Dorothy blinked, as though the force of his refusal might be softened if she pretended not to have heard it. “You cannot meanit. She must learn sometime. If she fell into so much as a pond, she would be helpless. I can teach her myself.”
“She will not be falling into ponds or lakes or any other body of water,” Magnus replied with a chilling calm. “Because she will not be near them without someone present.”
Dorothy made a small, strangled sound that was half laugh, half growl. The man was a brick wall with a title. Stolid, immovable, and vastly unamused by the battering ram of reason. Yet, she pressed on anyway. “You speak as though she were destined to live her life in a glass case. She is ten years old, Your Grace. If she is supervised, what harm can there be in a little splash in the shallows?”
Magnus’s jaw tightened. “Drowning is a harm, Dorothy. Perhaps you have not considered that.”
She flung up her hands. “Oh, I have considered it! That is precisely why she ought to learn. Would you prefer she remain as ignorant as a duck that has never seen water?”
He stared at her as though she had suggested throwing Eugenia into the Channel for sport. “You cannot compare a child to a duck.”
“Why not? Ducks know how to swim because no one tells them they mustn’t try.” Dorothy felt the heat rising in her cheeks, a mixture of passion and sheer frustration. She had never met a man so resolutely determined to be dreary. One might as wellattempt to kindle a fire with wet stones as stir Magnus from his cold caution.
“Eugenia’s safety is my first concern. That will not change,” he insisted.
“It is mine too, as you have made clear!” Dorothy shot back. “But protecting her from everything will make her timid. Would you have her grow into a young lady who swoons at the sight of a puddle?”
Dorothy very nearly stamped her foot, an urge she had not felt since she was Eugenia’s age. He was impossible, frozen granite in human form, and she the poor fool tasked with chipping away at him with a teaspoon.
Dorothy pressed her palms together, drawing in a long, steadying breath. There was no sense in quarreling with him. The man was unyielding granite and was likely to wear her down before he so much as considered shifting. If she were to persuade him, she must appeal to his merchant’s mind, not his mule’s pride.
“Your Grace,” she began again, her voice smoothed into something softer, more deliberate. “I know we might as well be strangers who share a home, but if you could listen to me for one moment. When you married me, you took a risk. You placed me here, in this house, with Eugenia, and you told me plainly what my duty was. To see her grow into a normal young lady. Very well. Then you must allow me to use my own methods. If you tie me hand and foot, how am I to accomplish what you demand?”
He did not so much as blink. His gaze fixed upon her as though he would outstare her into silence. But Dorothy pressed on, refusing to be daunted.
“When I was a girl,” she continued, “Philip and I learned to swim together in a pond. We were inseparable, always tumbling into scrapes, always in the water, and yet, look at us. We both turned out perfectly sound. Eugenia deserves a chance at such joys, to discover herself in something that is not confined within four walls and needlework frames. She and I could bond through it. She would feel braver, freer. It is dreadfully dull in this house, Your Grace. The day is fine, the air is warm, and I am asking you humbly, kindly, for a few minutes to take her to the lake. It is reasonable.”
Her plea hung in the air. Dorothy, almost without realizing it, bit her lower lip as she waited. She expected another curt dismissal, another sweep of his hand to end the discussion. But when her eyes darted back to his, she found him not looking her in the eyes, but rather, his eyes were fixed, unmistakably, upon her lips.
Startled, she tilted her head slightly, an involuntary gesture, as if to test whether she had imagined it. At once, his eyes lifted, catching hers with unflinching steadiness.
“You must adjust your strategy then, Dorothy. I will not change my mind on this. It is dangerous.”
Dorothy could not help herself. His refusal was so abrupt, so final, so immovable, that she found herself staring at him as ifby sheer force of will, she could pry open a crack in that wall of stone. Her gaze drifted to his eyes. Good heavens, what was that color? She had yet to decipher it. Now that she thought about it, perhaps it was a hue born out of some peculiar cruelty the world had yet to name.
Still, she stared, wondering if all that severity lived inside him, locked behind those eyes.
“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” Magnus asked suddenly, his voice as cutting as a blade drawn across stone.
Dorothy blinked. “Like what?”
“Like that,” he said, irritation sharpening each syllable. “Why do you keep staring into my eyes?”
“Why does it bother you, Your Grace?” she retorted.
“You are not to tell me what should and should not bother me, Dorothy.”
She felt the corner of her mouth twitch. “Perhaps I am attempting to determine whether your eyes were chiseled from granite or forged of ice in some particularly heartless storm. I have not yet decided.”
His jaw tightened. “If you imagine that insolence will serve to alter my mind, you are horribly mistaken.” His voice haddeepened. “You and Eugenia are henceforth forbidden from going anywhere near the lake. Do I make myself plain?”
Her cheeks burned hot with indignation. Without another word, Dorothy turned from him before he might see her eyes brim with hot, unbidden tears. She walked with determined steps through the long corridor, her fingers swiping angrily at her cheeks. She detested the weakness of it, that her body betrayed her so when in truth, her heart burned with fury. Why should she cry when she wished only to rage?
She reached her chamber at last and shut the door behind her with a firmness that echoed her spirit. Her hands, still trembling, went straight for her small writing desk. There lay a neat stack of paper, her pen, and the little pot of ink she kept near at hand. For a moment, she simply stood over them, gathering herself, and then, with a deep breath, she sat and dipped the nib into black ink.
The first lines came haltingly, for she had so much to say, more than could be reasonably poured into a single sheet. Yet Emma must hear of it. Emma, with her clear judgment and gentle understanding, would know what it meant to be so caged and stifled. Dorothy’s tears slipped faster now, spotting the page, and she pressed her lips together in frustration. She wiped at them with the heel of her hand, angry at her own display, yet the tears would not be mastered.
Still, she wrote. The last thing she did was scrawl Emma’s name across the front of the folded paper, her hand trembling ever so slightly as she pressed down harder than necessary on the ink.
