Page 13 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
But just now, with the twisting pattern of shadows and light cast upon the walls by the flickering fire, she felt as if she had been shoved into the lair of some ferocious beast as a sacrifice.
Patently ridiculous. Ian had hardly even noticed when she had taken her leave of him, his head bowed over the paperwork upon his desk.
In the darkness she fumbled for the handle of the dressing room door, throwing it open and squinting within in an effort to deduce to location of the dresser. In retrospect, she thought as she jammed her toes against the solidwood piece of furniture she’d been unable to see through the inky black, she ought to have asked Mary for a lamp.
At least her nightgown had been packed directly within the topmost drawer. Once she had wrenched it open, her fingers had found it right away, worn to feather-softness and familiar beneath the touch of her fingertips.
It was the work of only a minute to cast off her clothing and leave it upon one of the massive chairs set before the fire. She slipped the nightgown over her head and finally wandered in the direction of the bed.
Her marital bed. A queer little shiver slid down her spine, her toes curling into the plush rug beneath her feet. There had been a time she had wanted nothing more than this. A time when she had thought she had found it. She had been too young, mostly, to remember what her parents’ marriage had been like, too young to carry the same resentment toward the institution that Charity had. Their father had left scars upon her—literal and metaphorical—but he had not soured her against marriage itself.
Ian had done that all on his own.
Felicity plucked the pins from her hair one at a time and slapped them down upon the small table at the side of the bed. Probably four of her could fit within the immense bed with room to spare, which gave some small amount of comfort. His present taste for luxury was convenient, when it meant that she might curl up on one side and leave a wide swath of mattress empty between them.
Resentfully, she slipped into bed beneath the thick counterpane and settled back against the pillows. Her own bed at Mrs. Lewis’ school was quite narrow, with a mattress so old and battered that even a routine tightening of the ropes beneath it had failed to relieve the sag in the middle. Her room got quite chilly in the winter, without a hearth of its own to offer even a little extra warmth—not that they could have afforded the cost of extra coal even if it had—and she had had to pile her bed high with quilts only to keep her toes from freezing. Ian’s bed had been warmed already, from the heat of the fire and probably a bed warmer passed beneath the covers shortly before she had arrived.
With a little sound of disgust she rolled onto her stomach and planted her face in pillows. They didn’t smell like him. At least, they didn’t smell like she remembered—the tang of sea salt warmed by the heat of his skin.
She had loved that smell, once. And now it was gone. Replaced by the scent of washing powder and shaving soap; clean, fresh, and with the faint spice of pepper and clove. Not unpleasant, but notIan. At least not theversion of him she had known years ago, when his hair had always been wind-ruffled and shaggy instead of neatly trimmed and combed. When his clothes had been as worn as her own and rumpled instead of starched and pressed to perfection. When he’d been infinitely more likely to wolf down a beef pasty in a few harried bites or to scarf down roasted chestnuts a handful at a time instead of taking a leisurely meal upon fine china and with finer silverware.
She didn’t know how or when exactly it had happened, but one day he had been her Ian—and when she had next seen him, he had been someone else entirely. Someone with prospects. Someone ever so much more refined than the lowly courier and occasional pugilist with whom she had fallen in love.
Someone who had so very suddenly thought himself aboveher. Someone who had expected her to sacrifice the cherished dreams she had held dear, much in the same way that she had sacrificed the pin money she had once received from Charity to purchase those very same beef pasties and chestnuts of which he had once been so fond.
She had loved him when he had had nothing to his name. And his love had turned out to be so fleeting; a thing she had watched wane by the day, until there was too little of it left. Until the promise of a lucrative new career had outweighed the promises he’d made to her.
Once I’m settled in London, I will send for you. We’ve waited this long already. What is another year or two?
She could still hear those words, rife with exasperation, as if they had never quite trickled out of her ears. Felicity slammed her fist into the pillow beneath her head. She had been so blind, so stupid. It had taken many long minutes for her to understand what he had been asking of her. To set aside their plans for a wedding that he’d promised would be soon forthcoming for longer still. Only to follow him to London at his convenience, leaving both her own career and the city that had become her home, on the strength of promises long stretched past their breaking point.
It had not been the first promise he’d broken, but she had made certain it was the last. That final betrayal had broken her heart beyond repair. It was the last time she had sneaked from the house to see him—the very last time she had ever spoken to him.
Since then he had changed entirely. And she hadn’t. She had simply—frozen. Time had marched on and still in her heart she was that same devastated young woman of just one and twenty, frozen in that last dreadful moment, holding the tatters of her shredded heart in her hands.
∞∞∞
A headache burned behind Ian’s eyes as he eased open the door to his bed chamber at last. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence; they tended to plague him whenever he’d worked too long into the night, straining his eyes. They had been worse years ago when he’d crowded himself within the light of a single tallow candle in the service of reading weighty texts which Felicity had lent to him.
Once, she would have offered to rub his head for him to soothe away the ache. Even if he could have summoned up the audacity to ask her now, he couldn’t imagine it ending well for him.
Midnight had come and gone. The fire was in its last dying throes, red embers glowing like baleful eyes in the darkness. Ian tugged his cravat free of his neck and considered the ebbing flames speculatively. Had it just been him, he’d have let it die out rather than go to the bother of shoveling on fresh coal.
But Felicity’s feet were always cold. Even now as he squinted through the darkness, he could see her bundled up in the bed. Naturally he’d told the servants to warm the bed prior to her arrival, but that had been some hours ago, and that heat had since dissipated. The fire was dying, and she’d drawn her knees up toward her chest. Sound asleep—but cold.
Christ. She was never going to know it, and still he shrugged out of his coat and bent to retrieve the coal scuttle, laying down fresh fuel upon the dying fire. It would keep through the remainder of the night, he thought, at least until the maids came in the morning.
If the sounds he’d made stoking the fire had disturbed her sleep, she’d given no indication of it. Her back was still toward him, and she was mostly buried beneath the thick, downy counterpane. The spill of her dark hair in a tangle across the pillow suggested her sleep had not been particularly peaceful.
She’d abandoned her clothing upon a chair, and beneath the jumble of garments there he saw the dark grey coat she’d not let Butler take from her upon her arrival.Hell. It had been so dreary lately that it was likely still damp. He dug it out from beneath the pile to hang it upon the back of a chair. Possibly it would sufficiently dry before morning with the heat of the fire.
Probably she did not have a coat other than this one; this old, grey,shapeless thing that looked inches from falling apart at its very seams. Probably she’d skewer him in his sleep if he tried to get rid of it, even if itwashardly even fit for the rag heap.
The ring. She’d not been wearing it this evening when she’d returned home. Was it still in her coat pocket, where she’d placed it when she’d been in the carriage with him this morning? Or had she disposed of it already?
Ian slipped his fingers into the pocket of her coat, digging, hoping—and there it was, tucked into the very bottom corner. His breath escaped on a sigh of relief as he pulled it free. He would not have found himself particularly surprised if she had cast it straight into the sea…but it would have hurt. Wounded him in a way he hadn’t any right to be, in a way he could never have shown her, because in her present humor, she wouldwantthat.
He closed his fingers around it. It would be such a simple thing to tuck it away in one of his drawers, to preserve it, and to hope that there would come a time when she could be trusted with it. She would likely never notice. She hadn’t wanted it, besides. But he would be a coward take it back, and the sort of marriage he wanted for them—it would require vulnerability of him. She had bared her heart to him enough already, and paid for it in so much hurt. Now he would have to bare his own, even if she would slice it to pieces.
