Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Chapter 14

Two days. It had taken Lucian two days to break his word and turn to another woman. And he had invited her into their home. In bright daylight. It made no sense, but there were few other logical explanations for the caress she had just witnessed, and so she stood as if glued to the spot and stared. The woman wasn’t good society, and her hair was short and mousy, and the coiled tension in her slender body evoked a spring ready to launch. She still exuded a particular sensuality; it was in the worldly way she angled her chin, in the leisurely, confident manner in which she had dragged her fingertip along Lucian’s jaw. She was immediately enviable—Hattie could see her gracing one of her canvases as a heroine. Under other circumstances. She heard her teeth press together. Her stomach was burning with a violent emotion.

“Mrs. Blackstone,” Lucian said, and she knew the look on his face: impersonal, aloof—her father used it on her mother when they had company.

“I heard something crash.” Her voice had come out feebly. She didn’t acknowledge his guest, as the correct course of action was to pretend mistresses did not exist, but she felt the woman’s assessment prickle over her skin, and the heat in her veins surged like the tide of a fiery sea. Even a merely vaguely caring husband would exercise discretion. To think she had begun embroidering his braces with Scottish thistles last night … Her throat tightened.

“It was an accident,” Lucian said. “Don’t trouble yourself.” He beckoned with his hand. “Allow me to introduce Miss Byrne.”

“No.” It shot out of her mouth quickly, like a bullet. His face froze. As they measured each other across the room, the air between them quivered like some creature in its death rattle.

The woman made as though to place a hand on Lucian’s arm but seemed to think better of it and stepped back. “I take my leave,” she announced.

Hattie avoided looking at her when she approached. Still, she saw it, that the woman moved with a slight swagger rather than a sway, and that the corner of her mouth turned up in the tiniest of smirks when she walked past. Then she was gone, leaving a cloud of ambergris and tobacco hanging in her wake.

Lucian’s footfall was heavy on the tiles, and her pulse stuttered. She tried ignoring him, too, but he planted himself right in front of her and stood as immovable as a brick wall until she reluctantly met his gaze.

“What was the meaning of this?” he demanded, thunder in his eyes.

He was angry. Immediately, she felt nauseous. “I’m not obliged to acknowledge such a thing,” she whispered.

“A thing,” Lucian said quietly. “What thing?”

“Your … your liaisons.”

His face was blank with disbelief. “Since you’re not stupid, you can’t possibly think that I would introduce you to a side piece,” he said, “so forgive me if I assumed you were rude to my friend on purpose.”

Stupid.She sucked in a breath. Very well, perhaps she had jumped to conclusions, but his brazen friend’s feelings were presently his concern? She clasped a hand over her belly. “Unless she is your mother, sister, or cousin, in which case I’m terribly sorry for refusing an introduction, I’m quite certain I’m not obliged to acknowledge an unacquainted woman who is fondling you in my drawing room,” she said primly.

“Your drawing room,” he repeated, amazed.

Apparently, he didn’t even regard her as the mistress of the house. Her ears glowed with humiliation. “Insofar as the drawing room is a private area of the home, and usually the wife’s area,” she muttered. “Which requires any decent visitor to at least announce themselves to the wife before they enter it.”

The flash of displeasure in Lucian’s gaze said he didn’t appreciate the lecture on domestic protocol. He leaned down until his nose nearly touched hers. “And as your husband,” he said softly, “I won’t tolerate you acting like a snooty brat when we have company—even if you think they’re beneath you.”

His voice was cold. His eyes were colder. She stared into the gray depths thinking the soul behind might well be an arctic desert, hostile to anyone who had made the mistake of daring a foray. Last night, she had fallen asleep wearing the pendant he had gifted her between her breasts and a spark of hope inside her chest. She had slept well for the first time since the calamity in the gallery. Snooty brat. He did not like her much at all. Except, and she realized this now, except when he was trying to seduce her into sharing his bed.

“I would like to take to my room,” she said shakily.

His gaze searched hers right down to her bones, and whatever he saw made him step back. He speared five exasperate fingers through his hair. “All right. Go, then.”

She left with enough verve to make her heels slip on the floor. Halfway across the entrance hall, she abruptly turned left into the corridor leading to the back entrance. The correct procedure would be to ring the bell next to the door and ask Nicolas to please ready the carriage, then call for Carson. Next, Lucian would notice she was absconding, and he would probably put a stop to it. With a quick glance back over her shoulder, she opened the door and bolted into the courtyard. She banged her elbow on the doorframe on the way out, and the dull ache was still pulsing through her arm long after she had left Belgravia behind.

