Chapter 2 #2
He nodded and guided her toward the table of punch and refreshments.
Around them the footmen passed, glasses chiming softly as the guests mingled.
He poured her punch and she drank it, feeling herself relax little by little.
The Baroness was nowhere to be seen. The Hawthornes were circulating.
Eyes were still on them, but that was to be expected.
They’d been invited here tonight to be a spectacle, the center of attention, gossiped about.
They’d known that and it was part of the reason they’d come, just like at Rotten Row.
It wasn’t anything more than she could endure.
She heard the tinkling of laughter first, felt herself shiver at the sound of it. Too high-pitched and mean to be anything other than malicious. And then there were more laughs and a finger pointed and she knew.
“She’s here, Fred. The Baroness.”
The orchestra had picked up their instruments once more but no one was dancing. Lady Hawthorne was staring at them and whispering something to her companion, a woman Julianna did not know. Julianna could hear her heart pounding in her chest. Her pulse throbbing in her neck.
Fred’s head turned sharply, looking for the Baroness.
It seemed the whole of the ballroom was staring at them.
Whispering about the Ice Bride, how she had treated Thomas, how she had used him and her marriage to rise in society.
It was so ludicrous it ought not to hurt.
She wanted nothing to do with these grand halls and these awful people—she just wanted to be at home at Farrow Cottage, her hands in the soil.
But it did hurt, whether or not it should.
“Smile, dearheart,” Fred whispered to her. “Don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing you crumble.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she said back. This was harder than she’d anticipated.
“Then we’ll leave. Go about this in some other way.”
“No.”
They’d agreed on a plan. Come here tonight and find the Baroness. Have her admit her wrongdoing within earshot of the Inspector, whom Fred had personally let in the door. It was the only way they could ensure she was stopped and The Poisoned Quill put out of business. Julianna couldn’t falter now.
“No,” she said again. “I’m alright. Let’s see this through.”
“Jules,” Fred said. “We can find another way.”
Fred only had eyes for his wife. She’d gone stiff and pale next to him, her dark eyes too wide.
It was foolish to have brought her here.
Foolish to think that anyone—even a person as brave as Julianna—would not feel the terrible slings and barbs of this society.
Because Dorset was their home and wounds here hurt far worse than anything they might have sustained on Rotten Row.
He glanced behind him to the gathered crowd, whispering and pointing. No. It wasn’t worth it if he let them harm his wife.
“We’re leaving,” he all but growled and began to tug her toward the door.
“No, Fred. Not until this is finished.”
“It will never be finished, Jules.”
There was not enough gossip in the entire world to calm the appetites of Dorsetshire Society.
And he had nothing more to give. He could and would ignore them as he’d done for a decade but his wife was off-limits.
The thought of causing her more pain made him feel hollow, as if his heart, his guts, his lifeblood, had been scraped clean out of his chest.
No. He would not do it.
He turned and led her toward the entrance doors, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that if he’d had the necessary equipment, Hawthorne Hall would be ablaze by his own hand at this very moment. And then, from just beyond the edge of his shoulder, a familiar voice purred.
“There you are, Chester. Must you look so aggrieved?”
The Baroness stepped forward, giving him a smile that was all teeth. She was dressed in emerald-green silk, cut daringly low for Dorset and worn with the careless confidence that seemed to define her character in every way.
“I have no idea what you mean,” he said, turning to face the woman.
“No? I meant that just because you are a cold fish, doesn’t mean everyone else must be subjected to that look on your face. Or is that chill coming from your wife?”
Fred’s vision tunneled at the insult to Julianna and he found himself pushing his wife slightly behind him. As if he could bodily protect her from this shrew.
“What do you want?” he asked.
The Baroness’s eyes glittered. “Nothing from you. You’re too boring now, Chester, to be worth anything to me at all. Your wife on the other hand—why, she’s fascinating.”
“So it was you. You are E.S. Mallory. The editor of The Poisoned Quill. Admit it.”
The Baroness looked about the room and saw they were alone, except for Julianna standing behind him and an occasional footman passing through.
She leaned forward and whispered, “Of course I am, not that there’s a thing you can do about it.
But you knew that already. You did always catch on eventually. ”
Fred sucked in his breath. It was all just like that long ago night, when he’d been invited here by the Hawthornes and dallied with the Baroness.
When she’d taken his arm and purred into his ear.
When she’d dragged him into a dark alcove while Eva was at home, lost and confused, taking reins when she shouldn’t.
He shook his head to clear it of the memory. Behind him was the muffled roar of the ballroom. In front of him the closed front door, shutting him into this world until he suffocated from its weight.
“Why?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Because it’s fun.” She gave a little shrug. “Why do anything at all if it isn’t fun?”
“No—why me? I was too young.”
It wasn’t a question he’d planned to ask but now that he was standing here, in front of her, he found he had to know. He felt Julianna place her hand on the small of his back in support, where his had rested earlier on hers.
The Baroness considered his question before she answered. “Why collect beautiful things? Because I can and I like to own them.”
“He is not a thing,” Julianna growled behind him. “He is a person. We are all people, not objects made and destroyed for your entertainment.”
The Baroness’s smile only sharpened. “Oh do make her be quiet, Chester. Of course you belonged to me. You were my Darling of Dorset. My Local Adonis.”
The words slid into place and he realized with a shuddering horror what he’d never before understood: not only had she thought of him as her pet, her plaything, which was bad enough. But it was that the plaything had the audacity to run away that she had never forgiven.
All these years of vitriol were not because he had wounded her heart, but her vanity. Like some petulant child, she was angry because he had denied her possession of the thing she’d wanted.
Fred stared at her. She truly was a monster. A woman who had taken his boyish vulnerability, his need to be loved and wanted, his loneliness, and used it against him. Who had believed that because she had taken something from him once, she was entitled to it forever.
“And my wife?” he asked, his voice going impossibly cold. “Was she merely collateral?”
The Baroness only raised a single shoulder in a shrug. “She was too irresistible to pass up. So earnest and sincere.” Her lips curved. “I couldn’t resist.”
Fred’s hands clenched at his sides. “So you ruined us.”
“No, boy. You did that yourself.”
He closed his eyes and then opened them again. “I was only a child,” he said, returning again and again to the subject he couldn’t let go. He wanted answers even though he knew he wasn’t going to get them. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from bothering the wound.
“You were old enough to make your own choices. You cannot deny the consequences now.”
A sharp intake of breath sounded nearby and Harold stepped forward. The young man from Rotten Row who reminded Fred so much of himself.
Fred had not seen him there—waiting, he supposed, in that same dark alcove for this same, terrible woman. Drawn by her favor and then diminished by it, just as he had been. Because to be an object, to be a thing owned, was always diminishing.