Page 2 of The Forger and the Duke
A pause rolled out. Amaranthe heard breathing. Her own, but perhaps the girl’s also. The air glittered with sharp points of light.
“Areah!” the girl cried. “I knowed ee’d come over so, Iknowedit, and still I let ee—” The words stopped, a muffled sound following. A sound like her parents had made in the grip of their fevers, a wounded creature keening with pain.
“Cease your screeching,” the baronet said shortly. “I will not have you in my house until you rid yourself of this unfortunate development.”
“Rid me—rid me!” The girl gasped. Amaranthe shivered at the agony in her voice. “Ee shall give me a coin or three to turn me off, then? I’ve not a penny for my pocket!”
“You dare ask me for money!” Her cousin’s cold fury was worse than any roar. “Your morals are as light as your skirts. Consider yourself released from my employ.” He added with a sneer, “Slattern.”
Amaranthe’s mind refused to order the facts. Eyde, it would seem, was with child. But for Reuben, wed to pale, fretful Favella, to be father of this babe, and not acknowledge it? True,a bastard child could not inherit his house and lands, but to turn Eyde off entirely—this was a malice she would not have thought even Reuben possessed.
There was a suck of air, as if her cousin drew on a cheroot. It would be in line with his arrogance for him to smoke in the stables, a building which could easily catch fire. But it was Eyde, sobbing.
“I’ve nowhere to go. No one a’ will take me.”
“That,” said the baronet, “is likewise your problem. Not mine.”
Amaranthe couldn’t distinguish the sounds that followed. A cry, cut off as if bitten, the hiss of sliding leather, then a familiar snap. At a howl from the girl, Amaranthe rushed forward.
Eyde knelt in the tack room, her skirts stirring the dirt and hay upon the floor, her arms flung up over her head as the baronet slashed the short, sharp horsewhip toward her head. Amaranthe’s heart stopped beating for a moment, though that didn’t stay her steps. Her life as a rector’s daughter had been so gentle, and she knew only tenderness from her parents. It had been a sobering education when she fell under her cousin’s wardship and learned a man could be capable of gross indifference to his fellow creatures, as well as insolence and casual cruelty.
Before she knew how she’d arrived there, she stood between Eyde and the baronet, her hands raised, her voice a shriek unfamiliar to her own ears.
“Cousin! Stop, I beseech you.”
The baronet’s lip curled and with an angry, contemptuous stroke he brought the whip down on Amaranthe. The braided leather laid a trail of fire across her forearms and wrists, and the cluster of beads at the tip shredded her fine gloves. Amaranthe sucked in a breath of outrage and true fear.
“She came at me. I’ve a right to protect myself,” Reuben snarled.
“But if you beat her, she might lose the babe.” Amaranthe’s hands burned as if she’d touched acid, and her cousin’s scowl was terrifying. She understood now. He had done something base, and he did not want to be discovered in it.
“’Twould be a solution for us both,” Reuben answered.
The baronet was not a handsome man. Her elder by more than a decade, born the heir of an eldest son, he had always been condescending. Amaranthe knew from two years of living beneath his roof that he was a man who valued little beyond his own pleasures and the respect he felt due him. But she had never, until now, known him to be so completely deprived of morals.
“Favella will have fits when she learns you did this.”
The words slipped out before she could consider the wisdom of mentioning the baronet’s wife. Favella, the one thing in the world the baronet cherished, was delicate and excitable, and not upsetting Favella was the axis about which the household rotated. Favella’s need not to be vexed was one reason that much of the housekeeping, visiting, and other duties of the house had fallen on Amaranthe. But for her cousin to defile the marital bed?—
The baronet’s face reddened, his lips in an ugly twist. “Favella isn’t to hear a word of this.” He glared at Amaranthe and then Eyde, who flung her arms around Amaranthe’s knees and clung for dear life.
“I don’t see how she cannot,” Amaranthe blurted. Eyde’s condition couldn’t be hidden if she stayed in their service, and Amaranthe couldn’t let the baronet toss her out. Eyde’s family hadn’t been able to support the girl alone; how could they feed two more mouths? They were more likely to send her away. Illegitimate children had no place in the world.
Her cousin’s face turned calculating, and he stepped forward and grasped her hand. Amaranthe sucked in her breath as his grip pinched where the burning lash had fallen. Her palm stung.
“You forget yourself, cousin.” Reuben’s breath was foul, and she saw rot in his teeth as he bared them at her. “I have been lax with you, I see. Letting you take advantage of my good nature.”
That was a jest, surely. Her cousin kept most of her allowance for himself. He watched every pat of butter she put on her bread, every lump of sugar she carved off the loaf for her tea. He read the letters that came and went from her brother at Oxford and her friends from school. She’d had to leave Miss Gregoire’s when her parents died because Reuben would not stand her tuition.
The baronet pulled Amaranthe toward him, and she turned her face aside as he leaned close, his chuckle wafting onions and sour beer in her face. She breathed through her mouth, trying not to gag with disgust and terror.
“I think,dearcousin, it is time you began earning your keep.”
“I already do everything a wife does,” Amaranthe lashed out, not looking at him. She feared she might faint from the humiliation of being treated so.
He sneered and tugged her arm, trying to pull her against his fleshy stomach, his fleshy thighs. “Not everything, cousin. But perhaps you should. It might teach you a lesson about who your master is.”
Amaranthe bit down on her lip so she didn’t whimper. She was innocent, but she felt her innocence being shredded like rags. Her cousin had done something vile to Eyde, and now he meant to turn his attentions onher.