It took her nearly an hour to arrive at the sleek granite façade of London Print at number thirty-five Bedford Street. Both the white-haired receptionist in the lobby and the page boy operating the lift knew her as a friend of the owners of the house, hence they did not dare notice that she was hatless, gloveless, panting, and unsuccessfully trying to hide a limp. Limp notwithstanding, she hurried from the lift to the director’s apartment, for in the unlikely event that Lucie had returned from Italy, she would be in the apartment during lunchtime rather than her office. She had so little hope to find her friend, she burst into the room without knocking.

“Oh dear,” she gasped, and squeezed her eyes shut. Lucie was here, behind the desk, breaking from a passionate embrace with a tall, red-haired man.

“I apologize—”

“Hattie!” For a beat, it looked as though Lucie considered vaulting over the desk, then she rushed around it instead and flew across the room. She clasped Hattie’s hands in a grip surprisingly firm for her delicate frame. Behind her, Lord Ballentine was leisurely straightening his cuffs and cravat.

“My dear,” Lucie said, her eyes searching Hattie’s with concern, “how do you do?”

Hattie’s gaze flicked to Lord Ballentine, who turned to her and dipped his head. “Mrs. Blackstone.”

Her stomach gave a tiny lurch, the inevitable effect of the viscount’s symmetric beauty on a sentient person. With his soft mouth, high cheekbones, and perfectly cut jawline, his face called the archangels to mind. The devious glint in his eyes, however, said he was as wicked as the fallen one, and women across Britain were undecided whether to envy Lucie her roguish fiancé or to pity her. Judging by the lingering rosy flush on Lucie’s cheeks and her kiss-swollen lips, her friend was perfectly satisfied with her choice.

“The lift moved much faster than I remember,” Hattie stammered, mortified.

“Well spotted, ma’am,” Ballentine said smoothly. “I had the old lift replaced by a hydraulic one.”

“That sounds terribly modern.”

“Rather, the old one was hopelessly behind the times—this one is, too. Werner von Siemens has just invented an electric lift.”

“How fascinating.”

“Why don’t I send a tea cart up,” Ballentine suggested. “Mrs. Blackstone—congratulations on your nuptials. My lady.”

He exchanged glances with Lucie—his tender, hers harried—on his way out, and the moment the door had closed behind him, Lucie tugged Hattie toward a green fainting couch.

“We returned as soon as we heard,” she said. “But first, our mail delivery was delayed by nearly a week because we had changed hotels—”

Hattie sat down, stunned. “You … came back because of me?”

“Of course. But then every single Italian train was canceled or too slow. In France, there was a strike. It took eight days to reach Calais. I was ready to take over and drive one of those blasted things myself.”

Hattie gave a small moan. “You shouldn’t have abandoned your holidays.” In fact, her friend was still wearing a gray travel dress.

Lucie took her hands again in an unusually tactile display. “How could I stay? It all came at a great shock. Ballentine tried to reassure me he has never known Blackstone to maltreat a woman, but I had to see for myself.”

“But you so rarely take time for your own leisure!”

“If that worries you, look at my desk.” Lucie pointed at it, the towering stacks of mail specifically. “I’m dreadfully behind on my correspondence with the chapters in the United States, and Montgomery is putting the Married Women’s Property Act amendment proposal to Parliament in October, so I must lobby half the House of Lords by then. Idleness always takes revenge. I would have called on you in Belgravia this afternoon. Catriona shall be joining us here soon.”

“But … Catriona is in Applecross.”

“No, she stayed in Oxford, waiting for an opportunity to ambush you since you showed us the cold shoulder.”

“But she mustn’t!”

Lucie cut her an exasperate look. “Wouldn’t you do the same for us?”

“Of course I would,” Hattie said reflexively.

“So there.”

“You must know, my mother intercepted your letters,” Hattie confessed. “Hence the impression of me showing you the cold shoulder …”

“Dear, we aren’t cross with you,” Lucie said. “We understand. We are worried about you, not put out.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Hattie murmured. “What of Lord Ballentine? Is he terribly annoyed? You look very dark; it seems you had at least a few days by the sea.”

