CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tears. They're all Isobel could manage - and it felt appropriate, as she heard thunder booming over the plains, threatening the green hills and rolling trees of the lands of ducal Norbury with a fearsome storm. Aside from those explosive rumbles, she sobbed in silence, a painful silence blanketing the whole of the estate - not even the sound of Lilian cleaning silverware, or Werner barking orders, to comfort her. The occasional muffled shout would issue down the stairs, with Lord Brighton and Lady Maryweather still locked in some manner of verbal war.
It hadn't been much of a war between Lady Duskwood and the wicked Duke of Thrushmore. He had thrown her into the chair at the end of the table and barked at her; loud, wild, and possessive, he had berated her for her past transgressions against him, and for her petulant dismissal of his presence in the estate today. She sat, and she listened, and she wept; but there, she wept silently, confident that her master would escape the steely clutches of the harpy Lady Maryweather and her nebulous control over him. Instead she simply listened, and suffered, as Lord Miller battered her with verbal abuse. When it all felt close to over, she stared at the door - only to hear icy words threaten her.
"You'll think, you'll feel, you'll do precisely as I tell you, to save your own scabrous hide," he had barked into her ear; she winced, teeth gritted, hands folded into white-knuckled fists. He had savored the sensation of watching her angry, but helpless. "You'll be in debts deeper than you already are - legal debts, social debts, if your little tale of seduction goes public, the Lady Maryweather and her little 'birds' have made sure of that," he said.
"I'd rather you throw me from the top of your manor, you cur," she had snarled. He grasped her by the hair; the pain ripped through her and she struggled, which only made it worse.
"Death won't help you - or Upton, or what remains of your pitiful family name. All of them will wind up buried along with you - and so would Lord Brighton. Lady Maryweather would see to it, and with what she knows - she has plenty to punish him on your behalf. Quite brilliant, isn't it?" the filthy bastard lauded himself for his behavior.
"I'll be waiting in my carriage for you. Say your goodbyes - particularly to Miss Lilian. She's been your friend, hasn't she?" the Duke of Thrushmore marched to the door and Isobel threw herself into the couch at the foot of the stairs, rage and pain exploding in sobs and cries. Now she waited - she waited for one last chance to make all this right.
"M... m'lady, if..." Isobel heard Lilian's voice creep into her ear; perhaps the only reprieve Lady Duskwood would have, she reached - begged, for comfort.
"Oh, Lilian, what can be done?..." Isobel sobbed.
"M... m'lady, if you'll take my word, the Duke of Thrushmore... he's a crass, disagreeable man, for certain, but... well," Lilian offered, her voice a gentle warble. "Well, Lady Maryweather... she's got quite the grip on the situation... and I worry for Lord Brighton, should anything rash happen, if you take my meaning." Isobel blinked through her tears.
"Are... are you suggesting I... I surrender myself, to... to this?" Isobel asked in disbelief.
"I've not a judgmental bone in my whole body, m'lady, but... I did sense it, between you and Lord Brighton, and I did... see you, in his bedroom. Hear you, more than once," Lilian admitted. "I can't help it but see and hear what happens, m'lady, and I wanted to support you. And now, I am, by giving you advice. The scandal, it could ruin you! It may very well still ruin Lord Brighton," she whispered. "I worry for you. And I worry for him. And as dearly as it seemed you had fallen into his graces, m'lady, I—"
"Wait a moment," Isobel silenced the maidservant. She had given little thought to the duke's comment - about saying goodbye to Lilian. But slowly, a dreaded realization settled into Isobel's bones. The talk of a little bird had not truly meant anything to the young heiress until this very moment. "...What exactly are you suggesting?" Isobel needled at Lilian.
"I'm far from brilliant, I'm but a maidservant," Lilian held her hands up defensively. "But, I think, it'd be in the best interest of everyone, if—"
"You're far from brilliant perhaps," Isobel seethed, her cheeks blazing red, "but you're far more cunning than you let on. Because you're not 'but a maidservant'. You're a spy, you little viper," she hissed. "A spy!" Startled, Lilian's eyes blinked, her lips parted; she stumbled over her words.
