Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Her husband had been too cruel; Elizabeth’s life would nevermore be hers. Week two of her ill-begotten marriage and already all hope dashed. Destroyed.
Yet she’d weep no more, because Baron of Milton did not matter anymore. Nothing he could do or say to her would matter, for she was done trying. Done.
She rolled over in her bed to ease her aching buttocks.
The Duchess of Allendale had been absurd to think love might ever enter into such a union as was hers, for her husband was beyond redemption.
He’d beaten her with the same implement he used to underscore his sums, as if she were but another line in his accounts. Which she undeniably was.
There was no coming back from such an act. She had to find another way to exist in this world—his world. A way which excluded him from her day-to-day life as much as humanly possible.
Yet what world was that?
She pondered her predicament while she shifted her sore bottom once again.
Her writing—books—might offer her salvation.
They had with Papa. She might escape her rotten husband not in defiance of his orders but by escaping into worlds he could not touch, stories he could not bend to his will.
Journeys she, alone, might travel in her mind, where the awful Baron could not follow.
Elizabeth willed herself to get out of bed and start the day. Before breakfast even arrived she stood—rather than sat—at her escritoire to write. She must find a way to withstand the brute, because she was too weak to withstand his beatings.
Milton owned her flesh, but he would never own her soul.
She focused on her story, making the brooding villain pay for his evil ways.
She tortured him with ink, the only weapon she might wield.
He would pay for his transgressions, suffer for all his sins, before he died an ignoble death mourned by none.
He’d not harm the heroine again, because in the end, she would save herself, brilliantly.
As she scrawled words across the parchment a fat tear smudged her ink. Elizabeth blotted it with a curse, but then another fell, plop.
She used her kerchief to wipe her eyes, then sniffed and squared her shoulders. Once the page dried, she would simply write over the stains.
“Jasper, you are a blighter and a cad.” Li glared at him, her ink-black eyes matching her indigo-black hair. “You cannot take a ruler to a blueblood’s backside and think she will forgive you.”
“Now that is not entirely true, Li,” Milton answered. “I’ve taken a cane to many a—”
“Jasper, I am talking about an innocent young woman, not those depraved sods from the Ton who beg you to beat them so they feel something again. Your wife feels in abundance, all the time, in ways you clearly found appealing until you had the terrific bad sense to beat all feeling out of her.”
Milton winced.
“This will require a deal more groveling than gifts. Frankly, she may never come back to you after such mistreatment. I warned you not to marry the eldest. I told you to—”
“Yes, yes! Li, I married the wrong goddamn girl and now I’ve injured the wrong goddamn girl too. That is not why I am here, and it is not the first I’ve had to eat humble pie before your royal highness.”
Her frown became a scowl, because very few people on this continent would dare call her that, and he was unfortunate enough to be one of them.
“I will admit you are a loyal idiot, else I would not tolerate you at all.” Li’s mouth pinched. “I will speak with her, as should you.”
“And say what? That I am sorry I beat her like I’d not beat my own dog? That I can’t promise it won’t happen again?” He snorted his disgust. “That I am a man so broken and despicable I cannot bear to tolerate the very spirit of defiance which draws me to her like a moth to flame?”
Li coolly stared him in the eye. “Yes, to start, you might say exactly that. And a good many other things. You married her, after all, so you are stuck with her. And if you’d rather not spend the rest of your life in icy détente with a wife you chose, Jasper, then revealing something of yourself, your past, is the only way she might begin to thaw. ”
Milton shut his eyes, in pain.
“I have known women like Elizabeth Winthrop, and they cannot be bought with expensive, pretty baubles. Woo her with depth, with the language of the books you say she admires. You may have mastered her flesh, but to master her soul requires more nuanced work.”
“I do not want a wife to be work, Li.” He ground his teeth.
“Then you chose unwisely, natterhead.” She smacked him hard with her fan.
“Ow!”
“Go home, Jasper, and determine your own way out of this mess. I’ve my own messes to deal with. I don’t need you complicating my life.”
“Li, surely I do not complicate. Surely I do but—”
“Amuse, sir?” She smiled so coquettishly, so like the Li he’d known once long ago, that for an instant memories flooded back.
“No, mon cher,” she told him, the moment dissolving like mist. “You no longer amuse, you abuse my counsel. Now get out of my shop and see that your wife grows to love you as I do.” She cracked her ivory fan across his nose once more, sashaying from the room in her long red skirts, just like a princess would.
Milton sat a moment longer on the mat in Li’s tea room.
Never had he wished to cause his wife such misery and pain.
He’d spanked her before as a means of control—his own and hers.
But this last punishment had felt different.
He’d lost control, an unforgivable lapse.
Elizabeth had brought out the very worst in him, and he hated her for it, though he hated himself even more.
She’d goaded him into breaking his own blasted code of honor—and now he’d pay for marrying the wrong woman for the rest of his godforsaken life.
Yet he wanted her, his longing for Elizabeth most bizarre. He didn’t know why he wanted his wife’s affection when he knew such weakness was at worst a liability, at best a futile hope. His past would forever haunt and taunt him. And Elizabeth would now submit to him for fear alone.