“We did.” Lucie touched her fine nose where her skin was peeling. Her blond hair had lightened to a silvery shade of white. “My bonnet, the stupid thing, was blown into the sea during a stroll on the beach in Naples, and I burned despite Ballentine giving me his hat—isn’t it odd, you would think as a ginger he would fry, but no, he turns a most becoming hue of bronze. He isn’t natural, I tell you. And he isn’t annoyed; he’s keen on making progress here, too—he has recently taken up with this playwright, Mr. Wilde, and my cousin Lord Arthur, do you remember him? He is determined to include their Decadent Movement poetry in London Print’s portfolio. We are becoming a radical publishing house after all, it seems …. Anyway, Hattie, why aren’t you wearing a hat? Or gloves? And why are you hobbling?”

“It’s nothing,” she said, her smile a rictus grin. “I’m wearing new mules, and I took a wrong turn at Piccadilly Circus. I might have a blister or two.”

Lucie stilled. “You walked here. From Belgravia.”

“I wouldn’t have, but I realized too late I had no coin on me to hire a cab or take the underground.” Besides, she had never traveled on the underground unaccompanied.

Her friend was back on her feet, her hands on her hips. “You dashed from the house,” she said. “What has that man done to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Hattie groaned. “There was …” She had to close her eyes against the shame of it. “There was a woman.”

“A woman.” Lucie sounded incredulous. “But … you have been married only two days!”

“And I regret I ever consented to it.”

“The scoundrel!”

“It appears I was a bit hasty with my conclusions, but it revealed that he doesn’t care one wit for me, and he was terribly commanding.”

“Was he, now?” Lucie snarled. “How horribly provoking.”

The display of unconditional loyalty made her nose burn with tears. “Lucie,” she whispered, “I wish to apologize to you.”

“To me?” Lucie said, flummoxed. “What can you mean?”

She forced herself to meet her friend’s gaze. “I don’t think I fully comprehended the suffrage cause until now.” This had become clear to her during her hour-long, sticky, undignified hobble across London.

Lucie regarded her with two vertical lines between her brows. “Go on.”

The words came haltingly. “You see … whenever you said wives were rightless and voiceless, I heard you. And I have read many letters of unhappy wives during our meetings, and never doubted the righteousness of our cause. But now I feel as though I hadn’t truly understood. Perhaps …”

“Perhaps?”

“I suppose it still felt as though these misfortunes were happening to other people. What I mean is, my life has always been pleasant despite me being a woman, and I must have expected it to just continue that way. My father, my brothers, my uncles—they can be pigheaded, but they are good and kind men and husbands ….” Or so she had thought, until her father had single-handedly decided her betrothal. “I joined the cause because I wanted to have a cause, too,” she said thickly. “I wanted to feel useful. I enjoyed having new friends and being part of something radical. But I understand now. I … I was a silly fool.”

Lucie was shaking her head. “You are not a silly fool.”

“Then why am I so shocked?” She made to search her reticule for a handkerchief, only to remember that she had left the reticule back at the house.

Lucie walked to the desk and fetched a handkerchief from one of the drawers. “You were ignorant,” she said as she handed Hattie the neatly pressed white square. “Your personal good fortune has protected you from the consequences of the law thus far. Engaging with politics was a choice for you. For those who live with the consequences of injustice every day, political activism is not a choice. So I reckon the shock you feel now is your ignorance shattering—think of it as growing pains.”

Hattie pressed the handkerchief to her nose. It smelled of lemons, like Lucie’s soap. “You must have found me very annoying,” she murmured.

Lucie made a face. “I’m annoyed when you berate yourself.”

“But you must have noticed that I came for the company and cakes as much as for the cause. You were impatient with me sometimes.”

“Well, yes,” Lucie said, and paced in front of the couch. “Because impatience is one of my many vices. Hattie, I’d never expect your convictions to run as deep as mine.”

“N-no?”

“No. You’re a loyal activist, you have taken real risks for the cause, and you always cheer the troops. That’s plenty. If I expected every suffragist to feel exactly as I do, our army would be tiny in size and insufferable in disposition. Golly, don’t cry!”

She couldn’t help it: several weeks of pent-up emotional pressure burst out in a flood. Lucie cast a wild look around the room. “Would you like some brandy? A cigar? Ah, I wish Annabelle were here—I’m terrible at handling tears.”

Hattie squinted at her through a watery veil. “Lucie. He can do anything to me he wishes.”

All motion went out of Lucie then; for a moment, she was a like a statue. She approached slowly and knelt before the couch; her upturned face was as serious as Hattie had ever seen it. “Hattie,” she said, and placed a warm hand over hers. “I must ask: has he hurt you?”

