Chapter Fifteen
OUT OF SIGHT, OUT of mind. How Brooke wished that were true! But Dominic Wolfe had used a single word that had eased some of her rage before she got to her room. If. He’d said, If this marriage occurs . . . Was there still a possibility that he might do something to keep it from happening?
She found Alfreda collapsed in one of the reading chairs. The maid looked tired. She wasn’t any more used to nasty confrontations such as that than Brooke was.
Collapsing on the bed herself, leaving her lower legs to dangle over the side, she said, “He’s intolerable. We need to consider other options.”
“I wasn’t expecting him to be so handsome,” Alfreda remarked.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Well, it does sort of make him tolerable, I would think, at least in your eyes.”
Brooke snorted.
“Or not. But we don’t know what he is really like yet. A man in pain is never at his best.”
Brooke was good at reading people, but the only thing she got out of the wolf was that he was despicable. “He’s not going to have a ‘best.’ ”
“Then you should wait to make sure of that. And what other options have we?”
Brooke was precariously close to tears. “I don’t know! There must be something—other than poisoning him as my brother wants me to do.”
“If we leave here, we won’t be able to go home.”
“I know.”
“They will just drag you back here.”
“I know!” And probably beat her, too. She wasn’t old enough for her “no” to matter at the altar if her parents were saying “yes.”
A long moment passed before Alfreda said determinedly, “Then we go somewhere else.”
Brooke latched on to that kernel of hope. “I speak fluent French.”
“We are at war with those people. We can’t go there. They’ll think we are spies and hang us.”
“Scotland isn’t far from here.”
“Exactly—it’s too close. We’d be found easily there.”
“We can catch a ship then. The coast can’t be too far from here.”
“A day or two, but did your mother give you enough money for a long voyage? And to survive wherever we end up long enough to figure out how to earn more money to live on?”
Brooke figured she had enough for passage, maybe, but not enough to survive on for long. The tears got closer.
But then Alfreda added, “Or we can sneak back to Leicestershire and fetch my money from the forest.”
Brooke let out a near-hysterical laugh. “You buried it?”
“Of course I did. I suspected we might not stay here. And even if we did, I suspected you might want to escape every so often and could use the excuse of visiting your parents to do so. In any case, I assumed we would return to Leicestershire at some point. But you realize, no matter where we go, we still might be found. Your parents have too much to lose. They will send an army of lackeys after you.”
“But it will be too late. The Regent will have taken what he will take.”
Alfreda raised a brow. “Do you really want to do that to them? To your mother?”
“She doesn’t care about me,” Brooke insisted. “Why should I care about her?”
“Because you do. And because she does. I know you don’t like to hear it, poppet, but she does. I don’t know why she’s chosen to hide it, but she must have good reason. Did you never consider it might be because of your father? When a man decides something has no value, everyone around him must agree with him or risk punishment.”
Brooke shook her head, unconvinced. The times Harriet had acted like a real mother were too few. Although she’d gotten quite involved in preparing for Brooke’s Season in London, almost as if she were looking forward to it more than Brooke, none of that made up for the years of neglect, never giving her a hug, never telling her “I love you.” Brooke couldn’t even eat dinner with her parents! But Robert certainly did. Still, Alfreda was right. She couldn’t do that to her mother. It would break her own heart.
Out of options, she sighed dismally. “I’ll move up to that tower room so I will be reminded every moment I’m in it that it’s where my future husband wanted me to be.”
Alfreda tsked. “We don’t pout.”
“You don’t. I might find it refreshing.”
“Pouting hurts you more’n it hurts anyone else. We don’t pout. But you can make him love you.”
Brooke sat up. Her mother had said the same thing. Make him love you, precious. Make him fall deeply in love and you will have a good life with him.
“You suggested a pretend marriage earlier,” Brooke reminded Alfreda. “Love wouldn’t be a part of that.”
Alfreda shrugged. “You need to reach common ground with him so he stops pushing you away. He might find an arrangement or a bargain acceptable, and that might get you a truce. Then you can move in for the kill.”
Brooke burst out laughing. “I wouldn’t exactly call enticing him to love me moving in for the kill.”
“It’s his animosity you’ll be killing. Anything is possible after that.”
This interesting thought was a much more palatable option. She might indeed get the wolf to bargain with her if she convinced him she wasn’t going to leave no matter what. She just needed to figure out a bargain that would benefit him. It would be a way to become friends with him. Like before love. Friends before lovers. It would give her time to endear herself to him, time to get into his thoughts and then his heart. It would certainly be a challenge, probably the biggest of her life, but if she set her mind to it . . .
But one obstacle she might not be able to surmount. What if she couldn’t get past her dislike of him? Yet she was adept at hiding her feelings . . . well, she was before she came here! But she could get that under control. So as long as he didn’t guess that she didn’t like him. . . .