Chapter 7
Everett couldn’t live with the knowledge that Sybil had been beaten by her father without answering it in kind.
How badly the bastard had hurt her, he didn’t know, for she hadn’t been forthcoming, and neither had he seen scars.
Perhaps, for his sanity, he couldn’t know the full extent of what she had endured.
As it was, he had ridden through the night to arrive at Riverdale Abbey by morning light. He’d spared only enough time to refresh his mount before continuing his journey to Eastlake Hall, a place he had vowed to never again visit after that god-awful wedding breakfast.
And yet Eastlake Hall was where he’d found himself. The hour was unfashionably early as he tossed his reins to a stable lad. Everett didn’t give a bloody goddamn. This was not a polite social call.
This was a reckoning.
He could only hope he didn’t cross paths with the bastard footman who had dared to touch Sybil, because Everett didn’t have even a modicum of civility in him at the moment. He was all wild, furious beast, demanding retribution. Capable of anything.
He brazened his way past servants flitting about in preparation for their day, and after climbing the winding staircase and finding his way to the Marquess of Eastlake’s bedchamber door, he paused only a moment before bursting through it.
The curtains were tightly closed. The room smelled of sour breath and gin, and the snores rattling from a distant bed told him that his father-in-law was still sleeping off the effects of a night of dissipation.
It was time for the Marquess of Eastlake to wake and face the consequences of his actions.
Everett stalked through the darkness toward the bed, making certain he could discern only one lumpy form in the midst of the disheveled blankets.
After he was confident the marquess was alone, Everett wielded the riding crop he still held in his hand, sending it through the air with a vicious whir that ended in the sickening crack of leather upon skin.
The marquess shrieked as he shook into wakefulness.
“W-what is happening?” he stammered, clearly half asleep and shocked.
“What is happening is that I’m teaching you a lesson, Eastlake,” he drawled. “Men who raise their hands against women and do them violence deserve to be thrashed.”
The marquess’s balding pate was visible through his mussed white hair as he struggled into a sitting position. “Riverdale? What the devil do you think you’re doing? You cannot barge into my home like this and accost me.”
“Shut up,” Everett spat, lifting the riding crop and bringing it down on the man’s other shoulder.
Eastlake screamed like a piglet, and the sound was so gratifying, Everett wielded the crop yet again in rapid succession until the marquess was groaning, struggling to escape.
“My wife informed me that you’ve beaten both her and Lady Eastlake,” he explained, amazed at the calmness of his voice, when inside he was seething with roiling fury.
“I find it only suiting that you should be beaten yourself to experience what it is like when someone who is stronger than you are decides to wield his power against you.”
He brought the riding crop down on the marquess’s back as the other man struggled to haul himself to safety on the opposite side of the bed.
“Are you mad?” the marquess gasped out.
“I’m perfectly sane.” He rounded the bed and delivered another sound thwack to the marquess.
“Consider this your warning, Eastlake. If word travels to me that you have so much as raised a finger against your wife again, I will return, and I won’t stop until you’re a bloody, whimpering mess at my feet, begging me to end you. ”
He brought the crop down again.
“Please,” the marquess begged. “Stop.”
Everett reached down and caught the blubbering fool by his nightshirt, hauling him up. “Do we have an understanding, Eastlake? I won’t just thrash you. I’ll ruin you in the eyes of polite society as well.”
“I understand, Riverdale. I c-completely understand,” Eastlake gasped. “Please. Leave me alone.”
The scent of stale piss suddenly filled the air.
Everett dropped the marquess back to the bed with disgust. “Never again. As a courtesy that you don’t deserve, Eastlake, I want you to know that I’ll be speaking with your marchioness before I leave here this morning.
I’m planning to extend an invitation for her to join my mother and sister in London, along with the duchess and myself.
I would imagine she will accept. It goes without saying that you won’t be welcome. ”
Then he turned and stalked from the room.
Sybil had just left the dining room, still wondering where her husband was as she hadn’t spied him since the night before and she’d just completed her luncheon, when he appeared as if she had conjured him.
He looked tired and windblown, stalking toward her in riding clothes, as if he had spent half the night astride a mount.