He had. Somehow, Lucian had managed to wound her feelings. But that was not what Lucie was asking.

She shook her head. “He hasn’t. But he could.”

And he could parade his fancy women around the drawing room if he wished.She understood now that she’d rather bite off her tongue than seek refuge with her family and tell her mother or sisters about the woman in her house. In fact, it was why she had come here rather than set out for St. James’s. She glanced down at Lucie’s hand, protectively covering hers, and her heart swelled again with the pain of too much sudden gratitude. How fortunate she was to have such friends.

A knock on the door made her freeze.

“The tea,” Lucie said calmly.

Hattie glanced sideways at the young woman who pushed the cart into the room. She wore the neat white-and-blue London Print staff livery Hattie had designed when Lucie had taken over her share of London Print a few months ago. How pleased she had been to have been put in charge of the décor. Then Lucie had said to her, You have free rein. However, keep in mind this is an office building and not my great-aunt Honoria’s drawing room; no chintz, no kitten tapestries, please. She had quietly crossed chintz off her list of fabric options and decided to forget the hurtful comment because Lucie was brash with everyone. But she remembered it now as she sat here on the fainting couch, in need of advice like a hapless girl. Like a girl who would lean in.

Lucie poured the tea. “In summary, Blackstone flaunted his paramour, and he was bloody to you.”

“He claims she was a friend,” Hattie murmured.

“I still hate him,” Lucie said, and added three lumps of sugar to Hattie’s cup before handing it to her.

“She … she was caressing his cheek,” Hattie said, and the memory of it curled her left hand into a claw.

Lucie’s gaze briefly lingered on that claw. “I see,” she said. “How did you catch them together?”

“They were in plain sight in the drawing room.”

“The drawing room,” Lucie said, baffled. “Why, then he is either evil, or truly innocent.”

“In any case,” Hattie said, “I refused an introduction, as is only proper, but then he was put out that I was snubbing his friend.” And he had called her a brat.

Lucie blew on her tea. “Do you wish to leave him, then?”

“Leave him?”

“Yes.”

“Move to the country, you mean?”

“No. I mean whether you wish to properly leave your husband.”

Her mind blanked. “A divorce.”

Lucie’s eyes were intent. “Assume it would be possible, without consequence to your reputation. Would you leave him?”

“Oh my,” she said, and disturbed, “I don’t know.”

Her answer should have been an unthinking, resounding yes. She sipped her tea until the hot, sugary liquid slowed the merry-go-round in her head. “Does it sound terribly indecisive when I say that until this morning, I didn’t resent him, only the power he has over me?”

Lucie gave her a rueful smile. “No,” she said. “Not to me. I love Ballentine with all my heart—sometimes I look at his beautiful face and can’t breathe from how much I love him. I still shan’t marry him as long as it would make me his property. But now you are married, and if you don’t wish for a divorce or allow me to dispose of Blackstone in cold blood, we must work within those constraints. It is promising that you didn’t resent him at first—you normally have a good intuition about people’s character.”

She stared at the crumpled handkerchief in her lap. “I leaned in for the kiss that caused everything,” she said softly.

“So there is an animal attraction,” Lucie said, nodding, “however, that alone does not a good marriage make.”

“Animal attraction,” Hattie repeated. “Is that what it is?”

Lucie regarded her with some astonishment. “What else would it be, my dear?”

A sense of recognition between them, a forbidden pull … a warm response of her body to his scent and touch … well, yes. Very much an animal attraction. Part of her was intrigued, but her face was red again. Unlike Lucie, she hadn’t spent the past decade rigorously unlearning the deeply injected litany about female virtues and a woman’s natural lack of desire.

Lucie refilled Hattie’s cup, then she proceeded to move around the study, pulling folders from the cabinet and rooting through drawers. “A carnal attraction is a fortunate thing,” she said as she piled documents and writing utensils onto her desk. “That said, your husband sounds very unmanageable, while you—your stubborn and inflammable nature aside—are sweet-natured at your core. So, if you decide to return to Blackstone, please keep in mind that ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is a fairy tale. You do know the tale of the Beauty and the Beast?”

“Of course,” Hattie said. “You are still speaking in riddles.”

“The Beast traps the Beauty,” Lucie said, and sat down behind the desk, a fountain pen in hand. “In the end, Beauty saves the Beast—and herself—thanks to her gentle nature, self-sacrifice, and loving heart—so loving, she becomes smitten with an ugly, probably smelly monster that wanted to murder her father and kept her imprisoned.”

