“Your sister’s name—linked to Harbury’s—appears in a significant number of entries in tonight’s betting book.”
“Animals,” Eliza spat.
“Men are, aren’t they?” She studied Eliza for a long, speculative moment. “Vicious beneath their glossy exterior. Difficult to…manage, unless you’ve the right blend of qualities…”
How odd it was to converse with someone without being able to see them! Eliza had no means to discern the woman’ssentiments, no way to tell if she was gaining favor with the woman or not.
“Before we discuss your reasons for covertly entering the Den, I would first like to know how you came to seek me out.”
Eliza reached into the pocket hidden within her skirt and pulled out several papers. She slid them across the desk.
Mrs. Dove-Lyon moved the candle closer and carefully unfolded the notes. Then, she poured over the contents as if she’d all the time in the world.
As if the night and Society’s vultures weren’t already closing in.
For the most part, silence weighted the air. At one section, however, Mrs. Dove-Lyon inhaled sharply, and at another, she paused to look away before resuming her study. Finally, she carefully refolded the packet and returned it to Eliza.
The letters had not been franked but clandestinely exchanged with her mother, and they’d been signed only with anO, leaving much unknown about their source. Eliza had hoped Mrs. Dove-Lyon would give her a clue to the identity of the author.
Mrs. Dove-Lyon did not satisfy Eliza’s curiosity.
She simply asked, “Was your mother’s unhappiness, as confirmed in these letters, a surprise to you?”
“No. We saw little enough of my father, but little was more than sufficient for me to form an understanding of his true character.”
Her father, publicly beloved squire, Parliament’s premier orator, ready to lend a hand to all was, in private, petty, vindictive, and cruel. And the object of his greatest fury was the aristocratic wife who failed to provide him with an heir.
“My mother paid the price of her father’s choice for her husband.”
The Black Widow nodded. “In her shoes, would you have exposed his character?”
“I wish it had been in my power,” Eliza answered bitterly.
“And if—” the widow templed her fingers and leaned forward—“your mother had left him, would you have understood?”
Her question should have shocked Eliza. But the authoress of the letters she’d read had clearly made such a decision.
Eliza considered. She had always been frustrated by the acquiescent way her mother submitted to her father’s demands. But, if her mother had left her father, only a fool would have expected her to take along her five, young girls.
Would Eliza have forgiven her mother if she’d left them all behind?
Her eyes smarted.
“We would have all been ruined.”
They’d been ruined anyway.
“But surely,” Eliza continued, “it is not right to be condemned to perpetual unhappiness for a single, poor choice, especially if you had little say in the matter? I can’t—I won’t—have Cassandra sentenced to the same kind of union—a union as she’d have with Harbury.”
Never mind that Cassandra wouldn’t survive marriage to a man like that—a man who would see his wife only as the conduit for an heir.
Their mother hadn’t.
“Understandable,” the Black Widow said. “Admirable, even. But finding a solution won’t be easy.”
Eliza’s already wretched heart sunk further.
The Black Widow folded her hands on the desk. “You have not yet reached your majority. Therefore, you cannot simply run away from your troubles. Besides, the only profitable lines of work available to you would sink your family into furtherdisgrace. You’ve four younger sisters whose welfare hangs in the balance. So, that leaves marriage.”
