Page 12 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
Fury boiled his blood anew, lending him a strength he’d not thought to see again for some time. With one hand he sent the whole tray sailing across the room, and there was the slam and shatter of crockery hitting a distant wall and splintering into pieces.
“I don’t want your damnedpeasant’s fare,” he hissed, and dragged his gaze from the mess he’d made, only to find the defiance that had been etched into every line upon her face replaced with something like devastation. He faltered, shocked by the sudden change that had swept over her. “Miss Talbot—”
“Never mind,” she said, but her voice squeaked from her throat as if she had had to squeeze the words out. “Starve, then, if you’d rather.” She did an abrupt about-face, strain in every muscle of her body.
He didn’t want her to go. “Miss Talbot,” he called, desperate to bring her back, to hold her attention. Even when she was bitterly furious, even when she drove him to the depths of aggravation and madness, still—still he was morealivethan he had been in years. His skin crackled with it, with the effervescent spell she wove round him with her very presence. She alone beat back the numbing darkness that had pressed in around him, and he both loathed it and loved it in turn. Thoughfurywas by far the most prominent feeling that she inflicted upon him, still it was worlds better thannothing at all.
In attempting to kill him, there was the distinct, irritating possibility that she hadsavedhim instead.
But the door shut quietly in her wake, and he was left with nothing once again. Only the stultifying silence of the countryside and his own company.
And Luke had long since learned that his own company was the very worst there was to be had.
∞∞∞
As midnight crawled nearer, Luke wished he had simply eaten the stew, for his abductor-turned-savior had brought him nothing else. So shedidmean to starve him, then, he supposed—but he could summon neither the energy nor the blood-boiling rage to rail about it.
She’d wearied of his caterwauling, besides. It had been a great long while since he had last been made to feel like a child called out upon the carpet for untoward behavior, but damned if she hadn’t managed it.
Luke heaved a sigh, staring up at the ceiling. The room was dark, but sleep was slow to arrive, and apparently there was a disturbing dearth of liquor in the house that might’ve eased him toward it. Or, at least, that ornery old goat had claimed as much when he’d callously denied Luke’s every demand for brandy.
He’d been sleeping so much lately—resting, healing—that he supposed it was no great surprise to find himself deprived of it just now. He affixed his gaze to the ceiling and stared at the faint glow of the plaster in the darkness. There was a splotch there upon it, just above his head, though he could see it only faintly now. Probably the roof had leaked at some point, and there was water damage beneath the eaves. It was not the only such stain he’d seen—the ceiling was lousy with them.
He’d not given it much thought, since he’d been too busy stewing in his fury to think of aught else, but there had been other such signs of things in the household being even less comfortable than he had assumed from the brief glimpse he’d had at the crumbling exterior. The house was large indeed; a typical country manor house with all the frills and embellishments he would have expected of any well-to-do country family home. But the paint was peeling from the walls, and the wardrobe against the far wall clearly hadn’t been given a good dusting in some time. And then there was the fact that Miss Talbot had dragged in the tub and cans of hot water herself.
That irritable old man was the only servanthe’d seen during his sojourn here. And the man had to be seventy if he was a day. Willie, she’d called him—affectionately, Luke thought.
If he extrapolated what little he’d seen of the house itself, which was reduced down to just this room, themaster’sroom…well, then, he guessed the Talbots were not in what anyone would consider a prime financial situation. There werechildren, too. He’d heard them from time to time, clomping about as children were wont to do, though Lizzie was always quick to shushthem.
They couldn’t beherchildren, though why the thought had even briefly concerned him left him baffled. The morning that she’d shot him, she’d said something about putting him inPapa’s bed, which meant that this was her family’s home, not her husband’s—she certainly would have been occupying the master chamber, if it were otherwise. But where was her blasted father, then? Or her mother?
Not married, then, but still caring for her younger siblings.Children, and a pregnant, unwed sister. An elderly servant. And a house falling down about their ears.
Why the hell did that provoke a flutter of sympathy from deep within the ghastly, empty void where his heart once had been? She was nothing, no one to him at all. She was—
Here. The hinges gave that telltale squeak, and then she was slipping silently inside, a candle upon a plate held in one hand, and a couple of rags bunched into the other. His mouth opened automatically to chastise her once again for entering without so much as a knock for courtesy. And then, oddly, the breath sailed out of his lungs without a single word borne upon it. Instead he held himself very still and narrowed his eyes to only the barest of slits, peeking at her from beneath the veil of his lashes.
For a moment she lifted that candle in his direction, scrutinizing him through the cloaking darkness. Satisfied that he was and would remain asleep—as far as she knew—she turned for the far wall, setting the candle on its plate upon the floor as she dropped to her knees.
In the halo of the candlelight, he watched her right the tray that he had sent sailing across the room and gently, delicately, begin the arduous process of collecting the bits of shattered crockery. Carefully she set the broken bits and pieces upon the tray, until at last the floor was cleared enough of it for her to sponge away the dried remnants of the stew that had congealed upon the floor and coated the wall.
Why had it never occurred to him before thatsomeonewould have to clean the messes he’d made? It wasn’t as if the staff that worked in his home weren’t paid well enough to do so, but—still, he had never before considered that whatever wreck he’d made of whichever room would necessitate some poor soul to then come in after him and set it all to rights once again.
Only these were not hisownitems he had destroyed, nothisfood he had discarded like rubbish—they were hers. And she had not sent a servant along to clear the mess; she had come herself. At this time of night, when she’d thought he would be asleep.
An uncomfortable little skirl ofsomethingslid through his chest. It wasn’t until she had swabbed the last lingering traces of stew from the floor and walls, collected the tray, and quit the room that he recognized it as shame.
Chapter Seven
Their best layers were growing old, and as the days eased from summer into autumn, there would be fewer eggs still. It was that thought that remained with her as Lizzie gathered what eggs she could and shoved them into her basket. Soon the bulk of their diet would be bread, it seemed, or else oats—which could be got relatively cheaply. Unfortunately, butter and sugar were increasingly becoming luxuries they could ill afford. Even salt and pepper were dear enough to require sparing use.
At least oats and bread would be filling, if not precisely nutritious enough to feed two growing children and a woman with child through the winter.
Imogen. She’d had been quite snippy of late, but Lizzie suspected it was out of fear. Their bitter confrontation a few evenings past had shaken Imogen, perhaps loosed uncertainties that she had not wanted to acknowledge. That her lover had gotten her with child and absconded, never to be seen again. That her reputation would be in tatters. That she would bear an illegitimate child that she would then have to support on her own.
Imogen had needed to hold on to the hope that her Mr. Wycombe had always intended to return to her—because a future in which he didnotwas a bleak one, indeed. The world was so cruel to women with children and no husband to show for them. And Imogen had been so sheltered, so cossetted and protected that she had been a perfect peach ripe for plucking by unscrupulous men.
Lizzie had been so hell-bent upon protecting her siblings from the harsh realities of the world. Perhaps she ought to have been preparingthem instead. Perhaps then, Imogen would not be in her present condition.