“It sounded more romantic when Fräulein Mayer read it to me,” Hattie said.

“Ah well,” Lucie said as her pen was flying across a page, “it is easy to become distracted by the enchanted castle. But the conclusion of the tale remains: no matter how beastly a creature, a woman’s self-sacrificing love shall eventually turn him into a beautiful prince.”

Hattie cut her a sullen look. “Why don’t you speak plainly?”

Lucie rolled an ink blotter over her lines. “Blackstone won’t turn into a prince, no matter how loving and patient you are. Fairy tales express our hopes, not reality. The tale of women being tied to men they don’t want is as old as time, so of course we want hope. However, the reality is, a woman’s martyrdom will not change a man who doesn’t wish to change. Do you remember Patmore’s infernal poem?

While she, too gentle even to force

His penitence by kind replies,

Waits by, expecting his remorse,

With pardon in her pitying eyes

“When—if—you go back to him, don’t endeavor to shame him into feeling remorse with your pitying eyes, Hattie.”

She felt a pang of irritation, for she might have endeavored to do exactly that. “So what would you have me do?” It came out a little petulantly.

Lucie struck a match to melt the sealing wax. “Had Beauty been a man,” she said, “he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill the Beast rather than fall in love with it. So I say, make your husband earn your goodwill. So few men respect things that are freely given.”

“Make him earn it,” Hattie murmured. “Easily said, when he has all the men and horses.”

Before her eyes, Lucie’s elfin face turned into the pointy visage of an evil pixie. “If he can’t behave, consider staying with Annabelle,” she said. “She would never turn you away, and even Blackstone is powerless against a duke.”

She shifted uncomfortably on the couch. Inconveniencing her friends with her self-inflicted turmoil to such a degree felt terribly wrong. The fact that she was currently sharing her marriage woes so freely with a friend already broke a great taboo.

“Montgomery is still recovering from his own scandal of marrying Annabelle,” she said. “And Mr. Blackstone has a lawful right to me—he can order me home. And if I refused, they could send me to j-jail …. You know this.”

Lucie folded the letter into a square and sealed it. “You don’t have to make any grand decisions today.” She gathered the letter and other documents, tied them with a string, and brought the parcel to Hattie. “Your escape kit,” Lucie said. “To Mytilene.”

“Mytilene.” Hattie took the papers gingerly. “I thought the Amazons were relegated to legend status these days.”

Lucie chuckled. “Not these ones. This Mytilene is an enclave run by female artists, near Marseille, and few people know of its existence, because it is also a women’s shelter.”

“Marseille,” Hattie whispered. France. “You know I dream of France.”

“I do. Now, this one here contains ten pounds”—Lucie tugged at the corner of an envelope—“this here the detailed itinerary of how to reach Mytilene, and this one my letter of recommendation as well as a letter from the British consul granting you an unbothered passage to France from any British port.”

Hattie fingers tightened around the stack. “Merci?”

“The consulate letter is a forgery, of course,” Lucie said, “however, it is expertly done and has never caused any of my charges any trouble.”

She had known Lucie had a network of people smugglers at her fingertips, spanning across Europe. Her friend used it to make women disappear if they wished it. Her stomach roiled at the thought. She had never imagined herself being one such woman.

“Would you really have me go and live in France,” she said, “forever, and in hiding?”

“Of course not,” Lucie exclaimed. “But sometimes, a woman is in need of a ticket—one she may use independently of anyone else’s goodwill. This here is yours. You can keep it in a drawer and feel well in charge.”

Feeling well in charge sounded too good to be true.

She held the letters to her nose. “Mmm,” she said. “It smells like the Montmartre.”

Lucie was amused. “Montmartre,” she said. “What does it smell like?”

“Like adventure, fashion, and fabulous art.”

The one-way ticket seemed to radiate bright like a beacon from its place inside her bodice as she sat in the carriage to St. James’s. It would be best to spend the night at her parents’ house to make her displeasure known, but when she finally stood on the doorstep of her old home, she felt devious and ill at ease.

“Miss Greenfield—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Blackstone.” Hanson’s watery eyes had lit with delight when he opened the door, and he stepped aside with an animated flourish of his hand. Her heart ached a little at the familiar sight of the butler’s weathered face and severely brushed-back silver hair, and the rigid way he moved, as though his shirt and collar had been starched with iron ….

“I’m afraid Mr. and Mrs. Greenfield are not home,” Hanson explained as he oversaw the maid taking the hat and shawl Lucie had lent Hattie.

