Page 24 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
A long moment of silence drew out, and she heard him draw in a breath and let it out again slowly. “The garden is yours to do with as you please,” he said at last, in a carefully neutral tone. “If you have no liking for it as it is now, have it redone to suit your tastes. Have any room you please redone, if it so suits you.”
She swallowed down the raw sound of exasperation that pressed against her teeth. “I can’t be bought,” she said. And then because that was not quite true in the context of how she had become his wife, she amended, “My good will cannot be bought. There is no amount of money that you could cast at me that would affect it.”
“I would welcome the opportunity to earn it instead,” he said. “Would you give me that?”
Taken aback at the quietly-issued question, Felicity fell silent once more, staring into the flickering flames.
“I thought not.” There was just the tiniest curl of amusement to his voice, as if he had expected such a response—or lack of one. “So what would you like for Christmas?” he repeated, and there was another rustling sound as he opened his paper once again.
Resentment swirled behind her breastbone, rivalling the heat of the fire before her. “Nothing from you,” she snapped, wincing as the yank of the brush through her hair pulled sharply at a particularly devious tangle. “I never intended to get anything for you, besides.”
“I know,” he said lightly, reasonably. “I didn’t expect anything. I have what I want already.”
Her. The clenching of her teeth produced a sharp ache in her head, the temporary relief of the wretched congestion provided by the steam in the bathing room already fading in the wake of the sudden surge of anger, made all the more galling for the fact that these last few days had been generally peaceful. She had attributed that to the fact that neither of them had muchhad the energy for anything beyond sleep, but still it had been…pleasant, not to expend so much of her limited energy on anger.
On a few occasions, she had bestirred herself to take some jab at him, to strike out with the sharp side of her tongue—but it had begun to seem as if, no matter how much she might hone that tongue to a fine point upon his hide, his only inclination was to figuratively bare his belly to give her a softer, more vulnerable target. Perversely, it only fanned the flames of the ire that still glowed within her chest. A fury that went unsatisfied every time it rose to the fore only to find that there was nothing sturdy to clash against. A roiling, violent turmoil that only redoubled itself with each failed attempt to vent the pressure of it building within her.
Three thousand six hundred and fifty days—and I missed you every one of them.
She swallowed the sour sound that rose from her chest and it scraped at her sore throat on its way back down. He’d thought she had been asleep when he’d uttered those words. She’d pretended to be. She’d pretended to be asleep rather a lot lately. Probably she’d pretend it longer still, if only to avoid conversation, to avoid Ian’s unnecessarily solicitous behavior. His consideration even in the face of the acrimony she cast at him made her feel rather small and petty—and she blamed him for that, too.
Another flick of the page. “Hm,” he said absently. “Interesting.”
Felicity swallowed back a sigh. It had become something of a routine, as he pored over the morning’s paper, for Ian to toss out several comments upon the news of the day in a transparent attempt to tempt her into conversation, which she largely ignored. Any moment now he would find some particularly salacious tidbit of gossip with which to—
A low whistle. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “A duke has married a courtesan.”
Felicity wrenched her head around so swiftly that a sharp pain shot up her neck. “What?” she asked, her heart hammering in her chest. “You’re joking.”
“No,” he said, peeking over the topmost edge of the paper, his brows knit. “Only a few days ago, it seems.”
It couldn’t be. Itcouldn’t. Scrambling to her feet, Felicity stumbled toward the bed. “Give it here,” she demanded.
Wordlessly, Ian handed over the paper, and Felicity scanned the page, searching through various announcements until—there it was. Miss Charity Nightingale, lately of London, had wed the Duke of Warrington in a private ceremony in Kent on December the nineteenth.
Kent. Felicity’s knees trembled, and she sat upon the edge of the bed abruptly before they could collapse beneath her. Charity had not come because she had not received Felicity’s letter. All this time she had been meticulously scanning the mail for a response, something that would explain Charity’s continued absence—and Charity had been buried in the countryside, preparing for her wedding to a duke.
Her sister was married. And she hadn’t even known.
“I hadn’t thought you were so interested in such gossip,” Ian said dryly.
“I’m not,” she said as she flung the paper back in his direction. “It’s only that it’s not every day a duke marries a courtesan.” Felicity staggered to her feet once more.
“It’s notever,” Ian said flatly. “It doesn’t happen, as a rule.”
And yet ithadhappened. And she hadn’t known! But Mercy must have done. Felicity couldn’t think of another reason why Charity might have married in Kent other than that it was where their half-sister Mercy lived with her husband, Thomas, and their daughter, Flora.
And Felicity had not received an invitation. How long had it been since she had last seen Charity in person? A year? Two? And always—always—Charity had come here to Brighton to see her. Felicity had never once gone to London. She had never had the opportunity, never had more than a day to herself at a time.
“You’re pacing,” Ian observed mildly.
“I’m cold,” Felicity snapped, crossing her arms over her chest as she flounced back toward the fire and sat down before it once again, the half-brushed mass of her hair falling over her shoulder. Ian would never understand—and she would never tell him. Sixteen years since she’d left home, since Charity had sent her off to school to protect her from their father. Felicity hadn’t set foot in London since. She’d gained a proper education, cobbled together a life for herself here. It wasn’t grand or particularly exciting, but it washers.
And her sisters had played such small parts in it since then. Mercy had been a recent addition, since neither she nor Charity had known of their half-sister’s existence until a few years ago. But the sum of her relationship with both of her sisters could be reduced to the contents of a drawer; a stack of letters she kept bound in twine. A handful of visits from Charity across the years, furtive meetings owing to Charity’s notoriety. Their lives had moved on without her. Both had married, and Mercy had had a daughter, and Felicity—
Felicity hadn’t merited evenan invitation.
She pulled up her knees and rested her chin atop them, grateful that the general stuffiness of her nose made an adequate excuse for the raw little sniffle she gave. She hadn’t just gained an unwanted husband. She’d lost what remained of her family.