"M-m'lady, wh... that's preposterous, of course," she stated with a shivering and unsure tone, "I could never..."
"I trusted you, Lilian. I dared not speak the truth of my relationship with Lord Brighton to you - but I still trusted you. I confided in you, I..." Isobel's lip trembled, full of rage. "Do you know what you've done?"
"What I've done?" Lilian retorted. "Don't you mean what you've done?"
"So you admit it, then?" Isobel caught her, her nightgown ruffling as she stormed towards the maidservant. Lilian shrunk, clearly disturbed to see just how freed of restraint Isobel had become in Lord Brighton's company - and how that lack of restraint had become true, burning vitriol.
"I admit n-nothing, I just—I always had the best interests, not just of you, but of the master, in my mind," Lilian's voice teetered weakly.
"The best interest? Of me, and Ellery? And certainly not of yourself, and of how many pounds and pence the Lady Maryweather is paying you, certainly not that," Isobel's voice whispered in seething accusation.
"I'll not dignify such silly thoughts with a response," Lilian rebuffed her anxiously.
"You needn't not acknowledge anything, for your words and your conduct speak louder than anything. I cannot believe I trusted so shrill a screeching harpy as you," Lady Duskwood's words burned.
"My words, and conduct? And you now are a proper lady to be waxing judgmental on words and conduct, seductress?" Lilian snarled.
"Seductress? So you must have been the one to concoct that tale, for Lady Maryweather to blackmail us with? Do you know what the Duke of Thrushmore has done to me? What he'll try to do to me, the moment we arrive at his estate?" Isobel drew close, her words like poison poured into Lilian's ear. "Do you?"
"He'll, with any luck, turn you from your scandalous ways and turn you into a proper woman!" Lilian shouted. Stricken with pain and disbelief, Lady Duskwood swung and struck the spy with her opened palm, leaving a glaring handprint on the traitorous woman's cheek. Her eyes wide, Lilian appeared ready to return the gesture, her breath like fire, before a door opening with a burst of furor behind it drew both women's distracted gazes up the stairs to the trailing sounds of a dying argument; Lord Brighton's muffled shouts issued about the hall, and Lady Maryweather's responses came quiet, confident, and utterly sardonic.
"Just leave," Lord Brighton boomed, the end of an uproarious argument as the Lady Maryweather, still looking so perfectly manicured and reflecting the sun as only an angel could, descended the stairs, each step silently graceful. As she passed Isobel and Lilian, she offered them a quaint, smiling wave - a great contrast to the rage-filled, red-cheeked expressions the two women bore. Arthur and Werner had spent all this time glaring at one another near the front door; Werner wearing his stalwart expression, tinged with minor distaste; Arthur, taunting him with quiet, wicked smiles.
"Had our fun here, have we, m'lady?" Arthur asked flippantly to his mistress, who offered him her gloved hand.
"I'm quite ready to leave this place for the moment, though we'll certainly be back," she said. As Arthur led her out of the manor, she looked past her shoulder - giving Isobel one last, stinging little smile.
"Lady Duskwood," Lord Brighton's voice rung into the rafters, "we need to speak with one another. Lilian, go about your business," he commanded from behind the railing, just out of Isobel's sight. Shock; Isobel knew that he must have divined the identity of the spy, feeding information and wild theories to Lady Maryweather, but to simply dismiss her to her duties? Lilian smirked, and Isobel moved away, hesitantly climbing the steps, broken in so many ways. She had thrown her chains off just the night before - and now society had stormed back in to shackle her up tight, forcefully, just the way she had always feared it would.
When she rose to his level and her eyes met his, her heart trembled; he looked shattered, a shell of what she knew him as, with a forlorn emptiness filling his eyes like a rolling storm. Regret creased the features of his face and he fought back a flux of pain through his core, unwilling to let their eyes meet. She rushed to him - and though all of this had happened, and though the Duke of Thrushmore waited just outside the door to steal her away to a life of suffering and hell, she clung tightly to the hopes that he could solve it and save her from her chains, just as he had freed her before.
