Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Milton wandered the streets, the park, the Thames all night. He walked the city he knew, where he’d lived all his life, in better or worse hellholes. Where he’d lied and cheated and thieved and yes, even killed. But never in all his years on London’s streets had he felt so bereft as this.
He no longer knew why he’d done it. He’d been angry, of course.
He’d wanted to punish both Lizzie and Paul but more, perhaps, he’d wished to punish himself.
Because now she’d leave be. Surely now Elizabeth would cease her ridiculous attempts to reconcile, to make him into a respectable husband.
What lady in her right mind would love a man like him?
Li hadn’t, and Elizabeth was even more righteous and principled.
He’d been a fool to hope. Worse still, he’d let Lizzie down—he, who’d sworn to protect his family, had let them all down when he’d allowed Finch to snatch him from Winthrop’s house as if he were a boy and not a grown, goddamned man.
The moment that devil had put him in irons, he’d been lost.
“D’you enjoy our play as much as I do?” Finch’s knife twisted an open wound, making Milton’s nerves scream and his body shake, forcing his brain back.
“Stay with me, boy. Don’t leave now. I need yer here, feelin’ the fine flick o’ me blade.”
Milton’s flesh was licked by fire, his insides ablaze.
“Count fer me, boy. Remember?”
As I was goin’ to St. Ives,
Upon the road I met seven wives;
Every wife had seven sacks,
Every sack had seven cats,
Every cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, an’ wives,
How many were goin’ to St. Ives?
God, not this wicked, evil game! Milton knew the bloody answer. He’d learned it the hard way, same way he’d learned to count every wound carved into his flesh. If all were bound for St. Ives—the narrator, the wives, the sacks and cats and kits—’twas 2,801.
Instead, he held up one shaking middle finger, because only one man in that trick rhyme traveled—the narrator was the correct answer.
Finch bent Milton’s finger back until the bone nearly snapped. Nearly, because the fiend knew just how far to take a man to make him break. It’s what the devil enjoyed most.
“Ain’t no fun t’ end so soon, boy. We’ll have t’ play a different game.” And his grating, lazy voice began a new, twisted rhyme.
Sing a song of sixpence,
A bag full of rye,
Four and twenty naughty boys,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing.
Wasn't that a dandy dish
To set before the king?
“I were set t’ make you me heir, Jasp—with your blue blood and my sharp brains, what all we could’ve accomplished… But y’ ruined that.” His face soured, the blade digging deep enough now Milton screamed.
In desperation he pictured Lizzie, willing his mind to hold fast to her sweet visage instead.
He’d focus only on her innocence, her loveliness, as he took the twenty-four blows meant to filet his body—the pie’s baked crust. For he was Finch’s naughty boy, and clearly always would be.
But if he held on to his wife’s warm smile, her spectacles winking in sunlight, she might become his dish, and he her one true king.
She’d give him four and twenty strapping sons, birds heralding each birth, singing of futures bright, so bright…
Blight. Milton viciously kicked a stone off the pier.
It was better Elizabeth hate him.
Is that why he’d done it? Why he’d treated her and Kilpert as he had?
To spare her worse hurt? He gazed out at the water, moonlight sparkling across its grim depths.
How many bodies lay at the bottom of the Thames, those drowned willingly, and those tossed in, their lives cut brutally short?
At least now Lizzie would cease trying. It was astonishing, really, how valiantly she’d tried to make their doomed marriage work, tried to grow affection for him.
But he was a worthless cause. He could be neither reformed nor remade—by her or anyone.
Once a whipping boy, always a whipping boy.
A day later, Milton braced himself for Dr. Hollingsforth’s assessment, because Murdoch had called the doctor not for him this time, but for his Baroness, who apparently now cast up what little she managed to swallow.
He’d not visited Lizzie’s chamber nor spoken to her since the incident in his parlor.
Nor had he heard from Kilpert, though he’d penned the man a short letter of apology.
He had no proof the scholar had done anything worse than make eyes at his wife.