He smelled of outdoors and mud and horse, and still, she didn’t think the vexing man had ever been more handsome.
“Your Grace,” she greeted him, curtsying despite the ribald nature of the house party.
“Madam.” He bowed with equal formality. “You are looking well this morning.”
She hadn’t slept particularly well following his abrupt departure from her room. Instead, she’d spent the night tossing and turning, unable to sleep, until she had finally given up and turned up the lamps to read. In reading, however, there had been precious little distraction.
She had passed pages without fully comprehending the words. In the end, she had passed out from sheer exhaustion close to dawn. By this point of the day, she was most assuredly flagging as surely as the curls her lady’s maid had coaxed into her ordinarily straight hair at her morning toilette.
“You are being polite for my pride’s sake, I suspect,” she said warily. “Although I do thank you for the pretense.”
He still felt very much like a stranger to her, despite the fact that they had shared a bed and he was her husband.
She didn’t know what to make of him any more now than she had on the day their paths had first crossed.
Time had not, as was customary, given her the benefit of knowing him better.
Quite the opposite. The more days and weeks that stretched on, the greater his enigma grew.
“Walk with me,” he said, extending his arm.
His countenance was serious. She hesitated.
“Please,” he added when she failed to do as he had requested.
Hesitantly, Sybil placed her hand in the crook of his elbow. They had exchanged heated words yesterday, and she didn’t know where they stood after his abrupt defection to his own room, even if he had left with what had seemed a tender kiss to her cheek before he’d gone.
His reaction to her revelation had troubled her. She hadn’t known what it had meant precisely. Now that he loomed at her side, she was no more assured of herself than she had been then.
“Where are we going?” she asked, searching for something to say that wouldn’t reveal he had her at sixes and sevens.
Riverdale was still her enemy after all. It seemed most unwise to show her weakness on the battlefield.
“Anywhere we have privacy,” he informed her, unsmiling.
“Has something happened?” she asked, her heart leaping as it occurred to her that his mien was as somber as a mourner’s at a funeral. “Have you had word of my mother?”
Her mother’s health was frail at best and poor at worst. Part of the reason that Sybil had finally strayed from Riverdale Abbey—convenient for its proximity to her mother at Eastlake Hall—had been that her mother had recently seemed much improved.
She had been out of her invalid chair and meandering for walks in the chilly gardens.
But if Mother had become swiftly unwell in her absence, Sybil would never forgive herself.
“This does concern your mother, yes,” Riverdale said, doing nothing to temper her rising panic.
She clutched his tweed coat, which still bore the damp of the outdoors. “Has she taken ill?”
“Calm yourself. It’s nothing of the sort.” He cast a glance around the hall as he pulled her down the Axminster.
“Then why do you look so grave?”
“Because I paid a call to Eastlake Hall earlier today, and I am newly returned,” he said, as if the revelation should explain everything.
In truth, it only left her with further questions.
She swallowed hard. “You called upon my mother and father without me? Whyever for?”
“Hush,” he muttered grimly. “I’ll explain when we have privacy.”
It was an excellent point. Their fellow houseguests were underfoot in the hall, some moving toward the dining room, others to various salons, and others still away from the bustle, no doubt in search of assignations and heaven knew what other sins they could find.
Sybil held her tongue as he found them an empty sitting room and led her inside. The door had scarcely closed at their backs when she released his arm and turned on him, demanding answers.
“What is it, Riverdale?”
“I thought we agreed that you were to call me by my given name now.”
She was in no mood for delaying. “Everett. Please tell me why you went to Eastlake Hall and what happened whilst you were there.”
Her mind was still whirling with the news, spinning with worry over what had transpired.
But neither could she contain her amazement at such a feat.
She estimated that her father’s country seat was a good six-hour ride from Wingfield Hall, if not more.
Given the time that had passed, she could only assume that he had ridden directly there instead of sleeping, then returned almost immediately.
The trains would not have been operational at such a dire hour, and she doubted very much he could have taken one this morning and returned with such swiftness.
“Perhaps you should be seated for this discussion,” he suggested instead of allaying her fears.
“I don’t wish to be seated,” she countered. “I want you to tell me now.”