Chapter 3 The Duke’s Dilemma #2
“She looks human!” she announces.
I glare at her. “I was human before.”
Beatrice waves this away. “Yes, but you were a distressed human. Now you are a distressed human in proper clothing, which is much easier for society to forgive.”
The duke’s mouth tightens. “Beatrice.”
She ignores him. “Emma, you must dine with us.”
“Is that an invitation or a summons?” I ask.
Beatrice’s grin widens. “Both.”
The duke looks at his sister with a mixture of resignation and fondness that hits me unexpectedly hard. Then he turns back to me.
“You will dine,” he says, but his voice is gentler now. “You need food. And it will allow you to…recover.”
Recover. As if I have a sprained ankle and not a shattered timeline.
I nod once, because arguing will not conjure a portal.
Dinner is served in a room that is too beautiful to be real.
Candlelight turns everything gold. The table is an obstacle course of silver and porcelain, and I have never been so aware of my hands.
I copy Beatrice. I pick up the wrong utensil. I nearly drink from something that is not meant for drinking. Beatrice giggles. The duke corrects me with maddening calm.
Then the food arrives—roast chicken, bread still warm—and my body remembers it is starving. I eat slowly, trying to look like a guest and not a feral animal someone has lured indoors.
Beatrice peppers me with questions. I cling to the story Kitty gave me: Boston. Robbed. Hit my head. Confused.
The duke watches as if he can see the lie seams.
At one point Beatrice says, “James, you cannot interrogate her over soup,” and I nearly choke.
James. Of course his name is James. Dukes always have sensible names.
He sets his glass down. “Miss Hart, if you remain in my house, there will be rules. You will not go out alone. You will not speak of last night to anyone. You will allow my sister and Mrs. Finch to—” His eyes flick to Beatrice with faint exasperation. “—assist you.”
“Understood,” I say, because my options are obedience or the street.
Beatrice, incapable of leaving a bruise unpressed, adds lightly, “Lady Victoria will not approve, but she rarely approves of anything.”
James stills.
My fork pauses.
“Lady Victoria?” I repeat.
Beatrice’s eyes dance. “His intended.”
James’s voice goes clipped. “It is an arrangement.”
Beatrice sighs. “Sensible. How romantic.”
I swallow, force a smile that tastes wrong, and take another bite of chicken while my stomach tries to tie itself into knots.
After dinner, Molly escorts me back upstairs. Beatrice trails along, chattering about books and London and how I must tell her everything about America, as if my entire life is a charming anecdote.
At my door, she squeezes my hand again.
“Do not be frightened,” she whispers. “My brother is…stern, but he is good.”
I stare at her. “Is he?”
Beatrice nods fiercely. “Yes. He pretends otherwise, but he is.”
Then she is gone again, swallowed by the corridor and the rules of her world.
In my room, the silence settles like dust.
I sit on the edge of the bed, hands folded, and for the first time since waking, I let myself feel it.
The grief.
The sheer, impossible ache of my mother’s face, the way her hand slipped, the soundless scream my brain keeps replaying like it’s trying to brute-force reality into changing its mind.
I press my fist to my mouth.
“Mom,” I whisper, and the word is a wound.
Outside the window, London exists. The distant clop of hooves. A bell. Voices on the street, muffled by glass and distance. Coal smoke and damp air creeping in through the cracks.
Somewhere in this city, there are people who think washing hands is eccentric.
Somewhere in this city, I have no name that fits, no money, no power.
And yet.
I am alive.
That should mean something.
I change back into the nightgown Molly leaves on the chair. I wash again with the basin until my skin feels raw, as if scrubbing hard enough can erase time itself. I crawl into bed and stare at the canopy until my eyes blur.
Sleep does not come easily.
When it does, it is shallow, full of my mother’s horrified face and the smell of lemon disinfectant.
Then a scream rips through the house.
I bolt upright so fast the sheet tangles around my legs.
Another shout follows—men’s voices, panicked. Footsteps pound in the corridor. A door slams.
Adrenaline floods my body, sharp and clean. I am out of bed before my brain catches up, bare feet hitting cold floorboards.
I fling the door open.
The corridor is lit by flickering candlelight. Servants rush past—one maid sobbing, her hands clenched around her apron.
“What is it?” I call.
No one answers. They either do not hear me or do not consider me a person worth answering.
I run anyway, following the sound, the commotion pulling me like a hook.
At the top of the stairs, a cluster of servants has gathered. In the center, a footman lies on the floor, his limbs jerking violently, heels thudding against the wood.
Someone is trying to hold him down.
Someone else is shouting, “Fetch vinegar! Fetch a spoon!”
The maid is sobbing harder now. “He’s dying!”
My brain flips into a different mode, cold and focused.
Seizure.
Tonic-clonic. Generalized. I can see it in the stiffening, the jerking, the way his eyes roll back.
I push through the crowd without thinking.
“No,” I snap, loud enough that several heads whip toward me. “Do not put anything in his mouth.”
They freeze, shocked by the audacity of a strange woman in a nightgown giving orders in the duke’s house.
I drop to my knees beside the footman, hands steady despite the tremor in my stomach.
“Move the candles,” I say, scanning the floor for anything he can hit his head on. “Give him space. Turn him on his side when he stops.”
The footman’s body arches, then jerks again, harder.
Someone whispers, horrified, “What are you doing?”
I don’t look up.
“Keeping him alive,” I say.