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‘Pleasure.’ He looked at her, and he did not break her gaze. ‘Pain. Which for some is quite near to the same thing.’
Her blue eyes glistened with something then, a keen interest he wished to turn away from. But could not. ‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Briggs...’
They were saved by the fact that the carriage arrived at Maynard Park. He did not much believe in divine intervention, but he was going to have to give serious consideration to it at this moment.
The old place was grand, he had to admit, but he had no real fond feelings for it. He had not had the happiest of childhoods, and then he had not had the happiest of beginnings as a man. He’d had the interior renewed, and had ensured the gardens were revamped as well, and had seen to the installation of a greenhouse.
It didn’t completely erase the memories of what it had been like to grow up here.
And you keep your son there. Locked up like the prisoner you once were.
He pushed that thought away.
It was different.
The driver manoeuvred the carriage to the front of the grand entrance hall. It was all stately pillars in marble. Not to his taste. And yet it was his. And it felt in many ways as if it spoke to a great many things that he was. A great many of the wrong things.
He assisted his wife from the carriage, unwilling to allow the footman to place a finger on her. His possessiveness was unfamiliar. He was accustomed to it in the context of an interlude with a woman. After all, that was a hallmark of the dynamic. But he was not accustomed to it when he was fully clothed. And he wondered... He wondered if he might find a strange sort of fulfilment from this. From caring for her. Having her.
Even if only in this regard.
He escorted her to the front of the house, and the door opened, his butler a firm and imposing presence.
Mrs Brown the housekeeper was standing just there, smiling warmly. ‘Your Grace,’ she said. And she made her way to Beatrice and clasped her hand. ‘Your Grace.’
‘Hello,’ Beatrice said, suddenly looking awestruck and shy.
‘Do not worry,’ he said.
And he could feel her calm next to him.
‘I am Mrs Brown. I’m the housekeeper.’
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ Beatrice said.
And then he heard a great howl echoing through the halls. Beatrice startled.
‘No need for alarm,’ Mrs Brown said, smiling. ‘It is only that he’s having to change for dinner. He did not wish to stop what he was doing.’
‘William,’ he said. ‘That’s my son.’
‘Is he well?’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Brown said. ‘He is quite all right. I assure you.’
But there was something worried behind her eyes, and he hated to see that.
As much as this...discontentment in his son chafed against something inside him.
‘Welcome to Maynard Park.’
Chapter Six
Beatrice woke up, her heart thundering. It took her several moments to realise where she was. She was in Briggs’s house. She was Briggs’s wife.