And one couldn’t call a man out for looking, no matter how much one wanted to.
“It appears your wife suffers two distinct conditions, Jasp.”
“Are they curable?” Milton cut to the chase.
“One, yes, the other, I fear, less.”
“Well, out with it, Doc.”
“Jasper, are you feeling well yourself? After all you endured I suspect you—”
“I am healed.” He was irritated this man had seen him at his lowest. Everyone bloody had.
“The good news is your wife is with child, and the bad news is she suffers a dark melancholy.”
Shock, elation, terror—all at once—coursed through Milton’s veins.
“It happens to some, this melancholy, though usually it comes after, not before, the birth.”
“She is with child?” Milton repeated in a stupor.
“Yes, though it is early still.”
“And her health otherwise? I was told she’s not been eating.”
“Normal for early pregnancy; in a few weeks she’ll lose the nausea and gain back the weight. That is not what concerns me. What I worry about is her—”
“I’m to be a father, Christ.” Terror, elation. Again.
“Jasper, Lady Milton is strong enough to physically bear your heir, but her humors remain unbalanced. She is listless and gloomy, with little regard for herself. And if the babe is to be born healthy, the mother must get fresh air and mild exercise in addition to eating well.”
Milton barely listened. He was to be a father. Fuck.
“In my experience, a woman’s emotional state can affect the health of the developing child, not to mention her capacity to care for that child once born.”
“I—forgive me, Doc, I am ... I did not expect such news so soon.”
“Well, you’ve been married some while now, Jasp.”
“Yes.”
“You must ensure her mood improves, else the health of your heir may suffer.”
Milton finally heard the man.
“I do not know the cause of your wife’s melancholy, Jasper, but I suggest you uncover it.”
Milton sucked in his next breath. He was the cause of Lizzie’s unhappiness, but not a blasted thing would change that. She was stuck with him, God help her. As he was stuck with her.
“I shall do my best, sir.”
“Good.” Hollingsforth rose from his seat. “I’ll check on her again next week, see if her nausea has abated. And Jasp”—he gave Milton a stern look—“take care of yourself too. Your wounds may be healed, but less visible scars remain.”
“It is my wife you need worry about, sir. Not me.” Milton ushered the man out, eager to avoid more scrutiny.
Elizabeth did not believe the doctor’s words. She was not with child; she was simply ill, in bed. Sick to her stomach, perhaps, but mainly sick at heart.
Not even her sister’s joy upon learning she was to become an aunt cheered Elizabeth’s spirits. She’d barely been able to stomach Annabelle’s most recent visit, casting up her breakfast before her sister’s very eyes.
She desperately did not wish to be pregnant. It bound her only more to the Baron when she’d begun to fantasize faking her death and changing her name, allowing Milton to marry again. Or had that been a chapter in her novel?
Some other woman could give her husband his coveted heirs, because he clearly did not want her for his wife. Elizabeth lay listless in bed and wished herself dead.
Only that wasn’t true, damnation, because she didn’t want to die, she wanted her rotten husband back!
She wanted the man she’d begun to uncover, whom she’d quietly, secretly hoped had grown fond of her too.
There’d been signs he cared, enjoyed her company beyond mere enjoyment of her flesh. Before Finch, she’d held hope.
Now no hint of the man she thought she’d known remained.
The Baron still did not deign to speak to her. Not once had he visited her sickbed, even knowing she now carried his long-sought heir. Though one night she’d dreamt he stood over her, staring down with tears in his eyes. A dream.
His disregard, his treatment of her was inhumane.
She crawled out from under the bedclothes to fetch a sheaf of paper and a heavy book.
She laid the blank pages atop the book’s hard cover, placed the inkwell within bedside reach, and began to write an entirely new story.
The brooding baron would not brood. Instead, he’d be hell bent on the heroine’s complete annihilation, though the lady would of course fight back.
In this story, Elizabeth would kill the antihero and resurrect him as an entirely new man. Failing that, she’d kill the heroine. Something, someone, had to die—or change.