Chapter 12
“Three weeks,” Arabella whispered. “He actually said three weeks.”
“Yes,” Gwen replied, her fingers knotted in her gloves. “He has even named the place. St. Agatha’s.”
Eleanor shut the door to Arabella’s small sitting room with a decisive click and turned the key in the lock. “Then we must speak plainly, and we must do it quickly.”
Arabella whirled back toward them, her cheeks flushed, her copper curls quivering with indignation. “This cannot be allowed. Nuns, Gwen. He would lock you up with nuns.”
“It is a convent, not a dungeon,” Eleanor reminded, though her mouth was tight. “Some women like that life.”
“I am not some women,” Gwen said softly.
Arabella threw herself onto the settee in a storm of silk and indignation. “Nor am I. Nor is any creature with breath and a beating heart. Oh, Gwen.”
Eleanor crossed the room and sat opposite Gwen, arranging her grey skirts with the neatness of a woman who never allowed emotion to crease her seams. “Tell us exactly what he said. No embroidery, no muttered asides. Word for word, as far as you recall.”
Gwen recounted the conversation. Howard’s calm cruelty. Cordelia’s futile pleas. The words that had lodged in her bones like ice: three weeks.
When she finished, the room had gone very quiet.
Arabella’s eyes shone with tears. “He called you a burden.”
“He has called me worse.” Gwen shrugged.
“That is not an answer,” Eleanor observed. “It is a habit.”
Gwen tried to smile. “I have many habits, none of them very pretty.”
Eleanor’s gaze softened, just a fraction. “You are not a burden, and you know it.”
Gwen looked down at her hands. “I know that I cost him money. Gowns. Vouchers. The price of disappointment.”
“You cost him nothing that he did not choose to spend,” Eleanor scoffed. “He married your mother with the full knowledge of your existence.”
“And her dowry,” Arabella added hotly. “Do not forget that small detail.”
“We do not know what happened between them,” Eleanor said. “Speculation will not help.”
“Speculation comforts me,” Arabella insisted. “How else am I to survive another Season without a love match. I must have a narrative if I cannot have romance.”
“Arabella,” Eleanor warned.
Arabella sighed and leaned toward Gwen, taking her hand. “I am sorry. I am being flippant because I wish to throw something and cannot. I hate this man.”
“You do not know him,” Gwen pointed out.
“I know what he does,” Arabella replied. “That is enough.”
Eleanor folded her hands in her lap. “The question is not what we feel. The question is what we will do.”
Gwen lifted her head. “Do.”
“You will not go to St. Agatha’s,” Arabella declared.
Eleanor gave her sister a level look. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I’ve decided that I will not allow it,” Arabella said. “If I must stand in front of the carriage myself, I will.”
“You are five feet nothing in your stockings,” Eleanor snorted. “They will simply drive around you.”
Arabella shot her a glare. “Poetic support, Ellie, not practical criticism.”
Eleanor sighed, but there was affection in the sound. “Very well. I am poetically enraged. Are you satisfied?”
“Somewhat,” Arabella muttered.
Gwen watched them, a faint warmth blooming in her chest despite everything.
They were so different, the two sisters. Arabella, with her dreams and frowns and sudden laughter. Eleanor, with her calm mind and clipped speech, already deemed a spinster and seemingly untroubled by the word.
They had been her raft more than once. Now, she might be taken from them by a single man’s decision.
“I wanted to cry,” she admitted, her voice low. “When he said it, I wanted to fall at his feet and beg. But I did not. I stood there and thought of ledgers. Time. Numbers. How many nights I had left.”
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. “How many?”
“Twenty-one,” Gwen answered.
Arabella groaned softly. “You should not have to think in numbers. You should be thinking of dances and suitors and whether your hair pleases you.”
“My hair has never pleased me,” Gwen said.
Arabella sniffed. “Your hair is lovely. You only dislike it because he says otherwise.”
Eleanor cleared her throat. “Gwen, you spoke of nights. That is less usual language for a threat of a convent.”
Gwen hesitated, her heart giving an uncomfortable little leap. “I am counting opportunities.”
“Opportunities for what?” Eleanor pressed.
“For mistakes,” Gwen said lightly.
Eleanor’s gaze did not waver. “You mean for escape?”
Gwen looked away. The fire cast a flickering glow on the Chinese screen in the corner. “Perhaps.”
Arabella squeezed her hand harder. “Good. We cannot simply let him cart you off to a convent. We must run away instead. It is obvious.”
Eleanor pinched the bridge of her nose. “Running away is never obvious. It is rash. It is scandalous. It is, in most cases, disastrous.”
“In some cases,” Arabella countered, “it ends with true love and a cottage in Scotland.”
