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“Follow that carriage!” Simon called back.
* * *
“Where are we going?” Marion asked tentatively, trying not to look at the metal barrel of the pistol that her father had levelled at her from the opposite side of the carriage. Marion could feel her heart thundering brutally. She was glad, in a way, that she was sitting down so that she didn’t have to contend with standing up. She was so afraid that she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her. The last thing she wanted was to appear weak in front of her father.Her father.What kind of man—what kind of parent—had the gall to threaten the life of his own child? If Marion had any doubts that her father loved money more than family, she didn’t anymore.
“Somewhere we can talk alone,” Ted said, sitting comfortably in the carriage. He was not worried about hurting her, that much was clear.
“We could have talked in the carriage on the street,” Marion said. “We are alone now.”
Marion shifted slightly in her seat. She felt like she had a target on her that made her itch. In a way, she supposed she did. Her father’s hand on the handle of his weapon was unnervingly still. She got the impression he had threatened people before. Her father’s face split into a wolfish grin.
“I was hoping for somewhere with a little more privacy,” he said. “Though it might not be as fine as you are used to.”
Marion snorted at his words. Did this man remember nothing about the situation he had left Marion and her mother in?
“Do you not recall that I have lived my life in service, just like my mother?” Marion snapped, her anger overwhelming her fear for a moment. “That we would have lived in poverty, if not for Eleanor’s mother?”
“Oh, your mother would have never allowed that,” Ted said snidely. “She always found a way to land on her feet, especially with her many gentlemen friends.”
Marion felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her at the audacity of his words. Marion knew that her mother had been beautiful as a young woman and elegant as an older one. RShe had often impressed the gentlemen who circulated through Eleanor’s house throughout their childhoods. But Marion also knew that her mother had not looked at another man since her father left. Trapped in her marriage to an absent husband, Marion’s mother had still kept her vows, even though Marion had secretly longed for a new father and she knew that her mother had been lonely until the day she died. It seemed that Ted Laurie did not care that her mother had suffered.
“You are wrong,” Marion choked on her words, clenching her fists tightly to alleviate the overwhelming urge she had to strike this man who spoke so callously and cast hideous aspersions on her mother’s character. “It is only through the generosity of her friends that we survived.”
“You were hardly destitute,” Ted snorted, rolling his dark eyes. Marion wanted to slap him for his insolence. For the first time in her life, Marion found herself imagining all the ways she would hurt this man if he wasn’t holding a gun on her. Instead, she forced her anger back down like bitter bile in her throat, and spoke carefully.
“We lived to serve,Father,something I am sure you have no knowledge of,” Marion retorted. “We lived in someone else’s house, on someone else’s time. We may not have been destitute, but it was not finery.”
“Yes, well.” Ted looked out of the window casually, as if he didn’t he a care for what she said. “You certainly landed on her feet in your marriage.”
His eyes flickered over Marion’s body slowly, the corners of his mouth turning up slowly, almost lecherously. He was looking at her with such stark appreciation that Marion shivered uncomfortably, averting her eyes from his so she no longer had to see the ominous gleam in his eyes. Did this man have no shame? Ted continued to speak, but his voice was lower, more dangerous and almost suggestive.
“You say you had no money or status to lure him—I suppose you found other ways to appeal to him.”
Marion flushed deeply at his words. Despite the fact that she knew his words were lies, despite the fact she had no need to respect him or care for what he thought, her feelings were still stung by the idea that she had used her body to seduce Simon. The words of Lady Henrietta on the night that Marion had been caught in Simon’s arms flooded back to her at that moment.:People shall only wonder how such a romance came about in what…ah, scandalous circumstances …
“I will not talk to you about my marriage,” Marion said primly, turning away from him to look out of the window.
“We will discuss it,” Ted said quietly, and the hairs at the back of Marion’s neck stood up at the deadly intensity of his voice. “Eventually.”
Marion blinked back instinctive tears that had sprung up at the implicit dark threat in his voice. She stared out at the passing houses and streets, the great churches and statues of London, and tried to let her thoughts take flight.
She might be captive to this terrible man, but she could at least ponder on pleasant things. Her mind immediately went to Simon. She wondered where he was right now. She could imagine him so clearly, seated in his favourite room in the house, the library, in his favourite chair by the fire reading his book. If she closed her eyes she could almost feel the warmth of the fire that crackled next to him, hear the crinkle of the pages as he turned them and the creak of the leather chair as he shuffled, crossing and uncrossing his legs. She could see that slight frown between his brows, an adorable crease that appeared whenever he was deep in concentration. She felt as if she could watch him for hours, his dark hair falling across his forehead and his grey eyes roving busily, eagerly absorbing knowledge. She could smell the soot in the chimney, the coffee in the pot beside his elbow that she always made sure he had at a certain time of day.
I would give everything, anything, to just stay there forever with him,Marion thought.To be quiet and content with the man I love.
The thought came to her so quietly, so gently, that at first she didn’t quite notice it for what it was. Then it came to her suddenly, with roaring conviction that filled her with terrible, stomach churning regret. She loved him. She loved him deeply, passionately, with every part of herself. She had thought she was only protecting his reputation by hiding the truth of her father from him, but now she saw it for what it was—she loved him and she was afraid of losing him.
How could I have been so stupid?Marion scorned herself, feeling stinging tears in her eyes.If only I had been honest with him!
At that moment, she wished nothing more than to jump from the moving carriage, whatever the consequences, just so she could run back to him.
He doesn’t know I love him!Marion thought wildly.I never told him. What if something awful happens? He’ll never know.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Ted’s voice interrupted her thoughts and she turned to look at him. He was staring at her keenly, his eyes fixed on her right hand. Without realising, Marion’s hand had strayed to the carriage door handle. Ted pulled the hammer back on the pistol, a menacing click echoing in the space between them.
“You’d be dead before you hit the road,” he said darkly.