"Ellery, they've tried to separate—"
"Lord Brighton, please, Lady Duskwood," he said coldly, preferring to watch the rain patter against the windowpanes, instead of gazing upon her pretty visage. "...Please. Let's not... complicate matters which already weigh difficult, heavy and deep on our hearts." She sensed from the gravity of his tone, thrumming deep and choked in his throat, that he had already made a decision - and that it was one she could not think to fathom.
"Lord Brighton, you certainly can't—we've escaped all this, remember? The chains - they can't hold us back," Isobel's voice fluttered weakly; she knew, in her heart, the trembling words fought for a cause lost at the cruel hands of a manipulative mistress from across the moors. "They've nothing they can use against us, Lord Brighton. We're in love, and—"
"I warned you, Lady Duskwood... about Lady Maryweather. A cunning and vicious woman, a woman I had hoped to keep on quite a short leash. But her little birds know too much. I'm doing this for your own good," Lord Brighton sighed, still unable to look at her eyes - to see the stories he so often read, deep in her irises.
"My own good?" Isobel asked, her tone painfully incredulous. "And you think I'm incapable of thinking, acting - in a manner befitting my own good? The Duke of Thrushmore—"
"Is your only way out of a life of debt, pain and scandal. While I held the power to forgive your debts, Lady Duskwood, to do so with accusations of improper conduct, seduction - and the other lies, Lady Maryweather has spread of my reputation... we'd both be ruined. I can't let that happen to you," Lord Brighton's vexed tone came through in throaty, hesitant bursts.
"You can't let that happen to me. Or to you," she dismissed him, voice full of pain. He was upon her in an instant, his face full of fire, his expression torn. She shrunk under his powerful presence, and he spoke upon her in a manner she had never felt.
"Do you think this is only about me? Do you think I have spent even a moment indulging selfishly in coming to this conclusion? Do you not think that if I could, I would use our love as a cudgel with which to bludgeon the whole of the world into submission?" Lord Brighton roared. "But it is not a cudgel. It's an arrow through the gut; a nagging injury that has made the both of us vulnerable. And the killers have moved in to strike, remorselessly."
"I thought you to be free of your chains after our last night together, Lord Brighton," Isobel spoke his title and name in disdain and bitterness.
"Your debts are to be transferred to the Duke of Thrushmore, who will see them handled," Lord Brighton said, the hurt clearly unbearable, though he tried to maintain that unfettered, unemotional image. "They're forgiven. Forget what we've done here, Isobel. It's in your own best interest," he spoke with finality, storming angrily back to his study. As he stood in the threshold, Isobel longingly lingered, as if looking upon his strong body and broken emotions in search of answers; in search of guidance. Silently he looked to her, their eyes meeting again - that one, brief, fleeting moment of contact between their glances - between their struggling souls. She could see in him hurt - regret, something she had never seen before. True, real hurt. He hadn't lied - he did love her, just as she had fallen in love with him.
"I love you," Isobel reached out to him with one, last, shaking plea. He watched her shudder, as thunder rumbled around them; a flash of lightning screeched through the windows, its bright electric-white glow illuminating the murky shadows cast across Lord Brighton's face. She resolved that that would be the last she would see of him - bright, glowing, as she had seen him. He turned from her without a word, retreating into his study; the door shut cleanly behind him, and then, only the rumble of thunder in the distance remained to comfort her.
Head hung, Isobel retreated down the stairs, shoulders slumped and misery streaked across a broken-hearted face. Tears stained her cheeks; she saw only the carpet beneath her feet as she dragged herself across the foyer. A chipper voice interrupted her stroll towards the door; dressed in a dapper white suit, with a matching white top hat, and a rose on his lapel, the sprightly, elderly man greeted Isobel graciously.
"M'lady! The Lady Duskwood, yes? The Duke of Thrushmore's carriage awaits you." He unfurled a small parasol, holding it over the lady's head. She looked at him, expression burning in stark bitterness, and simply spat at him, to which he responded with a wince - but his smile never broke. He, too, wore the same chains they all did.
Even Lord Brighton, it seemed, could never escape.