Page 1 of Hazard a Guest
SUIT 1: CLUBS
PROLOGUE
“Such a thing is unnatural,” the barristers had muttered amongst themselves, not quite hushed enough not to be overheard, “a widow young enough to be a debutante.”
Privately, Ember Donnelly Withers agreed.
She sat with her hands folded in her lap, clutching her reticule until the knuckles under her satin gloves felt prone to split apart. The starch was still shiny and pungent on her mourning dress. It refused to allow her movement. It protested at any attempts to breathe.
Her tightly coiled curls had been dragged into order, pinned to her head with painful precision, and oiled to an acceptable dark brown. She had been curated into this picture, tamed to acceptability by her maid in the hopes that the people in this room would see her as worthy of regard.
Her maid, Ember thought, was naive. Covering up the notes of cherry red in her hair, lashing away the kinks and coils into pinned-down obedience, none of that mattered. None of itmattered because the whole package was wrong. Ember herself was wrong.
Any doubt about that was dispelled by the presence of the other mourners, by their very regard.
My stepchildren, she thought with a humorless twist of her lips, regarding the two men and two women crowded into the little room. The youngest of them was ten years her senior. They were, all of them, clustered together like insects in the heat, only pausing in their plotting to sneer at her, dwarfed in the barrister’s big leather chair, draped in unforgiving black crepe.
“The reality of the situation,” the barrister with the white hair said with a sigh, addressing Ember as though she were a child in leading strings rather than a grown woman, “is that your husband’s will was written with very vague language. He does not specifywhichbusiness you are to inherit, my dear, only that you are entitled to one of them as such that you may continue to thrive and support yourself.”
“It seems obvious to me,” Ember said, attempting to damper her Irish accent, attempting to force the barrister to take her seriously, “that by this very language, it is clear that he is referring to asuccessfulbusiness.”
One of her stepsons scoffed. “What does it matter how successful it is, pigeon? You’re just going to sell the thing anyway.”
“Because she wants more money,” the eldest daughter said with a disgusted sniff. “Her kind always do.”
Ember was uncertain ifher kindwas simply women,youngwomen, or worst of all, her countrymen. She supposed her reaction would be the same regardless, and so she smiled back at the woman, flashing her incisors, and replied, “I’m sorry yourown husband hasn’t knocked off yet, Beatrice. That must be getting awfully tedious.”
Beatrice, of course, immediately fainted, while her sister started gasping for air like a broken train horn. The brothers, bless their black hearts, both looked like they wanted to laugh.
The barrister only sighed, aggrieved.
“Mrs. Withers,” he said to Ember, again treating her like a lost little girl who couldn’t possibly know what she had meant by her words, “perhaps we ought to get you home and I will drop by when we’ve reached an accord.”
“Home?” Ember repeated, blinking at him. “Where’s that now? Do I have a home?”
“Oh,” wailed Beatrice, suddenly miraculously awake now. “Now the little Jezebel wants our ancestral estate!”
“By no means!” cried the other sister.
Meanwhile, Ember privately thought that the only woman in this room right now who understood her suffering was the one just invoked. Queen Jezebel, in Ember’s estimation, hadn’t deserved any of it either.
“Madams,” the barrister clucked, “ladies. Mrs. Withers should not be put immediately onto the streets! She must be given a reasonable amount of time to—”
“To steal all the silverware?” suggested the only sibling who hadn’t spoken yet, the youngest brother, whose regard of Ember was distinctly hungry in nature.
Ember bit her own tongue to prevent her body’s desire to shiver. She bit it until it bled.
In the end, they had handed her a deed, old and brittle around the edges, and the barrister, in his kindest voice, had suggested she find somewhere new to lie her head as quickly as possible.
She had ridden all the way back to the house without looking at the deed in her hands, utterly convinced that literacy had gone the way of serenity in her own body. She wouldn’t even try until she’d slammed herself into her marital bedroom and collapsed in a heap on the floor. She intended to rip this blasted gown from her body and to send it heaped and undignified into a corner with all the fanfare of a hanged man who’d just been cut loose.
The staff, at least, didn’t know what the meeting had entailed. All of their awful, peaceful faces clearly thought that Mr. Withers had been intelligent enough to use specifics in his own damned will.
Fools.
Ember demanded bath water so hot it might boil her, wanting to feel the revulsion sloughing off, welcoming it.
She knew she should write her parents, write to Kildare, and tell them she was coming home. She knew that was the sensible thing, but the taste of it on her bruised and punctured tongue was unbearable. She could not. Would not.
