Page 3 of The Duke's Forbidden Bride
“Eleanor Barnes.”
Her name rang out through the hall, and she kept her head down.
“Sister Martha,” she greeted. “You have summoned?—”
“Do not speak, girl. Not without permission.”
Eleanor clamped her mouth shut. She stared down at her thin slippers and the black dress she was forced to wear in the convent, neither of which did anything to ward off the night’s chill.
Sister Martha laughed at her, a subdued huff of a sound. “Look at you. How far you have fallen, daughter of theton. Nobody would look at you and suspect you are an earl’s daughter. Notwith your looks, your words, or your manners. And certainly not with the way you tempted our visitor. Your dress is skewed. Should we check your sheets, Eleanor? Your bed? Did you tempt him with your body and commit more sin? Was your first ruination not enough?”
“I amnotruined,” Eleanor snapped, her temper breaking through her fear. “Lord Belgrave came without invitation. I-I did not know he would arrive. His presence was a surprise to me.”
“Did your body flush with heat upon seeing your former fiancé? Did you miss the marital bed you were promised and never got to see? The convent sees all, Eleanor. If you lay with him, if you used your body?—”
“I did not!” Eleanor shouted, and then cringed when Sister Martha surged forward, snagging her hair and yanking her head back.
“You should calm yourself, Eleanor Barnes,” Sister Martha snarled, her accent curling around the name as if it were dirty. “Godwillhear your prayers for forgiveness. Kneel.”
“No,” Eleanor whimpered, her shoulders sagging, but she was thrown to the floor, her knees breaking her fall in a way that sent a wave of nausea through her.
She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, looking up at Sister Martha. The woman’s lined face had haunted her nightmares since her first night at the convent all those years ago.
Perhaps they had broken her that first night.
Perhaps it had been an accumulation of every long, hot day and every freezing night.
Or perhaps it was the punishments, the denigration and humiliation. The daughter of the Earl of Quinley, forced to go down on her knees, reciting prayers that nobody heard anyway.
The stone bit into Eleanor’s knees, a punishment she had known often enough but never grown used to. She parted her lips, and prayers to a god she was not sure she believed in anymore came forth.
At her first stutter, Sister Martha brought her cane down across Eleanor’s shoulders. Eleanor had long learned to keep her cries of pain behind her clenched teeth, but today, a choked, pained groan escaped her, and she swayed from the strike.
Another landed on the back of her thighs, and she forced her spine to remain rigid, to stay upright, to continue.
Bury the pain and the protests.
“Begin again,” Sister Martha instructed. “The Lord will receive nothing but perfect worship.”
“Yes, Sister Martha,” Eleanor whispered.
She remained kneeling on the stone floor, new bruises forming over the old ones, and recited and recited until her voice was hoarse.
Tears had long dried on Eleanor’s cheeks by the time she hobbled back to her room, bruised, with welts from the strikes opening on her shoulders and thighs.
Her dress stuck to her—whether it was the blood or sweat, she didn’t know. She didn’t care. That protective numbness she always let in had blanketed the pain and fury, leaving her empty.
While it protected her, it was exactly what the sisters wanted: she could not be angry, could not bite back if she was exhausted and empty.
And it was for that reason that Eleanor didn’t let herself collapse onto the bed as she ached to.
She dragged her weary body to the corner of her room, choosing to tuck herself away, even if the hard floor hurt more. This was her defiance, even if nobody but herself saw.
Stuffed in a pile of old bricks was ointment she had received from another girl like herself around two years ago.
“For your swollen knees,”the girl had whispered.
She’d had haunted eyes, and Eleanor had asked for her name.
