Twenty-two

No sooner had she bared herself to Lord Bowles, giving him the chance to escape their arrangement, when the cottage door opened.

“Riders coming. Two of them,” Mr. Beckworth bellowed from belowstairs.

“I’m on my way,” Marcus yelled and grabbed her shoulders.

She jolted at his hot, hazel-eyed scrutiny. Stern and unshaven, the master of Pallinsburn was positively hawkish.

“Do you want to go with him?”

“No, but—”

“Then it’s settled. You’re staying with me.”

Lord Bowles bolted from the room and she followed, colliding into him when he stopped short. Her leg bumped the pistol butt sticking out from his boot.

He steadied her from falling. “Keep to the cottage.”

His tone brooked no argument, but of course she would anyway.

“Don’t you think it’d be helpful if I were with you?”

“No,” he barked, descending the stairs. “Unpack your things. You’re not going anywhere.”

Skirts clutched high, she scurried after him. “But Reinhard might listen to reason—”

“You mean Herr Wolf? Do me the courtesy of addressing him less intimately.” He whipped on his redingote. “Remember. I am your husband.”

For a little while…

Settling his hat on his head, Lord Bowles filled the doorway. His broad shoulders would carry the burdens of another woman someday. Not hers.

She shivered at the fierceness in his eyes. “You’re right.”

“Marcus,” Mr. Beckworth called from the yard. “Now.”

With a curt nod, Lord Bowles shut the door. His sternness could be born of danger. Or was it something else? Was Lord Bowles jealous of Reinhard?

Genevieve hugged herself, trying to quell a dull ache. Having Marcus champion her was a luxury, one she wasn’t used to having. Nor had he liked it when she’d tried to warn him about Reinhard. She’d read the hardness in his eyes: he thought she believed he couldn’t protect her from the Wolf.

In the dim entry, part of her feared it to be true.

Outside conversations muffled with the ebb and flow of masculine voices booming louder. She cracked the door. Herr Wolf sat tall on a dark horse, while Herr Thade sat in a cart meant to take her and her few possessions away. In the yard, Lord Bowles’s and Mr. Beckworth’s heads bent in a conspirators’ conversation. Her old master and Herr Thade exchanged quick, speaking looks before both men dismounted. Herr Wolf’s coat flapped open, and a silver-trimmed pistol butt shined against his black waistcoat.

When she pressed her ear to the opening, the murmured voices drove her to distraction. They were too far away to hear. She eyed her red cloak. It’d be conspicuous to walk out the front door. Wrapping herself in the wool, she raced to her room. Her window hadn’t been opened in years, but wrenching with all her might, she jammed the side sash open. Crows pecked at the dead garden. She climbed through the opening and tumbled onto the straw mulch below.

On tiptoe, she skimmed the cottage wall. Deep male voices rumbled. Footsteps crunched the graveled path as if heading to the garden. Herr Wolf and Lord Bowles walked toward her.

Heart pounding, she ducked back against the cottage and flattened herself to the wall. Cold sandstone bit her cheek. A flock of shiny-eyed crows gathered near her, cawing and flapping their wings. She glanced at her open window, but male voices carried as the footfalls ceased.

“I offer her a new life.” Herr Wolf. His German accent was as bold as his arrogance.

“A new life she doesn’t want.”

“And what are you giving her, Englisch?”

She peeked around the corner. The Prussian’s arms were spread wide as he jeered at the modest rustic setting. Both men stood by an apple tree, a flock of crows hunched on its winter-bare branches. The Wolf was taller than Lord Bowles. Queue neatly clubbed, Herr Wolf was clean-shaven, his black boots freshly polished.

Her new husband, by contrast, sported rough whiskers, unruly hair, and a slouching cravat. But he pointed a fine pistol at his opponent’s chest.

“I think she fancies all this. Tells me she wants to stay.”

“As your wife,” the Prussian scoffed.

“You saw the marriage license. Everything’s quite legal.”

