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I cross my arms, gulping up a lungful of air before he murders me.
He hasn’t moved an inch, not even to blink, his cool, handsome face serene. Like he doesn’t care about a single word I’ve just said. Because it doesn’t matter to him. I’m just another little fly who can be flicked off, a minor inconvenience—
“If you’re going to fire me,” I say, and he laughs, the sound shocking me like a punch to the face. He looks up to the sky, hands unclenching, and he reaches up to grasp at his chest, laughing so hard, it’s all I can do to stand there, shocked. The duke, smiling?Laughing?Is it going to start raining blood?
“Fire you. Christ above.” He bends forward, his carefully swept-back hair falling into his eyes, untidy and… my cheeks flush with warmth.
A little bit handsome.
I dash that feeling, that thought, away, chasing it with a clearing of my throat.
“I’m a little…” well if I’m not fired, in for a penny— “Yes, your grace, you are working her to death. She needs time to play, to explore the world, and not be in so many lessons that she almost falls asleep in her soup course every night.” Each word might feel like I’m signing my own severance package, and the duke has stopped laughing now, but instead is looking at me, somber andinterested.
And so far, he is not having me escorted off the property, my things in a cardboard box. Maybe God is smiling down on me. Brave fools are rewarded, sometimes.
He’s quiet for a long moment and then breaths out through his nose, reaching up to pinch the bridge of it like I’ve given him a headache but he’s willing to hear me out.
“And what would you suggest, when she is the wife of a great man and has many responsibilities, hospitals to oversee, the poor to tend to, the oppressed to minister to,” he says softly, hands falling to his sides. “What will she do then, when she’s soft, and not used to hard work?”
My mind spins.
“When she’s what, thirty years old? Emotionally mature and intelligent? Did your father make you do all of those things when you were barely out of the nursery?” I shoot back. His expression goes blank.
Oh.Oh.
“He did,” I whisper, “the exact same… schedule? The same… everything?” I can’t help the horror that creeps into my tone, and he flinches, like I’ve hit him.
He pulls off his jacket.
“I want you to see what comes of being soft on children,” he says, his voice rough. He rolls up his sleeves, to the elbow, frowning down at his cufflinks. I shift my weight. Is he going to… hit me?
He turns out his arms.
“This. This is what happens when you are soft on children.”
I choke on my breath.
His arms are a mess of scars. Burns litter his forearms, up and down, some shallow, some deep craters, like the moon’s surface, pitted and shadowed. I count twenty… no… over forty… too many…
Horror wells up in me. When I finally look up, to his face, I want to be sick. His expression isn’t furious, but surprisingly peaceful.
“Did you… Do that… did you hurt yourself—“ I can’t say it, it’s too horrible. I can’t. My eyes are wet. I lift my arm to my face and wipe at it, the linen of my uniform soft and warm against my cheeks.
“No, I did not hurt myself,” he says, “but when I was found deficient, I paid the price. I will never have that be Madeline. She willneverbe found wanting.” He jerks his sleeves down, the white cotton wrinkled from being shoved up his skin. “I will never give anyone the chance to have even the slightest excuse to hurt her.” He stares at me steadily.
I feel like someone’s yanked the rug out from under me, and my head whirls. What happened to him, when it happened, so many questions flood my mind. But one thing comes crystal clear, through the noise, and the static.
How can he think that running her ragged now could prevent something likethathappening to her in the future?
My lips part, and my voice shakes when I finally speak.
“I can’t agree,” I say finally, when I find the right words for it. “You are hurting your daughter. Maybe not in the exact way as someone abused you, but it’s harming her just the same.” There’s a painful lump in my throat, scratchy and refusing to goaway no matter how many times I swallow hard. My eyes water again, and I blink away the tears. “And I hope you know that no matter what you did, you never deservedthat.”
There’s something in the depths of his eyes, a shadow that seems to lift for a moment.
“I must ride out,” he says, and that tiny crack in the wall cements over. He turns away from me, and leaves me standing there, only the sight of his back, ramrod straight and stubborn visible as my vision blurs over with tears.
What happened to him? And what have I stumbled into? This place is a mess of vipers, a nest of them, and I should run from it, if I have any sense of self-preservation.
