Apparently, prisoners didn’t get more than that. In fairness, sheabsolutelywould have used anything else as a weapon. She would have broken a table apart with her bare hands to wallop Peter with it. If given fire, she would have tried to burn her way through the door.
Shehadbalked at braining him with the chamber pot, mostly out of fear of what she would do if he took it away.
So, it wasn’t that the room was uncomfortable. It was that she was a goddamned prisoner!
Also, she was so bored that she had recently started counting the individual strands of her hair. When she had lost count, she had almost cried.
The boredom was preferable, though, to the burning self-recrimination for all the harsh words she had spoken to Ezra. God. If she had known that it would truly be the last time she would see him—not just because it was unwise to keep coming together, but because she was about to be bloodyabducted—she would have behaved so differently.
It had been nearly a week since Peter had forced her to come here. They were in Belgium, she knew, but not a town she recognized. That was all the information Peter had deigned to give her.
The heavy lock turned, as if her thoughts had summoned the man himself. Peter entered, then stepped aside, allowing a mouselike maid who refused to speak to Letitia in both French and English to enter. Letty didn’t know if this was because the girl didn’t speak either language or because she was simply so terrified of Peter that she didn’t dare.
Either way, it ended up the same: the girl was no help in planning an escape.
The maid skittered in, bearing a basket that Letitia now knew contained a few basic supplies. Then, the girl left, taking the chamber pot with her. She would return with it cleaned, and afterward, she would bring an ewer of water.
Other than this scant interaction, the only interaction she had was with Peter.
Andthatwas worse than the boredom.
“Hello, my dear,” he said now, ignoring the maid entirely to take his place in the woven chair. That was where he always sat when he came to accost her with his conversation.
She turned her face away, pressing her cheek into her drawn-up knees.
“Oh, Letitia,” he said chidingly. “Do not be like that.”
This had been her tactic for the past few days. For the first day or so, she had tried explaining in a very calm and reasonable tone that there were so very many reasons he should let her go and almost no good reasons at all to keep her captive. Unsurprisingly, this had not worked.
Sulking wasn’t working, either, but it seemed to annoy Peter, which was satisfying.
She tried not to think about what would happen when he lost patience with her antics. But for now, he seemed to remain amused with the idea that he would eventually woo her.
“You know, Letitia,” he said when she remained mulishly silent, “this would all be so much more pleasant if you just decided to be agreeable. Wouldn’t you like to get out of that dress, for one?”
She was still wearing the damned ballgown. It was no longer quite as fine as it had once been, and she had never managed to get it laced up properly. She was agonizingly aware of the fact that the laces were pulled together loosely, since that was all that she could manage with her hands behind her back. She did not like any sense of vulnerability in front of Peter, let alone having her clothes improperly tied.
She kept ignoring him.
“You are behaving like a child!” Peter snapped. The time between his arrival and his anger had been growing shorter and shorter. She was running out of time. “I am sure that you thought thatdukeof yours would rescue you, but by now you must realize that that is absolutely not going to happen.”
She stiffened, turning slightly to look at him before she could think better of it. It was the mention of Ezra that had done it. She could not help herself. She didn’t know if Peter looked more pleased that he had gotten a reaction or more annoyed over what had finally caused it.
He stopped looking mockingly protective and started looking cruel.
“Oh, yes, I know all about how you whored yourself out to Swifton,” he snarled. He was not a handsome man at the best of times, but now, with his face twisted into a sneer, he was downright hideous. “You decided that my title was not good enough for you, was that it? That’s rich, coming from a gutter-born nothing. But I suppose that’s how it goes. Your mother was a whore, and now, so are you.”
She was steeled against the flinch now, so she didn’t let him see how she felt at the reference to her mother.
Letitia’s background wasn’t asecret, not necessarily, but she didn’t advertise it. Governesses lived and died on the appearance of respectability, and the sins of the parents were still laid at the feet of the children.
Peter had asked around about her. He had done more than look for her in the present; he had dug up her past, too. And he was not afraid to wield it like a weapon.
She hated him so, so much.
He might have gotten under her skin, but she refused to let it show.
There was another pause, then Peter surged to his feet and kicked the chair across the room. The woven seat fractured when it hit the wall.
