Chapter 47 #2
“I am so pleased you chose to attend tonight’s ball, Lady Milton.” Lord Mathers embodied that particular style of ‘slippery polite’ Elizabeth loathed about the Ton. “What do you think of my betrothed? Is she not exquisite?”
Extremely accomplished … impeccable bloodline … a perfect duchess … He droned on about his fiancée’s attributes, though Elizabeth did not, in all honesty, know which attending lady even was this man’s intended.
She wanted rid of him. Fast.
“May I ask, Lord Mathers, why you do not dance with your bride-to-be?” Their eyes met. “It must be a chore to suffer my person, sir, when you might instead enjoy the charms of your affianced.”
“Oh, it is no chore at all, Lady Milton.” His tone turned canny.
“Quite the contrary, dancing with you brings me great joy, for it allows me to present you to my father, who has long wished to assess your own fine attributes.” And the obnoxious man turn-twirled her into an audience with the Duke of Lennox, seated like royalty at one end of the dance floor.
Elizabeth dug in her heels, but Mathers urged her forward.
“Your Grace.” He spoke loud enough that nearby heads turned. “I present to you Lady Milton, the Earl of Winthrop’s daughter.”
Lennox’s eyes met Elizabeth’s with cold appraisal. She knew their ice-blue color. They were her husband’s eyes, precisely.
“Lady Milton, I am delighted we meet, at last.”
“Your Grace.” She dipped into a genuflect.
“You are enjoying the evening.” It was less question, more command.
“Very much, Your Grace. Congratulations on your son’s engagement,” she murmured.
“I have not seen you dance yet with your husband, Lady Milton. Did he not accompany you?”
How she hated this man in this moment. “My husband does not enjoy dancing, Your Grace, though I assure you he is in attendance.”
“I am glad to hear it, Lady Milton, though a man should never leave his wife alone too long upon a dance floor.”
His insinuation stole her breath.
“Happily, my husband does not suffer your concern, Your Grace.” She would not let this duke insult her or her husband.
“I find that most surprising, Lady Milton, for Baron of Milton seems most keen on propriety, given his rather humble origin.”
She wanted to punch His Grace for such thinly veiled insult, yet Lord Mathers’s grip on her arm held fast. Elizabeth prayed Milton remained too far removed—or far too occupied—to hear a word of this exchange.
“Your Grace, I believe you do not know my husband in the least.”
“I know he married a spitfire.” The Duke’s eyes raked her person, lingering at her spectacles. “An ill-bred wife who’s altogether lacking. But then, Baron of Milton’s own breeding lacks class.”
A hush fell over those close enough to hear.
Elizabeth did not think; she reacted. “The only ill-bred individual I see here, Your Grace, is the one seated right before me.”
***
From afar, Milton watched his bloody half-brother present Lizzie to their bloody sire for no other reason than to humiliate her, he was sure. He pressed his way through the crowd to try and reach her, but it was difficult to push through the throng.
He’d been set up; he felt it in his bones.
The invitation to this ball was but a ruse to give him a public drubbing, a stern ducal set-down.
His old man reveled in demeaning others, which was why Milton had worked so damned hard to prove his worth in wealth, title, and influence.
Yet here he was—amidst a slew of blood relatives, no doubt—trapped beneath his father’s roof, prey to the Duke’s power.
He clenched his fists, desperate to snatch Lizzie from his sire’s clutches and protect her from that man’s ugliness, yet he failed her even in this.
Again, he could but impotently stand by and watch his wife take the brunt of his father’s cruelty.
For Lennox was as brutal as Finch. He used words instead of knives, cut-downs and social jabs instead of beatings and gouged flesh.
But the effect remained the same: to bend one to his will.
***
The Duke looked livid.
“Turn around,” he barked, and Elizabeth’s body obeyed as if Milton himself had ordered Mutton sit. She obeyed without thought, facing the ballroom now instead of the Duke, her mind a sudden blank.
A weight fell to her chest as His Grace clasped something cold about her neck. She shivered.
“This belonged to an old acquaintance of mine, Elizabeth, a person close to your husband.”
Her wits returned; he’d not only demeaned Milton’s mother, but used Elizabeth’s given name.
“It seems they were misplaced.”
He had purchased the necklace from the Lombard! Only how had he known?
“It is only fitting, I think, that I should be the one to place these stones about your neck.” He tugged the clasp, and then his finger traced her breastbone in a manner so intimate and degrading, a vision of Finch with Jasper flashed through Elizabeth’s mind.
She twisted about and slapped the Duke of Lennox flat across his face, the crack of her palm ringing in the hall.
“Bastard,” Elizabeth hissed at the Duke’s disbelieving face.
“You are a bastard of the worst degree. A true bastard, sir, not one born, but one made. And I do not care who hears me say it.” Her voice grew louder still, for Elizabeth had entered a state from which there was no turning back.
“You would treat you firstborn with such contempt as this, and publicly no less? What man does such a thing?” She wished to slap him again. “What man deliberately, cowardly shames another by so vilely abusing his wife? What man disavows his own flesh and blood?”
Her rage only rose. “You are no Duke, sir, for you have no honor. My husband is a far better man than you, and should have made a better duke. He may be but the fruit of your base actions, but to those who love and serve him, he is more worthy of fealty and affection than you will ever be.”
And Elizabeth, without thinking, spat at the Duke of Lennox’s feet.
Outrage ensued, voices shouting, talking over one another, as spittle trickled down the Duke’s immaculate black boot. He remained still as a statue, his face turning purple, while his heir, Lord Mathers, crept slowly backward.
Elizabeth’s heart beat with righteous contempt. This man stood between her and Milton’s happiness. Not Finch.
“Husband,” she announced at the top of her voice, “if you can hear me, take me home. I do not wish to lay eyes upon your rotten sire ever again.”
Within seconds Milton was beside her, leading Elizabeth through the crowd of dumbstruck onlookers who stared as if the pair were ghosts, the throng parting for them like water.
As if they were untouchable.