Chapter 17 #2
The words fell into the confined space of the carriage like stones dropped into still water. Christina's hands went cold, her fingers numb where they gripped the cushion.
"I cannot," she answered, hearing her voice tremble and despising it. "I cannot and will not, Pennington."
"But you have loyalty to your family, do you not?" He lifted an eyebrow. "And I am family to you. This inheritance of yours must be kept within the family structure, and I am the only one who can do such a thing by marrying you."
The shiver that ran from the top of Christina's head to her toes was so great that she could not speak for some minutes. She shook her head, closing her eyes as she pushed back the rising panic. "I am engaged to Lord Coventry."
He snorted. "No, you are not. He stepped back from you once, Christina. He will do so again, be assured of that."
But his composure was fraying. She could see it in the way his hands trembled slightly where they rested on his knees, the way color had begun to climb his neck.
His eyes had taken on a glazed quality — not the look of a man in control but of one being driven by something larger than himself, something desperate and consuming.
"I require your fortune, Christina. You will marry me."
"I will not."
"So you have ascertained that it was I who wrote to you both, then."
"And the most present note."
Lord Pennington shrugged his shoulders as if what he had done was of no importance whatsoever.
"If you will not end your connection with Lord Coventry willingly, then I shall make certain he will step back from you regardless.
No gentleman wants to be tainted by the stain of a lady's reputation.
" His mouth curved into a mirthless smile.
"I, however, care nothing for that since your inheritance will do more than satisfy me. "
It felt as if something were clawing in Christina's throat. "You cannot force me to marry you."
With one swift movement, Lord Pennington reached into his coat.
Christina froze, blood turning to ice in her veins. The knife caught the afternoon light through the carriage window, its edge narrow and glinting.
"I told you that you would marry me, cousin," Lord Pennington said in such a gentle tone that it was as if he were trying to woo her. "You will come with me now, and you will make no complaint."
Christina stared at the blade, her breathing sharp and shallow. Every instinct screamed at her to reach for the door, to cry out, to throw herself from the carriage — but the knife was steady in his hand, his arm extended just enough that flight would bring her within its reach.
Lord Pennington's gaze cut sideways to Sarah, and his voice did not rise. It did not need to.
"And you, girl. You will sit where you are, and you will hold your tongue.
If you stir from this carriage, if you attempt to cry out, if you disappear from my sight before I have your mistress where I intend her to be — this blade goes into her shoulder before you have reached the corner. Do you understand me?"
Sarah made a small, strangled sound in her throat and nodded, her whole frame shaking.
"Good."
Christina's stomach turned. Whatever she might yet attempt, the shape of it had just been fixed: Sarah could not simply go. Whatever was done would have to be timed, concealed, executed within the single breath in which Pennington's attention was entirely elsewhere.
Think. Do not panic. Think.
"You were watching me from the beginning," she said, her voice thin but deliberate. She was buying time — every second he talked was a second she was not in his carriage, a second closer to rescue. "You used that footman, George. Why?"
Lord Pennington rolled his eyes. "Are you truly so simple?
I saw you in the gardens that night at Ashbourne House, Christina.
I had danced the quadrille with you only hours before, and I had been certain — absolutely certain — that you had received my attentions with something more than courtesy.
I followed you out of the ballroom to press my suit, and instead I found you in the arbor with Lord Coventry, your hand already in his.
I heard him propose. I heard you accept.
" His lip curled. "My humiliation was such that I could hardly see straight as I left the gardens.
I went directly to Whites, and it was there, at the card table, that Lord Coventry was foolish enough to speak of you aloud — not by name, but clearly enough that I knew whom he meant.
By the time I left that club, the shape of what I would do had already formed. "
Christina kept her eyes on his face while her hand moved slowly — imperceptibly — to her left, reaching for Sarah's fingers beneath the fold of her skirts. Her maid was trembling, one hand pressed over her own mouth, tears running silently down her cheeks.
"The footman?" she asked, buying time, her fingers finding Sarah's and squeezing once, twice, the pressure steady. She did not look at the maid. She could not.
"Already one of Coventry's, as it happened.
A man with gambling debts I had, through a certain intermediary, come to hold.
I had only to apply the pressure. He copied the hand well enough, and I had your own letters" — his mouth twisted, a small, ugly movement — "from a previous exchange on some family triviality, so that I could produce one to Coventry in turn.
Then the footman was redeployed to your household, where he could tell me what I wished to know.
I had placed myself in a position from which every outcome was to my advantage. "
"Every outcome?"
"If Coventry had pursued you despite the letter, I would have exposed the footman, revealed what I took to be his forgery, and presented myself as the relation who had uncovered the plot.
You would have been grateful." His voice took on the faintly pedagogical tone of a man explaining something he had given great thought to.
"If instead you retreated in sorrow — which you did — then time and a cousin's kindness would bring you to me in the end.
I did not require haste. I had expected, in truth, to have you within a year. Two, at the outside."
The cold precision of it — the fact that he had laid out each branch like a chess player considering his openings — was somehow worse than any rage. She forced herself to keep pressing Sarah's hand, her fingers brushing toward the carriage door.
"But I did not come to you," she said.
For the first time, something in his composure slipped.
Not a crack — a twitch, at the corner of his mouth, quickly mastered.
"No. You did not." He drew a breath through his nose.
"I wrote to you. Small notes, kind ones, the sort of thing a cousin might send to a grieving girl.
