before to marry Hamilton.
Duty was a hard master.
And this promise made on a deathbed was even harder.
“Send in Hamilton and Thomas,” Lord Carin said on a sigh.
Eva rose, her skirts rustling. She left without a backward glance for Ian or for Lord Carin, but given the straightness of her spine, Ian knew, her heart wept for what she was losing: her father figure and her independence.
Ian stood for one long moment in the room, suddenly feeling as if his childhood was racing away from him, that all the days of summer were fast slipping away and that a very cold winter was about to sweep him up. But like Eva, he knew his duty and his duty he would obey.
England
The present
Mrs. Palmer stared down at the blank sheet of cream-colored parchment sitting next to a letter from Lord Thomas Carin warning her about the arrival of a cousinwho would insist on seeing Eva. The letter explicitly stated she was not to permit such a visit.
The foul note tainted her usually meticulous world.
She’d been outthought—outmaneuvered—by a bastard of a man who had led her a merry dance. She drew in a sharp breath, desperate not to let her calculations fall to baser emotion, emotion that would cloud her vengeance.
Her fingers inched toward the quill, half ready to write the necessary letter. A letter that would make her look an incompetent woman.
Rage, an emotion she’d known full well since she’d been a little girl, threatened to break free of its carefully built prison. That rage howled for blood and punishment at her humiliation.
She smoothed her fingers over the parchment, ensuring there were no wrinkles in its surface. Feeling the thickness of it soothed her for a moment, gave her purpose. She was going to hurt Eva Carin for this. She was going to make Eva pay in blood and flesh and terror for disturbing her carefully constructed world. And then she’d deal with the bastard who’d stolen her away. Perhaps there was a room here in the asylum she could find for him, until a hole could be dug out back with all the other holes that had been dug over the years.
It was a fantasy, of course.
Viscount Blake couldn’t be killed so easily. But Eva could. Her destruction was surely the best way to pay back the high-and-mighty lord who had so played her for the fool.
But first, she had to write the letter.
She jerked her hands back from the parchment and eyed the quill as if it were a mortal enemy.
It was almost impossible for her to admit, but she had made a mistake. A significant one, which was even moreinfuriating because she did not make mistakes. She was an impassable gate through which lies could not slip.
Lord, she should be, for she was a prodigious liar herself. A creator of ephemeral and delicately spun half-truths to ease the minds of her clients who, though brutal, longed to believe they weren’t quite as inhuman as they indeed were.
Monsters, the lot of them. Men who ruined the lives of their women. But she had got the better of them. Finding a place of power over even the most powerful. Yes. She was untouchable. Or at least she had been, until the man who had come to collect Lady Eva Carin had sneaked under her gate. His lies had seemed like perfect truths to her well-trained ears, and now . . .
She ground her teeth down, her gaze blurring.
One hundred guineas seemed an insubstantial sum in the wake that had been left behind Eva Carin’s abduction.
Her very safety was threatened. The asylum was threatened. And she had not outlived her own brutal husband to be destroyed now by a laudanum-addled woman and her brave, but no doubt hypocritical, white knight.
There was nothing for it but to let loose her dogs. She shoved the blank parchment aside, not yet ready to set pen to paper and write Lord Carin that his ward was missing. Oh, no. Mrs. Palmer rose, heading for the door. That was something she could not yet confess.
There were other avenues she could first pursue, crueler, more permanent avenues, before she
Duty was a hard master.
And this promise made on a deathbed was even harder.
“Send in Hamilton and Thomas,” Lord Carin said on a sigh.
Eva rose, her skirts rustling. She left without a backward glance for Ian or for Lord Carin, but given the straightness of her spine, Ian knew, her heart wept for what she was losing: her father figure and her independence.
Ian stood for one long moment in the room, suddenly feeling as if his childhood was racing away from him, that all the days of summer were fast slipping away and that a very cold winter was about to sweep him up. But like Eva, he knew his duty and his duty he would obey.
England
The present
Mrs. Palmer stared down at the blank sheet of cream-colored parchment sitting next to a letter from Lord Thomas Carin warning her about the arrival of a cousinwho would insist on seeing Eva. The letter explicitly stated she was not to permit such a visit.
The foul note tainted her usually meticulous world.
She’d been outthought—outmaneuvered—by a bastard of a man who had led her a merry dance. She drew in a sharp breath, desperate not to let her calculations fall to baser emotion, emotion that would cloud her vengeance.
Her fingers inched toward the quill, half ready to write the necessary letter. A letter that would make her look an incompetent woman.
Rage, an emotion she’d known full well since she’d been a little girl, threatened to break free of its carefully built prison. That rage howled for blood and punishment at her humiliation.
She smoothed her fingers over the parchment, ensuring there were no wrinkles in its surface. Feeling the thickness of it soothed her for a moment, gave her purpose. She was going to hurt Eva Carin for this. She was going to make Eva pay in blood and flesh and terror for disturbing her carefully constructed world. And then she’d deal with the bastard who’d stolen her away. Perhaps there was a room here in the asylum she could find for him, until a hole could be dug out back with all the other holes that had been dug over the years.
It was a fantasy, of course.
Viscount Blake couldn’t be killed so easily. But Eva could. Her destruction was surely the best way to pay back the high-and-mighty lord who had so played her for the fool.
But first, she had to write the letter.
She jerked her hands back from the parchment and eyed the quill as if it were a mortal enemy.
It was almost impossible for her to admit, but she had made a mistake. A significant one, which was even moreinfuriating because she did not make mistakes. She was an impassable gate through which lies could not slip.
Lord, she should be, for she was a prodigious liar herself. A creator of ephemeral and delicately spun half-truths to ease the minds of her clients who, though brutal, longed to believe they weren’t quite as inhuman as they indeed were.
Monsters, the lot of them. Men who ruined the lives of their women. But she had got the better of them. Finding a place of power over even the most powerful. Yes. She was untouchable. Or at least she had been, until the man who had come to collect Lady Eva Carin had sneaked under her gate. His lies had seemed like perfect truths to her well-trained ears, and now . . .
She ground her teeth down, her gaze blurring.
One hundred guineas seemed an insubstantial sum in the wake that had been left behind Eva Carin’s abduction.
Her very safety was threatened. The asylum was threatened. And she had not outlived her own brutal husband to be destroyed now by a laudanum-addled woman and her brave, but no doubt hypocritical, white knight.
There was nothing for it but to let loose her dogs. She shoved the blank parchment aside, not yet ready to set pen to paper and write Lord Carin that his ward was missing. Oh, no. Mrs. Palmer rose, heading for the door. That was something she could not yet confess.
There were other avenues she could first pursue, crueler, more permanent avenues, before she
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