Page 64 of Drowned in the Pleasure of a Devilish Baron
Felix doubted that, but held his tongue.
“Drag me home?” Sarah asked, folding her arms. “So that you can force me to marry someone to benefit you and John?”
Lady Marlow did not even look at her daughter, turning to Felix instead. “I am taking her with me now, unless you would like to stop her mother from taking her home?”
Mother and daughter looked at him, both their faces equally intimidating. He took Sarah’s hand. “You know you will have to go home eventually. Go now, we will speak more later.”
Her eyes darkened with hurt, but she nodded. “Mother, can you give us a moment alone? Just a moment?”
“That is more than enough from you,” she hissed, and seeming to catch herself, she took a slow breath and turned to Felix. “Tell my daughter she has had quite enough time to be unchaperoned in a strange man’s home,” she said coolly to him. “She is coming with me. Now. Or I will send in my coachman to drag her out.”
“Better just to go,” Felix said, nonplussed, and not wanting this to turn physical. He would not be able to bear watching Sarah be physically carried away, it would only make things worse between them if he had to hold back her coachman. Lady Marlow was formidable, and did not tend to say things she did not mean. “I will come by tomorrow.”
Lady Marlow tutted loudly, her fingers tapping her hand in front of her until Sarah, casting a regretful, questioning glance over her shoulder, followed her mother out.
The two walked silently down the hall, and he heard the front door close behind them.
What have I done?
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Mother, speak to me,” Sarah said to her stone-faced mother sitting across from her in the carriage as they rode home together. She had brought their coachman with them to follow behind, atop Acer.
Sarah sighed. “I’m sorry for sneaking out like that, but I had to speak with him, all right? I simply had to.”
Her mother turned a blank face to the window, staring out without a word.
“Mother?” When there was still no response, she folded her arms and turned to other window. “Fine.”
The two rode the rest of the way in unbroken silence, and when they arrived home, Lady Marlow swept from the carriage and inside without looking back.
Sarah, feeling uncertain and a bit frightened, went up to her room.
Rebecca knocked on her door. “Dinner, Miss.”
She wrapped a shawl around her, craving a piece of comfort for the dinner ahead, and went down to the dining room. Surely dinner would not be so silent. She wondered if John would even be at the table this evening.
He was. Sitting at the head of the table, a surly expression on his face, she found him nursing a glass of whiskey—it was all he had taken to drinking since the visit with Lord Ashton—and being petted by their concerned mother.
“That brute,” she was saying as Sarah entered. “Absolutely despicable. I have half a mind to call the constable and have him jailed.”
“I protected myself. There’s no need to get the constable involved,” John hissed with pain as he reapplied the compress to his face. He gave Sarah a cold look as she was seated at the table. “Look who it is, the maker of all this trouble herself.”
“How have I possibly caused this trouble?” Sarah asked. “I do not even have the slightest clue what the two of you were fighting about today.”
Her mother turned slowly toward her, eyes flashing. “You have quite the nerve to defend yourself after what you did today.”
She took her own seat at the table without response, drumming her fingers together under the cover of the cloth.
“And besides, I would think what they were fighting about was quite obvious.” Lady Marlow said. “They were fighting about you. If you had not given that-that…manyour attentions, and hope that the two of you could be married, this never would have happened.” She sniffed as she lifted her wine glass, inspecting the color of the wine within against the light.
“Why did he come?” she asked John, who rolled his eyes and shifted stiffly in his chair.
“I barely know myself. He stormed in babbling about some letters he was receiving and called me a liar! Me!” He looked to their mother at this wound to his pride, and she patted his hand sympathetically.
“Letters?” Sarah thought quickly. She thought back to her own conversation with Felix this evening, when he had spoken of her notes to Juliet. He had not received it until after he had come to speak with John, so what letters could have upset him?
“As I said, I haven’t the slightest idea what he was on about,” John said sulkily.
