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‘I am sorry,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.
‘It clearly does.’
‘No. It does not. I made the decision in the end to bring him. It is done.’ He looked past her, into the darkness, then back at her. ‘Do not stray from the garden.’
‘I would not.’
‘You are in London, now, and you must take care. You will not leave the house without accompaniment. This garden being the exception.’
‘Yes. Sorry, I had quite forgotten that I was your ward, and in no way your equal.’
‘Even if you were my wife, you would not be my equal.’
She sucked in a sharp breath at the barb, that she had a feeling did not reflect what he thought about anything, but rather was designed to harm her. And it had. Why was she so fragile where he was concerned? It made no sense. And yet, he made her feel as if she was made of broken glass.
Why did he have this power over her?
It was something beyond friendship, for theirs was no easy companionship. She resented the way he avoided her when she should not care about it at all. His disdain hurt. She did not understand how they had got here.
It had changed since he had touched her by the fire in her brother’s study.
And again after he’d pushed her on the swing.
And most of all after they had married, after the carriage ride.
It should have worked, this arrangement. And yet nothing about it did.
‘Of course not.’
He turned away from her.
‘And where is it you are going?’ she asked.
‘I do not have to answer to you.’
‘That in and of itself is an answer. And such an answer,’ she said. ‘Why you do not simply wish to tell me...’
‘I am going to a brothel, Beatrice, are you familiar with the term?’
His face looked cruel now, and she hated this. This was not the man who had brought her sweets. This was a dark and furious stranger, the man who had compelled her to stare across the ballroom on that night, the man who captured her breath.
She knew that he was angry, but there was something in his cold, quiet fury that made her feel sick.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I... I don’t know what that means.’
Perhaps it pertained to his duties at the House of Lords. But judging by the expression on his face she knew that it did not.
For that would not hurt her. And right now, he wished to hurt her. She could feel it.
‘It is where a man goes when he wishes to purchase the company of a woman.’
r /> That immediately brought to mind an image of Briggs sitting down to tea with a lady, and she was absolutely certain that was the wrong image to be in the middle of her head, and yet there it was.
‘Still confused?’ he asked, and his tone was unkind.
‘Stop it,’ she said, feeling angry now. ‘You are aware of the gap in my knowledge on certain things, given the cloistered life that I had led, and it is one thing to acknowledge them, but it is quite another to cruelly take pleasure in them.’
