Page 18 of Unseen

“Excellent.” Adelaide patted my hand gleefully. “Let us take cake together, and you can tell me all about the houses you’ve found.”

“Certainly.” I gave Mary a nod, who bobbed into a curtsey and left the room.

“I’m sorry, my dear.” Adelaide lifted her saucer from the table and stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea. “I know I should not be rude, especially given the circumstances, but… Oh, that man makes me wild with anger.”

“He is just a man, Aunt Adelaide, calm yourself.”

“He is a man with a reputation as foul as the women he beds,” she hissed, and I could not help the way my jaw dropped.

“And what do you know of such things?” I asked, sounding far too curious.

Aunt Adelaide huffed out an indignant breath through her nose, drawing her spoon along the edge of her cup and placed it back on her saucer. “People talk, Evangeline, and they have talked about Azriel Caine for a very long time. Indeed, it was why…” She trailed off, taking a hurried sip of her too-hot tea, choking a little as it burned her throat.

“Why what?” I pressed as she spluttered softly.

She cleared her throat, fixing me with an earnest gaze. “Why I came to see you, to ensure that you are safe in thishouse with him. Lord only knows what he is up to here, and you, all alone with him?”

“He is my stepson,” I said, stirring sugar into my own tea and forcing a smile. “You have nothing to fear, I assure you. Soon, I will be miles away from Long, and none of you will ever have to see Azriel Caine again.”

6

A LITTLE VIPER

Once Adelaide had left, yet another storm began to roll in. Thunder rumbled in the distance at an almost constant pace, and as night set in, lightning whipped the dark clouds.

I took my dinner on my own, as Azriel had indeed not returned from whatever business had taken him into town. It was a welcome relief, and a sign of the life I was about to lead. I did not mind being on my own. In fact, I doubted my family would leave me on my own in any case. But when they did, I would have cats, and dogs, and I would finally be allowed to have friends.

Acton had not even allowed me a diary. He had said that a wife’s thoughts were not her own, and all should be shared with her husband.Why the need for secrets?He’d say with a laugh that was supposed to be jovial. Why indeed?

I’d been forced to hide my diary, deep in the drawers holding my underthings, the one place he oddly had the decency not to look.

Even so, I had been extremely careful about what I wrotein that little book. I never wrote about the device, the one I’d procured from a quiet little chemist in Leicester on the recommendation of a girl I’d attended school with. I’d never written about how I’d washed Acton’s seed away, every time he filthied my body. He hit me hard enough when I bled. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he’d have done, had he found out.

I most certainly never noted down my plans. That was perhaps not because I didn’t want to risk it, no. I truly think that until that night had actually come, when I’d seen him spluttering his way up the stairs, that terrible hacking cough that had become worse in the cold weather, I hadn’t had a plan.

It had simply happened. All the anger, the dread, the injustice of it, all those nights when he’d violated me - it had become too much to bear. And the thought of it going on…

I could not help that thought wandering back to the whore that Azriel had entertained in Acton’s study. Lovemaking had never been enjoyable for me, but for her? She had appeared to be enjoying it. She had made sounds I certainly never had. She had not even protested when Azriel forced her to her knees, and to do… that.

But how could anyone enjoy that act? Being bent over and mounted, like a horse, having that disgusting member pressed inside you, spilling vile filth. That woman had simply been a good actress, stroking the masculinity of her paying gentleman to make him feel like a god.

And yet…

My cheeks were flaming, and there was an unpleasant sensation between my legs. I longed for a bath, but the boiler had not been lit and it was certainly far too late.

I wandered the halls, lost, like a ghost, as lightning illuminated the windows. I should have gone back to my room, butI could not face those suffocating four walls yet. I felt trapped, and twisted about, a deep sense of longing, and yet I had no idea what for.

Perhaps I just needed a drink.

I walked past the stairs, and down the corridor to the drawing room. A comforting fire crackled and roared within the ornately carved fireplace, casting dancing shadows on the walls. I lit a lamp on a side table, and crossed the room to the large oak cabinet that held all of Acton’s liquor in sparkling crystal carafes. I took out a cognac, the only liquor I truly enjoyed, and poured myself a perhaps too-generous amount. I swirled the amber liquid about the glass, warming against my palm, and walked over to the window to admire the leaping lightning strikes in the obsidian sky above.

It felt like yet another step in my liberation, taking a drink when I felt like it. Acton had never allowed me to drink casually, only at balls, and under his ever-watchful eye. Two glasses of champagne were more than enough in his esteemed opinion. A lady ought not to imbibe too much.

Control. He had been obsessed with it. Hence his disdain for a diary.

It occurred to me, as the sweet liquor warmed me from within, that I had not yet destroyed the letter to Azriel. It was similarly hidden away, in a place no one would find it, the one time I had indeed recorded one of my innermost secrets.

Amid a clap of thunder, movement caught my eye, and I almost choked on my cognac, hacking a cough as Azriel smiled at me from the doorway.

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