the near-darkness of the carriage. “You wanted to
know
. She stood by and let him have his way with me, the whole night, all those long, long hours, until my voice was no more than a croak, until my whole body ached and ached, just so that I would be a fitting heiress for her, that I would know what to do with the other present of hers, a toy all for myself, a—”
“STOP IT!” Troy roared.
For a moment she froze, while the blood pounded in his head, a wild, pagan rhythm that threatened to swallow him up. The wheezing breaths that filled the carriage might have been his or hers; Troy did not know.
“And now she is back,” she whispered and went limp. Her shoulders slipped through his fingers as, in a rustle of muslin and silk, her body slid off the seat. Covering her face with her hands, she huddled on the floor of the carriage, rocking back and forth.
Troy swallowed.
At first her sobs were quiet, silent almost. But they increased in volume, a swelling sound that made his nerve endings quiver. Soon, loud, heart-wrenching sobs shook her whole body, filled the coach with her despair.
For Troy, it seemed as if suddenly the bottom of his world had dropped away.
Breathing became difficult.
Within a few short moments his whole world had been turned upside down and, like in a kaleidoscope, the pieces had fallen to form a new picture. The woman whom he had thought to be evil incarnate, whom he had desperately wanted to prevent from marrying his cousin, that same woman had suddenly turned into a victim, had reverted back into a terrified girl, pushed beyond her endurance.
A memory flashed into his mind, the first sight of her in prison. Her reluctance, her embarrassment. And her fear.
He had forgotten her fear, later. His own feeling of helplessness, his own abject terror and pain had left no room for considering others, had obliterated every other feeling but intense hatred.
But he remembered her fear now. Her fear in the prison, her fear on the stairs of Holland House. And yet… and yet…
“I left him in the garden somewhere, chained to a tree.”
And yet she had tried… what?
“If you search the gardens, you might still find the bones.”