Chapter 7 #2
He passed a hand through his hair, leaving the dark strands mussed, and some errant, wifely urge in her longed to comb them back into place. She stifled it and clasped her hands behind her back instead.
“I went to Eastlake Hall because of what you told me last night,” he said at length.
Sybil reeled, even though it was what she had suspected. She knew the ramifications of such a foolish act. Not for herself any longer, for she was beyond her father’s reach. But for her mother.
“You…” She faltered and attempted to begin anew. “But my father… I shudder to think of how he would react if he knew I had told you…”
“You needn’t fear him,” Riverdale said, an edge in his voice. “You need never fear him again. That was what the call I paid him concerned.”
“My mother,” she protested, her worry gaining speed, like a runaway locomotive veering down the tracks. “You cannot possibly conceive of how she will suffer for this. She is ill, and my father is a cruel man, and if you confronted him, he will unleash his ire on her.”
Tears threatened her vision as the heavy weight of the implications fell upon her.
“Sybil, calm yourself.” His voice was soothing as he took her in a gentle hold. “Your mother is safe.”
“You cannot possibly know that.”
“Yes, I can,” he insisted. “She is on her way here in one of my carriages as we speak.”
She blinked furiously, her vision clearing as his reassurance washed over her. “She’s coming here, to Wingfield Hall? But my father keeps her at his estate because he can have complete control over her there. How would he ever agree to such a thing?”
Everett raised a brow at her. “How do you think?”
She inhaled sharply as understanding began to dawn. “Are you saying that you somehow coerced him into allowing you to take my mother away from Eastlake Hall?”
He smiled, flashing white, even teeth. “There was no coercion involved. I told your father what was happening, and when I extended the invitation to your mother, she gladly accepted.”
His explanation still didn’t quite make sense to Sybil. Not knowing her father and his penchant for control. He adored nothing so much as keeping those weaker than he was beneath his thumb.
“But my father would never allow something like that.”
“He has no choice in the matter. I’ve made that more than apparent to him.”
“How can you have done so?” she asked, searching her husband’s eyes for answers.
And finding them.
She gasped. “What did you do?”
Riverdale—Everett, as she must remember to think of him now—shrugged. “I merely demonstrated to him what it is like when someone stronger and more powerful than you are abuses that strength and position. I’m afraid he didn’t care for it very much, not that I gave a damn if he did.”
Her mouth fell open. “Did you harm him?”
“He’s still well enough.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He inclined his head. “Would you care if I did?”
“I…no. Yes. I don’t know.”
She was confused. Her father was not a kind man, and he had brought much pain to her, physical as well as emotional. Her heart bore the scars that her skin would never show.
“I struck him with my riding crop, if you must know,” her husband finally said. “I don’t regret a moment of it, save that I didn’t hit him more or with greater strength. I ought to have done the bastard more damage.”
Riverdale had ridden through the night to confront her father.
On her behalf.
And instead of leaving her mother behind to face his wrath alone, he had settled her mother in a carriage and was bringing her here.
Sybil was astounded. “Why?”
“Why what?” He frowned down at her, then brushed at his coat sleeves as if he required the distraction.
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“You are displeased with me?”
“No.” She shook her head, still trying to make sense of his actions, to make sense of how they made her feel in response. To understand what it all meant. “I’m not displeased at all. My father is not a kind or gentle man.”
“He’s lower than dung for raising his hand to you and your mother,” her husband countered sternly. “He deserved far worse than what I gave him, I will tell you that much. He’s fortunate I didn’t thrash him to within an inch of his miserable life.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she pointed out. “Why?”
He stared at her solemnly, his pale gaze unreadable. Everything made sense now, from his rumpled riding clothes to his wearied state, to the scent of the outdoors that clung to him like a shadow. He had indeed been riding through the night.
And all, it would seem, for Sybil.
For her mother too.
“Because it had to be done,” he said simply.
“Thank you.”
Impulsively, she reached for him, taking his hand in hers.
The jolt that went through her was instant and reminiscent of their first meeting, when she had been stranded with her horse Eloise and the most handsome man she had ever seen had galloped along the fencerow and to her rescue.
It would seem he had done so again last night. And she hadn’t even asked him to.
Why would he do something like that for her?
It still defied logic and reason.
“You needn’t thank me,” he said. “It is what any gentleman would have done in my place, upon learning something so egregious.”
She didn’t think so, but she didn’t argue the point, for it mattered not.
What did matter was that Everett had. She still didn’t know what it meant, but it felt like something.
Something complicated and confusing. Why would he care so deeply about what had happened to her when he had made it plain he had no wish to be bothered with her, aside from breeding her, as he had so coarsely phrased it?
She forced her mind to her mother’s impending arrival, recalling where they were and the reason for the gathering. “When will my mother reach us?”
“Within a few hours, I should think,” he answered, giving her fingers a reassuring squeeze.
“But the manner of this house party,” she protested at once. “My mother will be horrified.”
“We shall proceed to London after she reaches Wingfield Hall. We will change the horses, and she can enjoy a respite before we leave later this afternoon. We’ll arrive in London this evening.”
It would seem he had thought of everything. But then, if he had truly spent all night riding to Eastlake Hall, he would have had ample opportunity to sift through his thoughts and make a plan. She was still astounded this was what he had come to.
“You’re leaving the house party early on my account?”
“The party is coming to an end tomorrow,” he explained. “Unless you wish for your mother to remain here in the dubious company?”
“No,” Sybil hastened to reassure him. “Of course not.”
Realizing belatedly she was still holding his hand, she released it as if it had burned her. “I suppose I should make my preparations for leaving, then.”
“Yes, you ought to do so,” he said, giving her a curious look she couldn’t define. “And I shall do the same.”
She moved toward the door, beset by a barrage of confusing emotions she couldn’t bear to decipher just yet. Perhaps not ever. But remembering herself at the threshold, she stopped and turned back to him, gratitude making her hands tremble on the latch.
“Thank you for thinking of my mother, Everett.”
No one else had done so.
And she felt it now—the shame, rising, choking, threatening.
Not just that she had kept her father’s awful secrets for so long, but that she had managed to escape and had failed to bring her mother with her.
Instead, she had felt trapped as ever, even if she was beneath a new roof, out of reach of her father’s wrath.
Doomed to an unhappy union from which there was no escape, save one.
“I do wish you had told me of your own volition, and before now,” he said. “I would have taken action far sooner.”
“I didn’t know what to think,” she confessed shakily. “My mother made me promise not to speak of it, for fear my father’s treatment of her would grow worse. Besides, you had ignored all my letters.”
He had the grace to look ashamed of his own conduct. “Either way, the both of you are freed of him now. I’ve seen to that.”
She cleared her throat of the emotion that had thickened it. “I’ll go and see that my belongings are packed and prepared for the journey to London.”
He nodded. “Excellent.”
Sybil stared at him for a moment more, allowing herself the luxury of drinking him in and forgetting about all the ugliness between them, before she moved through the door, leaving him in the sitting room.