Herr Wolf’s jaw muscle ticked. A pair of birds pecked at the ground near her feet, battling over a sparkly object in the gravel.

“I saved her from a life of hard labor. From the—what is it you say?—the decay of her old life.”

Unfriendly laughter shot from Lord Bowles. “By introducing her to the decay of a new life in Prussia?”

“I would treat her well.”

“And use her,” Lord Bowles ground out.

The giant Prussian shrugged. “For a time. She’ll live well. I’ll see to it.”

“You see, that’s the problem. Genevieve doesn’t want what you’re offering. When you treat a woman like a whore, buying and selling her as you did, it doesn’t matter how fine a cage you put her in… It’s still a cage.”

She flinched. There were no surprises about where she came from, but to hear it said aloud hurt. Even worse, she’d yielded to Herr Wolf in the basest way.

Silver glinted from the Prussian’s round hatpin. He was a handsome man. Strong and well muscled. Why couldn’t she give in? Life would be far better than what she had known at the Golden Goose. She could secure funds to live richer than she’d ever imagined.

Yet the stain of that choice would never go away.

She shut her eyes, resting her forehead on the wall. Northern winds whispered in the trees, carrying her mother’s dying wish.

“Don’t end up like me,” her mother rasped, straining to lift her bald head off the pillow. “Find a man. Get married.”

Opening her eyes, Genevieve looked to the heavens. Her mother never told her to seek true love. Because she hadn’t believed it existed. Anne Turner had died, never knowing the gift of one man’s stalwart love and devotion.

Did it truly exist?

The cottage stone nicked her palms. Her fingers numbed. No gloves. Cold seeped into her as she listened to the men.

“You want Genevieve for yourself,” Herr Wolf went on.

Lord Bowles sighed as if he were the soul of patience. “Must I remind you, she’s my wife. Her name is Lady Bowles. You will address her as such.”

The Prussian snorted.

“And as marriage goes, she deserves my protection,” Marcus explained. “Need I defend her honor by calling out your overgrown ass?”

Heart thudding, Genevieve peered around the corner again. Both men puffed small clouds as they spoke in the bitterly chill day. Herr Wolf eyed the weapon pointed at his chest, cold and assessing before he laughed harshly.

“You play at being a virtuous man.”

A click filled the silence. Herr Wolf’s eyes flared wider. Lord Bowles had cocked his pistol.

Was he going to shoot the Prussian?

A breeze stirred the black redingote. With his hat pulled low, her husband’s face was hard to read. This couldn’t go on. She’d beg them to see reason. Or offer to leave again. It was the only way. Poised to make her presence known, she pushed off the wall.

“Very well, Englisch. I’ll leave.”

Polished black boots slammed the ground, and she exhaled deeply. Crows squawked, their numbers scattering as the Wolf shouted, “Herr Thade! Wir’re jetzt verlassen.”

Slumping against the cottage, Genevieve blinked at gray skies. Was it true? The Wolf would chase her no more? Voices drifted on the wind, but she couldn’t make out what was said because of the blood rushing through her ears. Carts rumbled. Hooves pounded the earth. New voices mingled in the air. A familiar feminine titter rang from the driveway. Ruby Dutton flirting with Lord Bowles, no doubt.

It was washday. How…normal.

It’d be good to lose herself in mundane work. She hurried to the open window and climbed back in, her heart racing as though she’d sprinted hard. She plopped onto her lonely bed, needing a few seconds to collect herself. The Dutton sisters’ voices echoed in the cottage. The water pump squeaked on the other side of her wall. Someone dragged the washtub across the floor. The sisters were talking, their chatter light and easy. How pleasant and secure their lives were. They had family and a home.

Icy air whipped into her room. Genevieve cupped her cheeks, unease creeping up her back. Reinhard had given up quickly with Lord Bowles. Too quickly. The window, so perfect to steal in and out of, needed closing. Locking the sash, she eyed the dark forest where the Wolf had chased her.

The chill wouldn’t go away.