“Half the novels in the libraries are not evidence,” Eleanor protested.
“They are for me,” Arabella insisted. “Listen. We find a carriage, we pack your belongings, we whisk you and your mother away in the dead of night. William can join you later, once he is safely out of school. You disappear to Bath or the Lakes or some charming little town where no one has heard of Howard Tull.”
“Howard would send notices,” Eleanor cautioned. “And solicitors. And possibly the magistrate. He is not the sort of man who loses things quietly.”
“Then we hide her more cleverly,” Arabella said.
Gwen drew her hand back gently, placing it in her lap. “I cannot simply vanish and leave my mother to endure his anger alone. If I run, she must run with me.”
Arabella nodded as if this were the most natural condition in the world. “Of course.”
Eleanor pursed her lips. “Your mother, does she know about this plan?”
“Not yet,” Gwen admitted. “I only just left the morning room when Martha told me you were at home. I came here first.”
“You chose correctly,” Arabella said. “We are much better company than your stepfather.”
Eleanor ignored that. “What do you hope your mother will say?”
“That she will come,” Gwen whispered.
Silence fell. It was softer than the earlier ones, filled with memory of Cordelia’s bruised silences, her quick, apologetic smiles, the way she shrank and then bloomed again whenever Howard’s temper left the room.
“She loves him,” Gwen muttered bitterly.
Arabella made a sound that was almost a growl. “She is afraid of him.”
“She is both,” Eleanor said quietly. “The two are not strangers.”
Gwen swallowed. “If I ask her to leave, I ask her to betray a man she believes herself bound to. Even if he does not deserve her loyalty. If I do not ask her, I leave her there to bear his wrath alone. How am I supposed to live with either choice?”
Arabella blinked her tears away. “You cannot stay.”
Eleanor looked at Gwen, long and hard. “You cannot.”
Gwen stared at her hands. “I know.”
Arabella leaned forward, her eyes shining. “Then I will help you. Whatever you choose. If you say tonight, I will find a way to throw clothes into trunks. I will bribe our coachman. I will tell Mama we have decided to be philanthropic and take the air in the country.”
“You will do no such thing without a plan,” Eleanor interjected, but her tone had softened. “Running away is not a matter of romance. It is a matter of money, carriages, false names, and careful lies.”
Arabella tossed her head. “Then we will have all of those. We have you.”
“I am not a supply cupboard,” Eleanor protested.
“You are better,” Arabella replied. “You are organized.”
Eleanor looked at Gwen again. “I was going to tell you not to do it. To endure. To go to St. Agatha’s and hope that time and distance will dull his power. That you might make a life there, even if it’s not the one you wanted.”
“And now?” Gwen asked.
“And now I have recalled the look in your eyes the night he shattered your teacup because you laughed too loudly,” Eleanor said quietly. “I do not wish to imagine what three more years of his temper will do to you. I have decided that running is less foolish than staying.”
Arabella’s lips trembled. “Ellie, that is the closest thing to open rebellion you have ever said. I could kiss you.”
“Do not,” Eleanor warned.
Gwen felt a laugh catch in her throat and then turn into something wetter. “If I run, it is not only for me. It is for my mother. I must find a way to take her. Perhaps with the help of a friend who knows something about arrangements.”
Arabella’s gaze sharpened at once. “The Duke.”
Heat bloomed in Gwen’s cheeks. “I did not say that.”
“You did not have to,” Arabella quipped. “You look different when you think of him. Like the heroines in the second volume, when they have decided that kissing the rake is worth certain ruin.”
Eleanor’s eyebrows flew up. “You have kissed him.”
Gwen’s heart thumped. She wished the floor would open and swallow her. “I did not say that either.”
Arabella clasped her hands to her chest. “You have kissed him! I knew it! I knew the garden party was too quiet after you left.”
“Arabella,” Eleanor said sharply.
Gwen tried to gather the tatters of her dignity. “If I had, in theory, it would not mean much. My reputation is already ruined.”
“It means something to you,” Eleanor countered. “Judging from the color in your cheeks.”
Gwen pressed her hands to her cheeks instinctively, as if she could smooth the warmth away. “We are not speaking of that.”
“We are speaking of escape.” Arabella nodded. “And he is a duke with money and a closed carriage and an interest in you.”
“That is precisely why we are not speaking of him,” Gwen said. “He is not my savior. I will not be another of his problems to solve.”
“He may not see you as a problem,” Eleanor suggested.
Gwen thought of Victor’s hands on the keys, of his mouth on hers, of the way his eyes had softened when she spoke of running. The memory sent a confusing rush of heat and ache through her.
“He is dangerous to think of,” she said quietly.