* * *
Lizzie didn’t weep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him with his whore. As the carriage jolted through the night, she saw his betraying body doing the devil’s work with that disgusting woman, over and over again.
Damn him to everlasting hellfire!
Lizzie was an hour into her journey before she remembered she had left Gladys at Quorr House with all her clothes.
The thin costume she wore made her glad of the carriage rugs stored under the seats. She could not show herself at an inn. “Stop the horses,” Lizzie rapped on the roof. “I need to get out.”
The night was cool and still, moonlight illuminated the road. Her outriders gathered around the coach.
Lizzie marched down the road away from protection, back the way they had come. Around a bend in the road she halted to draw a shaky breath.
Not a sign of him. Silent darkness surrounded her.
An owl hooted nearby, startling her. The hedgerow rustled. Lizzie walked on, away from the old berline, away from safety.
He was not coming after her. He didn’t care. He must have known she’d seen him, surely he’d heard her gasp of horror. If he had missed that, surely he’d felt her burn his bottom.
Half a sob escaped her. He didn’t care. Not at all.
Lizzie pulled her love, her heart, all her emotions out of her breast. She tossed them to the ground and trampled on them. She ground her very soul into the earth beneath her feet and cried out, “Damn Dacey Felmont to hellfire for eternity!”
She was never going to weep for him again! Dignified restraint for the rest of her life. She turned and walked back to her carriage.
They stopped at dawn to rest the horses and for breakfast. The trouble with servants was they always needed to be fed at regular intervals, even when her heart was dead.
It was during a lengthy stop at noon, not far from Felmont’s Folly, that Gladys arrived in the landau, trailed by the other coaches laden with all their baggage. She climbed into Lizzie’s carriage with a bag of necessities and a reproach on her lips, but Lizzie silenced her by sobbing in her arms. All the toe crunching in the world could not stop the flood.
“There, there, Lizzie, my dear. Don’t weep so. Whatever happened?” Gladys rocked her as she had when Lizzie had wept her childhood sorrows. “His lordship was in a right taking when you disappeared. Went racing off after you, but if he’d asked me, which he didn’t, because he surely thought I was with you, then I’d have told him you’d go back to Felmont’s Folly. No use haring off to London in search of you. Mind you, better to let him cool down before he finds you. There’s no knowing what he’ll do.”
The Beast had not whored enough at Quorr House? Now he had gone to London to play the devil with her money. To slake his thirst for wicked, diseased women.
She was free at last! He had not bothered to come after her—he’d gone to London to whore anew. Or was it Molly? Had it been Molly all along, brought secretly to Quorr House to whore with him. The Thwaites had dark brown hair. In that gloomy bedroom, Lizzie could not be sure of the hair color but those shoes were too fragile and high to belong to Molly.
Lizzie wiped her eyes with the handkerchief Gladys offered.
Freedom.
The Beast could not stop her from leaving him. What a foul joke! He didn’t care! He did not love her! All those caresses were what men did to whores as well as wives. They meant nothing!
Nothing!
A skillful lover could make a woman love him against her will, against her better judgment, against all reason.
The body was a trap. Sink to the level of acknowledging the body with its loathsome needs and yearnings, its hungers—and all sanity was lost.
Betrayed by the Beast in the bed they were going to share! Even every midnight was not enough for him. Even her promise to let him sate all his urges with her, meant nothing to him. A guilty twinge shook her. Had she done all he wished? Or had he not asked her to do those wicked things all Felmont’s relished?
Now she’d never have the chance to refuse to do them for him.
Tears flowed anew.
How could he have wanted another woman, unless all his words and actions were lies. What had her stepfather said? Excite a woman, pleasure her until she is as eager to please her lover as a bitch in heat. Lizzie had missed his next revelation by humming while counting backwards from a thousand.
Maybe she should have listened, maybe her stepfather would have let slip how to make a man sated and happy. Not that she’d have the chance to do it now. No, she’d never make love again.
Never!
Love was nothing but a vile trap.
The Beast had caught her with his lure of bodily pleasure. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned her he meant to do it. You’ll have to fall in love with me.
Fall in lust, he meant.
How many women had given themselves up to lust thinking it meant love? Love had nothing to do with lust. Lust made fools of women and Lizzie was never going to lust again.
Women died from it. If she had not caught him in the act, she might have become diseased when the Beast had recovered enough from his exertions to ravish her. When boredom drove him to make her play the whore for him. To entrap her into loving him, into making her the wife he wanted. A willing, wanton woman.
A surge of jealousy rose like bile from her stomach. Was that eager female an old lover of his or a new one? Was she his ideal woman? The one he might have married, if Lizzie’s Tempest uncles had not made her pay dearly for repairing Felmont’s Folly?
They had made the Beast pay dearly, she had to admit it. Now she knew what love was, she knew why he wanted to marry a woman who loved him. A woman he could love. A woman who welcomed his sinful debauching attentions, one who sighed for him and moaned for more.
Not that she had not done that on occasion, entirely by accident. If she had done it more, would he have strayed? Or having enslaved her to wicked folly, would he have cast her aside for more erotic pleasures, for more bountiful bodies? She had not seen that horrid woman’s breasts but Lizzie was sure they were larger than hers.
When the tears stopped, a familiar mantle of numbness surrounded her. Forever more, she’d welcome it. Calm dignity. The only way to live.
Unless she trapped him. Not by love. She was no fool, he’d never love her. She didn’t want his love! But what if she captured him and held him prisoner, in chains?
Lizzie clenched her fists. She’d tell everyone he’d gone mad.
He was a Felmont, everyone expected them to go insane from syphilis. It wasn’t really a lie—left to his own devices he’d go insane anyway. She’d spare him the trouble of whoring himself to death. He’d live much longer if she ruled him.
Chains, light ones, no use making him uncomfortable. He’d soon get used to wearing them.
A Scottish castle. If she rented an old castle with lots of places to chain a man, then all she’d need would be a way to lure him to her.
Easy! She simply had to send him a message telling him she was carrying his child. He’d never know it was a lie. It might even be true. Once in her power ... Lizzie gave an hysterical laugh. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the funds to do it.