Chapter 4 #2
Her father's frown deepened.
"Yer mother's father filled yer head with tales of that land for years, and now here we are." He said it without heat, more resignation than complaint, his eyes flicking to his wife.
"She is returning to me roots," Lady Hunter said, pausing at the door long enough to press a hand to her own chest. "There are worse things, Edmund."
Grisselle turned back to the window, watching the yellow-grey mist creep over the slate roofs. The bargain was struck, the ink was dry, but the cold weight in her stomach felt remarkably like lead.
The next afternoon, the sun managed to break through the clouds just enough to turn the mud of Bond Street into a thick, glittering paste.
Grisselle walked with her chin up, her old green parasol tilted against the light, when a sharp, familiar voice broke through the rattle of passing hackney coaches.
"Well. Look who has crawled out of the hills."
Penelope Asquith stood on the pavement outside the milliner’s shop, her blue silk skirts held high above the filth of the gutter. Mr. Hartley was beside her, his silver-headed cane hooked over his arm, though his jaw looked distinctly slack as he caught sight of Grisselle.
"Miss Asquith," Grisselle said, stopping two paces away.
"I stood not ten feet from that door myself," Penelope said, her small teeth bared in a smile that did not reach her sharp eyes.
Her disbelief was raw, visible in the tight twitch of her nostrils.
"And I still can hardly credit what I saw.
Surely you aren't going to pretend he actually knows your name? "
"The contract is signed, Miss Asquith," Grisselle replied, her voice dropping into that low, steady rhythm that always made Penelope's fan rattle. "We leave for the Highlands on Friday morning."
Hartley shifted his weight, his face flushing a dark, ugly red as his spite took over. "A savage from the rocks, then. He looks as though he’d rather skin a deer than dance a quadrille. You’ll be freezing in some stone tower before the winter frosts even hit, Miss Hunter."
"I prefer the cold to the smell of stale tallow and gin, Mr. Hartley," Grisselle said softly. "And I believe you owe the gentlemen at White’s five hundred pieces. Do try to pay it promptly. It is bad form to let a wager linger."
Penelope’s mouth snapped shut so hard her teeth clicked, her face turning the ugly color of a bruised turnip as she wrenched Hartley’s arm and hurried down the street.
Grisselle stood alone on the cobblestones, watching them go.
For three years, she had dreamed of this exact moment—of the absolute silence that would follow her victory, of the sharp, cutting sting she would leave in Penelope’s pride.
But as she stood there in the pale July sun, the triumph tasted entirely hollow, like dry ash in her mouth.
It did not fill the empty, shaking space in her chest at all. It changed nothing.
She went back home, and by evening, the small bedroom at the top of the house was in absolute chaos. A heavy canvas trunk sat open in the center of the floor, its leather straps spilling across the bare wood boards.
Clara Doyle knelt beside it, her small hands trembling as she carefully folded Grisselle’s old white muslin dress. A single, heavy tear dropped from Clara’s chin, leaving a dark, wet circle on the fabric.
"You never did like London, did you, Gris?" Clara asked, her voice cracking as she pressed her sleeve against her eyes.
"I hated every single inch of it," Grisselle said, slamming a stack of heavy woolen stockings into the corner of the trunk. "I hated the air, I hated the people, and I hated the way they looked at my shoes."
"But him," Clara whispered, looking up through her damp eyelashes. "Gris, the way he looked across that crowded room... he didn't even ask who you were. He just saw you, and he knew."
Grisselle stopped, a heavy linsey-woolsey skirt clutched in her fists. The memory of his dark eyes hit her like a freezing wave, making her breath catch in her throat. "He is enormous, Clara. And that scar, it looks like it was made by an iron hook."
"And his voice," Clara muttered, leaning her head against the edge of the trunk. "That deep northern burr. It made the glass pendants shake. When he leaned down to your ear, did you not feel entirely undone?"
"No," Grisselle said sharply, dropping the skirt into the trunk with a violent jerk to reject the thought before it could take root. "I felt cornered. I felt like a fool who had been caught stealing bread from a larder."
Her hands didn't move to the next stocking as quickly as they should have. She smoothed the same fold of wool flat three times over before she trusted herself to look up.
"But the way he holds himself."
"He is a stranger, Clara," Grisselle interrupted, her voice hard as she forced herself to stare at the small candle flame on the desk.
"We have made a bargain, nothing more. He needs a lady to silence his council, and I need a horse and a hill to escape this place, and I need to marry.
There is no romance in it. There is no knowing.
I have sold myself to a savage man for the price of my freedom, and I will not pretend it is anything grander than that. "
Clara looked at her for a long, silent moment, then reached out and took Grisselle's hand, squeezing it, quick and firm. Grisselle didn't pull away, but she kept her eyes fixed on the dark window, where the wind off the river was just beginning to howl.