Fuck! He did not wish to be cruel. He simply wished to bring his wife in line.
To hell with Li’s advice, Milton thought. He knew what he must do.
“They all know, don’t they?” Elizabeth asked Ginny as she soaked for the second time that day in a bath. Her bottom still ached, despite the arnica and witch hazel liniment her maid had liberally applied. The ruler had left raised welts; it would take time for her skin to heal.
“Well now…” Across the room Ginny fussed with Elizabeth’s dress.
Of course they all knew. The servants had been too kind: a posy at her bedside and chocolate for breakfast. A croissant with a yellow pansy tucked beside it on the plate. Gerald had even complimented her green frock. It was mortifying one’s household knew so much, humiliating to endure their pity.
“It doesn’t matter,” Elizabeth muttered to herself for the hundredth time that day. “It doesn’t matter what they think of me now.”
“Think o’ you, ma’am!” Ginny’s words exploded. “’Tis what they think o’ him. In t’ doghouse, he is! Burnt toast fer breakfast an’ salt in ’is coffee. Jack even told ’im t’ saddle ’is own mount when he made off in a huff this morn. An’ deserves it, he do, every bit of our—”
Elizabeth interrupted. “Where did the Baron go, Ginny, do you know? I should like to avoid him if I can.”
“Dunno, ma’am. A ride t’ burn things off, I s’pose. He does that when he gets in one of his moods. Or went t’ see Miss Li, mayhap. Depends right much on ’er counsel if y’ ask me.”
Miss Li, Elizabeth realized, had not replied to the letter she’d sent.
Perhaps she should call on the lady herself, provided her beast of a husband would allow it.
And her mother-in-law, Madam Audrey, had not replied either, hmm.
No doubt Milton’s closest confidantes wished nothing more to do with her now that she was his property.
They were not property. He respected their ability and intelligence, if not her own.
Elizabeth tamped down her infernal anger. She’d sworn off all emotion; she was turning over a new leaf in her marriage, one which focused inward, not outward or back. One which required as little contact with her bastard of a husband as possible.
That night, Milton slipped into his wife’s chamber to deliver her a bedside note, presuming she slept.
Instead, he found her submerged in a bath, eyes closed, dark hair floating like the Lady of the Lake.
Her nipples peeked above in rosy decadence, her legs bent at angles so that her knees poked out.
He was stricken by her beauty, and by how wretched her beauty made him feel.
He crept back to his room before she could catch him spying, yet sleep refused to come. He tossed and turned, imagining a way to right this sinking ship and amend his rotten ways. He imagined becoming the man he wished to be, rather than the man he seemed destined to remain.
She could hardly remain angry at him forever, could she?
Yet a voice inside Milton whispered that his wife could, and would stay angry.
Because a woman forged like Elizabeth—fierce and smart and proud—might hold a grudge for a very long time.
Li had. Years ago, Li had been so furious at both himself and Wells it had taken no small degree of groveling on both their parts for her to come around.
Not even Mutton could ease Milton’s misery. The wolfhound slept at the foot of his master’s bed, in reproach of all Milton was—and would never become.
***
Elizabeth sank deeper into the deliciously hot water, submerging herself in silence.
She knew she’d taxed staff with a third bath as well as by taking dinner in her room.
She’d managed all day to avoid her miserable husband but was sure she’d be forced to do her duty by him again this night, slave to his conjugal rights.
How she hated Mother England, whose women had no rights!
She willed herself not to fear her husband’s touch, for she’d enjoyed their congress before.
Only now she felt deceived—had allowed herself to be deceived—by imagining emotion ever entered the Baron’s twisted mind.
She’d confused bodily pleasure with sentiment, letting herself foolishly feel for the man when she was but a vessel for his offspring, nothing more.
Elizabeth broke the bath’s surface and stepped out to don her banyan, having long dismissed Ginny. She reached for the salve beside her bed and saw a note laid across its lid.
Elizabeth, I will not ask you to visit my chamber this night. You are hurting, and I am unable to speak, let alone write, words to relieve your pain. There are no words to undo what I have done. I can only beg your forgiveness. —Milton
Surprise, irritation, and a million other feelings flooded her mind.
She stuffed his note into her drawer. He’d not said that he was sorry, he’d merely begged for her forgiveness.
And why should she now shoulder his guilt?
He was not, at heart, repentant. He was like a surly, sullen child.
Perhaps staff had made him write it. Yes, Gerald had told him to apologize.
Or Murdoch. Milton had acted sorry before and not meant it; let him lie in the bed he’d made and stew.
She applied more salve to her posterior, pulled on her night-rail, and laid herself upon her stomach, willing sleep to come.
When it did, her devil of a husband entered her dreams with singular insistence, until she awoke and poured her dreams onto pages lit by the faint light of dawn.
Elizabeth covered one blank canvas after another in sprawling, curling script, her tale unfurling with fantastical reach into ever darker realms.
At times she did not recognize the words she wrote—as if they were not hers, but his.