I made certain to be visible to your brother in London, to keep my name alive in your household, to remind you all that I was — reliably — there.
I was patient, Christina. I was exceptionally patient. "
"And still I did not come."
"No." His voice flattened. "Your letters back to me grew colder, not warmer.
When you returned to London this Season, I had thought the reunion would be the thing — that London, society, the memory of your broken engagement, would make you look to me at last. Instead you looked at Coventry within the first fortnight.
The very man I had removed." The word removed came out with a bitter precision. "It was not to be borne."
"And your debts," Christina said quietly.
That struck. His hand tightened on the knife.
"We do not all have wealthy relations who leave us vast amounts of coin," he said, and his voice cracked on the word vast. His hands clenched briefly, knuckles white, before he flattened them against his thighs with deliberate force.
"Some of us are left with dwindling coin because one's father was selfish and arrogant.
I have spent two years keeping that reckoning from catching me.
Two years of managing creditors, of selling quietly what could be sold, of watching my inheritance amount to less each quarter than the last. I had time, Christina.
I had time so long as you did not marry another.
And then you arrived in London, and you looked at him, and I found that my time had run out overnight. "
For one breath — one single, treacherous breath — Christina felt something that was almost sympathy.
The pain in his voice was real. The financial desperation that drove him was genuine, not performed.
His father had squandered a fortune and left him with the title and the debts, and that was a burden she could understand.
Then his expression changed. The pain was still there, but it was joined by something else — a cold, calculating determination that hardened his features and turned his eyes to glass.
"I require your fortune, Christina. You will marry me."
The sympathy died. Christina lifted her chin. "I will not."
"Lord Coventry has no claim to you," Pennington hissed, his attention entirely on Christina now. "I, however — "
"You have no claim either." Her voice trembled at the fury in his eyes, but she held his gaze, her fingers finding Sarah's one final time and pressing hard. "I do not choose you, Pennington. I choose him."
His jaw worked, the skin around his mouth pulling taut. "You were warned, Christina. You were warned of what would happen."
"You would ruin my reputation?"
The smirk cast more fear into her chest. "I would ruin you, yes, but not in the way you think. There will be a scandal, certainly, but it will have no lasting damage."
"You cannot force me to marry you."
"Cannot?" he echoed with a chilling smile. "Oh, Christina, I thought you were more sensible than that. Your inheritance — and you yourself — will soon be mine." Twisting his wrist so the knife glinted, he leaned closer. "Do you understand now, my love?"
Christina's heart hammered violently. She needed one moment — one distraction — to take his eyes from Sarah completely. Anything less, and the blade would move before the maid could reach the door.
"Please, Pennington," she whispered. "Do not do this."
She let her body sway, her eyes rolling upward as she slumped sideways in her seat with a sharp cry.
It was not a convincing faint — she was too rigid, too tense — but it was enough.
Lord Pennington's attention snapped entirely to her, his free hand reaching for her arm, his expression twisting between irritation and alarm.
"Get up!" he demanded, yanking her forward.
Behind him — behind him, where he was not looking — the carriage door on Sarah's side opened.
A rush of daylight flooded in. Sarah's small, terrified face appeared in the frame for half a breath, her eyes enormous, her whole body shaking.
She looked at Christina. Christina's eyes, still half-lidded from her feigned collapse, met the maid's.
She gave the smallest nod she could manage.
Sarah pushed herself from the carriage and ran.
Christina heard the maid's footsteps, rapid and uneven on the pavement, growing fainter with every passing second. Relief — cold, overwhelming relief — washed through her even as Pennington hauled her upright, his fingers bruising her arm.
He did not notice. In the fury of the moment, in the urgency of his own design, the maid had ceased to exist for him. Christina prayed it would remain so.
"Outside, now," he ordered, his voice tight. "Take my arm."
Her skin crawled as she set her hand to his.
He guided her with hurried steps toward the waiting carriage on the next street, his grip too firm, his pace too quick for a gentleman walking with a lady.
To anyone watching from a distance, they might have been taking the air together.
Up close, the tension in his frame and the panic in her eyes told a different story.
He opened his carriage door and motioned her inside.
Christina hesitated. Every ounce of remaining strength in her body gathered itself into that hesitation — a brief, desperate stand at the threshold.
"Do not hesitate." His voice was a blade. "You know what awaits you if you do not."
She stepped inside. Tears blurred her vision as she settled onto the seat. Lord Pennington climbed in after her, shutting the door firmly and rapping on the roof. The smile on his face sickened her.
He set the knife down beside him on the seat so that her eyes were continually drawn to it and sat back against the squabs. "You may as well try to rest, my love. The drive ahead will be long and arduous."
"Where are we going?" Her voice was strangled, though she already knew.
"To Scotland," he said, calmly. "You and I will be married without delay."
Christina turned her face away from him and pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the carriage window. Sobs broke from her lips — partly terror, partly fury. She was afraid, yes, but rage burned beneath the fear like embers beneath ash. She was not broken. She would not break.
The maid escaped. Coventry will know. Someone will come.
But if no one comes, I will find my own way out.
The carriage lurched forward, carrying her into the gathering dusk.
Lord Pennington closed his eyes and folded his hands in his lap, as composed as if they were going to a dinner party.
Christina kept her forehead against the glass, watching the last streets of London slide away, and beneath the tears and the terror, a small, fierce flame of defiance refused to be extinguished.