Page 6 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
But he had lost her. No; not only lost—he hadsacrificedher. He had cut that bond between them himself, a thread at a time, without realizing how far it had frayed until it had been too late to save. And ten desolate years hadfollowed, years in which he’d made more money than God and still had nothing he valued. Years which had been steeped in loneliness, in misery.
And she would make him more miserable still, he knew. He’d got her at last, but not honestly. Not honorably.
Tomorrow morning, she would put her hand in his and swear herself to him before a man of God. Then, he had no doubt, she would make him suffer for his audacity, for the gall of it all. And he would take it, every bit of that enmity that she still held for him, because that—that he had earned honestly.
Christ. He dropped his head into his hands and scrubbed at his face.You always have to win, she had accused, and it had scored his heart to its core. He’d won hundreds—thousands—of other battles. But he’d been losing this war of silence between them for a decade. Yes, he had to win; the rest of his life depended upon it. But in the doing of it, he’d set himself up as her enemy, the bane of her existence, the lone target of every bit of her anger.
And he could only hope that when she had spent every last ounce of that well-deserved wrath, that she might finally find herself willing to listen.
∞∞∞
The bitter rush of wintery air hit Felicity full in the face as she stepped out onto the street. Uncertain if the shiver that trickled down her spine had been due to the sudden strike of the cold or her own unspent fury, she started out for home once again.
Home. Mrs. Lewis’ Seminary for Young Ladies had been that for more than half her life. But it wouldn’t be for much longer.
There was an icy mist heavy in the air, and the scent of salt coming off the sea. It was a walk of perhaps fifteen minutes back to the school, but the biting cold made it somewhat less than pleasant. This part of town was populated mostly by the wealthy, and the street was quiet and dark.
Once, a lifetime ago, sneaking out of the house for a midnight rendezvous had been a matter of course, and she had never before felt unsafe out of doors at such an hour. But just now she felt…
Watched. There was someone watching her. Briefly she paused to look back at Ian’s massive house, scanning the windows for any hint of an observer. The windows were dark, curtains drawn. If there existed some unseen observer lurking there, she could see no sign ofsuch a person.
And yet the feeling of being watched persisted as she continued on her path and turned a corner. The only sounds were the whistle of the wind through the trees and her own footfalls, and yet—still she was certain she had some pursuer, some villain dogging her footsteps. Hiding there in the shadows, trailing behind her. But who? The same party who had been sending notes alluding to the past she had hoped she had put behind her? Or someone in Ian’s employ, sent to safeguard hisinvestment?
Perhaps they were one and the same.
No; it couldn’t be. She had never told Ian from where she had come and how she had escaped. She had never told anyone; not even after she had reached her majority and could not have been compelled to return to what had once been her home. And in the documents stuffed within the folio she held tucked beneath her arm, her name had been rendered as Felicity Cabot, not FelicityNightingale. Surely, if he had known, he would have substituted her true name. But that did not mean he hadn’t set someone on her, someone to watch her and report her movements. He could well afford the expense of such a thing.
She did not intend to make it easy to spy upon her. As she rounded another corner she broke into a run, sprinting across the street to the shelter of a copse of trees just within the boundary of a small park, where she ducked behind the thick, solid trunk of an elm. Her heart tripped through a few rapid beats as she peered through the unrelenting dark, and she held her breath as she waited for her unseen pursuer to round the corner.
There. He was lighter on his feet than she would have expected of such a great hulking behemoth of a man; she could hardly hear his footfalls. For a moment she could only be profoundly thankful for the black of her gown, the dark grey of her coat. She would blend better with the shadows here in the shelter of the trees in such dour garments—so long as she did not move and draw his eye.
The man stopped there, scanning the street for any sign of her. Too dark for her to make out much of anything beyond his approximate height, the wide, beefy set of his shoulders, and the stomach-churning flex of his hands at his sides. For a moment that felt like an eternity, he stared directly across the street where she had taken refuge behind the trees, and Felicity held herself still as death, silent as the grave, and willed him to look elsewhere even as the pound of her heart echoed audibly in her ears.
If he caught her—if he caught her, she feared she would freeze, just asshe always had in her youth. A learned reaction that had become beyond her ability to control. At some point, her young mind had learned from too much experience that a beating was over faster when one didn’t fight back. She feared she had neverunlearned it.
At last—at last—he made a rough sound in his throat, spat a wet glob of mucus straight onto the street, and proceeded in the direction he must have assumed she had taken. As quietly as she could manage, she crept from beneath the shelter of the trees to watch him go.
The moment he had disappeared from sight, Felicity fled through the park. The grass beneath her feet muffled the sound of her footsteps as she raced away, her lungs burning with the exertion of it. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and the brisk wind stung her eyes. Her chest ached with every frantic breath she drew. And when at last she emerged at the other end of the park, she pressed her hand to the stitch that had formed in her side, bent double, and breathed deeply.
Probably, if she hurried, she could make it back to the school without encountering him again. Possibly he had not even meant to catch her, as he had had ample opportunity for that already. But he hadfollowed her, and she did not intend to stop him for a chat in the service of determining his motivation. Whether he had been sent by Ian to keep an eye upon her, or for his own nefarious purposes.
Her fingers had clenched upon the leather folio as she had run, and the impressions of her nails had left a permanent mark upon it in deep grooves carved in the cover. But that was not likely to be the last of the misfortunes to befall it tonight. She’d seen the stack of pages within it, and if they were only half so thorough as she expected them to be, then the wretched thing would be lucky to survive the remainder of the night without being set ablaze.
Home, then, once more—for the last time.
She’d sold her soul to Ian Carlisle. And now all that was left was to read through his terms.
Chapter Three
As Ian scratched out yet another signature for the banker who had, as directed, come to call upon him early in the morning, the door to his office flew open and cracked against the wall.
So. Felicity had come early, then.
In a strained voice, Butler announced, “Sir, Miss Cabot has—”
Thwack. A familiar folio landed upon Ian’s desk with unerring accuracy, the force of the throw that had landed it there sending a number of other papers flying. He swallowed down a sigh. At least he had signed those already, though the ink might not have dried entirely.
Felicity had swept past Butler entirely, sailing into the office on the strength of her indignation. The air crackled with tension, and he found he could not be certain if she owed the faint fuzziness of her hair to her escalating ire or to the particularly cold and drizzly weather.
