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He had been right. It was Beatrice. He could not mistake her bright, starlit voice. It was like silver.
As he got closer, he understood what he’d seen from the window. She was suspended on a swing that hung in the centre of the grove of trees.
‘Lucky for you. Not a highwayman. Or anything else intent on stealing whatever fortune you have on your person or your virtue.’
Her virtue.
He should not think of her virtue.
And yet, it was difficult to avoid thinking of it altogether. Her brother had concerns about her bearing a child, but there were many ways to find pleasure...
It was far too easy in that moment to imagine her as the virgin sacrifice in her white nightgown. Far too easy to imagine her sinking to her knees before him...
You will not be teaching her the ways you find pleasure.
She would be disgusted. Likely go screaming right back to her brother, who would ensure Briggs lived out the rest of his days as a eunuch.
‘What are you doing out here?’
‘I thought I saw an apparition outside my window.’
‘I am not an apparition,’ she said. ‘I am just Beatrice.’
‘A relief.’
Her hair was loose; he had never seen it so. Falling over her shoulders in thick, heavy curls. She was pale and wide-eyed in the moonlight. Like a virgin sacrifice to be taken by the gods.
But not by him.
‘I am... I am considering my life in your servitude, Your Grace.’
‘Servitude?’
‘I’m not free. Was that not the discussion we had mere days ago?’
‘You will be freer with me than you ever have been before,’ he said, and at the same time he wondered if that were strictly true. ‘You will have the protection of being a married lady. Scandal will not be able to touch you quite so easily.’
Though because of her health... She would not have all the freedoms that she might’ve had otherwise. But he would not say something. Not now. Not when he was trying to comfort her. A task he was unequal to. For he was not one to offer comfort to anyone.
‘And what sort of freedoms will I have?’
‘What do you wish, Beatrice?’
She closed her eyes. ‘I wish to see things. More than this place. I did not ask for this,’ she said. ‘I did not ask to be ill. To be fragile. It is an insult, I feel, that my spirit does not match my body. For I have always felt that I...’ She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, a shaft of moonlight illuminating her skin. And he could see that her nightgown was...
Transparent.
Even in the dimness of the moonlight he could see the shadow of her nipples, the faint impression of dark curls between her thighs.
She was like a goddess. Beautiful. Untouchable.
Absolutely untouchable, no matter that he was to be her husband.
He had married a woman so like her. Serena had been fragile. Beautiful. Virginal. And utterly unprepared for him. Their life together had not been happy. In fact, he felt, unavoidably, that he was part of her being driven to such despair that she could no longer live.
The one person on earth he had attempted to connect with. The one person he had attempted to find a real relationship with and it had...
He had not loved her. But he had thought that he might one day. He had been ready to fight for that. To make it his aim.