“When shall they be back?”

“Past the time for supper, I’m afraid—they are attending an assembly in Surrey.”

A pressure in her chest eased. Apparently, she wasn’t at all keen on seeing her father; she would prefer to be safely ensconced in her old bedchamber by the time her parents returned.

“What about Zachary—is he home?”

Hanson’s cheerful mood withdrew like a clam into its shell. Impossibly, he carried himself straighter than before. “He is home, yes.”

“Where is he?”

“Hmm. I believe in the library, ma’am.”

He was walking conspicuously slowly beside her as if to force her own pace to a crawl.

Her pulse sped up. “What is it, Hanson?”

The butler looked pained: “There is a possibility that Master Zachary is not in a condition to receive callers.”

“No—has he taken ill?”

“Ill is not quite the word—”

“And callers, Hanson? I’m his sister!” She rushed along the corridor leading to the library, not caring that she lost Hanson on the way.

She swung open the heavy door. “Zachary?”

Silence.

She took a turn along the dark, dusty bookshelves lining the walls and mindlessly looked behind the couches and armchairs around the cold fireplace. “Zach?”

“Hattie Pom?” An unsteady figure had appeared in the arched doorway to the adjacent study.

“Zach.” She hurried toward him and took his hand.

He looked down and blinked slowly at their clasped fingers, then dragged his gaze up to her face, his expression dumbfounded, as though he wasn’t certain she was real. His eyes were unsightly, bleary and bloodshot. “Why are you here, darling?”

She recoiled from his whisky breath. There was a vast liquor cabinet in the library study, and by the smell of it, her brother had drunk it all. “Blimey, Zach—it’s barely noon.”

He squinted. “I guarantee you, it ish six o’clock somewhere at the moment.”

This was unlike him—Zach usually indulged in moderation and handled his drink well.

“What is it?” she prodded. “Are you in trouble?”

He untangled his hand from hers and grabbed her shoulder to hold her away from him. “Lemme look at you.” He squinted harder. “Well, you seem whole and hale.”

A shyness came over her, and she thought how awkward it was to be seen by her brother after a wedding night even if it hadn’t taken place. Zachary appeared to have little apprehension of things; he was using her shoulders as a crutch. She wrinkled her nose. “What has happened to you?”

“‘Away, and mock the time with fairest show,’” he drawled, “‘false face must hide what the false heart doth know.’”

She shook her head. “Macbeth, brother?”

“Clever little goose.”

“Come now, be good,” she tried. “I may need your help: do you believe Papa would object to me staying here for the night—Ouch.”

The hand on her shoulder had tightened like a vise. Zachary’s eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits. “Fleeing him already,” he said. “What has the bastard done to you?”

“Nothing—Zach, you are hurting me.”

“Ah well,” he said, and dropped his hand. “Either way. I’m of no use here. It’s of no use.”

She was rubbing her shoulder. “I don’t like you much when you are in your cups.”

“Neither do I.” He turned back toward the study, swaying like a spinning top just before it toppled. “A good thing you never pay attention to business,” he said. “Always with your lovely head in the clouds …”

She slipped a supportive arm around his slim waist as he was taking course toward the Chesterfield below the window. The crumpled pillow on the seat said he had been resting there before her arrival.

“I do pay attention,” she said. “I know more than you might think.”

He slumped down on the sofa. “Do you? You read the business section, then?” He gave an ugly laugh, and the fine hairs on her nape stood.

“Very well,” she said. Was there a blanket? He was in dire need of sleeping off his debauchery.

“Poor Pom Pom,” he mumbled. “It said it right there, black on white, that the Greenfields are now the majority owners of Plasencia-Astorga.”

The world became very quiet. Except one voice was loud and clear: Zachary’s, when he had told her at the dinner weeks ago that the Greenfields wanted Lucian’s share in the railway company. When she spoke, she sounded as drunk as he. “What are you saying?”

Zachary slid down sideways onto the pillow. “You didn’t know that, huh?”

She was on her knees next to the sofa and slapped his cheek. “Zach.”

A bad premonition crawled up her spine. She smacked him again.

Zachary’s eyes slitted open, their depths unfocused. “At half price,” he said. “Half. Price. I don’t trust that fellow … too calculating. Mark me, he planned this through and through.”

Her gut clenched as his words began to make sense. A lonely roar filled her ears, like the howl of a storm over an empty plain, as the pieces of her life were pelting down around her all over again.