“Of course I didn’t deserve it,” she said calmly.
He wanted to shout in frustration. “I sometimes wonder if for all your grand ideas you think you do. You deserve kindness, pleasure, niceness—”
She held up her palm, her face a symphony of anger. “How dare you assume you know what I think?”
“I only mean—”
“Enough. Just because you fuck a woman doesn’t mean you understand her. Go. You have outstayed your usefulness tonight.”
Outstayed my usefulness. My God.
He turned and strode to the door. “Happily.”
Chapter Seventeen
Seraphina Arden did not traffic in regrets.
Regrets were for people who lacked conviction in their actions. People with pulpy, overswollen hearts. Her heart was as sharp as Cornish shale.
So why couldn’t she sleep?
She rose from her bed to her looking glass and observed herself.
You should not have fucked a man like that, her eyes flashed at her, reproachful.
And why not? she retorted, pinning up her hair in a defiant swoop that made her even taller than she was. No calamity will come of it.
The calamity is that you hurt him, her eyes responded.
’Tis not my responsibility to protect his tender feelings, she rejoined, anchoring the swoop with pins in a way that made her scalp sting. He. Was. Warned.
The woman in the mirror was not impressed. Leave him alone.
“Of course I will leave him alone,” she said aloud. “He’ll want no more of me anyway.”
A knock sounded at her door. “Sera? Are you awake?”
It was Elinor.
She rose and opened the door. “I’m sorry, I was talking to my reflection, who is being pugnacious. Did I wake you?”
“No,” Elinor said in an unsteady voice. “I had a nightmare and I saw a light in your room.”
It was difficult to see her most redoubtable friend look so shaken. Sera reached out and drew Elinor to her breast. “Don’t fret. It will get better from here.”
Elinor looked unconvinced. “I thought I would make myself a cup of tea to soothe myself. Join me?”
Sera took her lamp and followed Elinor down the stairs to the kitchen.
“Tea will keep you up,” she said, rummaging in the cupboard. “Let’s have wine instead.”
“Darling, you cannot live on wine alone.”
“Nor can I live without it,” Sera rejoined, pouring two glasses.
Elinor accepted the wine, but with a frown. “I wish you would take care. You are looking dreadfully thin.”
The motherly concern in her tone made Sera’s throat ache. She would not accept such fuss from Thaïs or Cornelia, but Elinor brought out something softer in her.
Sera put her arms around her friend and rested her head on her shoulder. “I know. I will. It’s just that I’ve been so worried about you.”
Elinor kissed her cheek. “I’ll be all right, you know. Don’t cry.”
Sera had not realized she was crying. Oh, how childish. She wiped away the moisture from her eyes.
“We haven’t had much time to talk,” Sera said, pulling herself together. Now was not the proper time to burden her friend with her turbulent emotions. “Did you have any word from Bell at the asylum?”
“He came a week after he took me there. Offered to let me out if I promised to retract my essay and avow his claims about Jack as true. He was furious when I refused. I’ve heard nothing since.”
Seraphina considered this. “I suspect he and his cronies want Jack’s press shut down. Think it will silence the lot of us.”
“He does. But he also wants to punish me. The night we fought, before he took me, he said my loyalties are to Jack and not my family, that I’m a moral danger to our children, that I’ve ruined their chances in society with my radicalism. Usually I pat his brow and assuage him when he gets into one of his tempers but I was so angry that I couldn’t bring myself to soothe him. At which point . . .” She shuddered.
A chill went down Seraphina’s spine. “Did he hurt you?”
Elinor shook her head. “No. He would never deign to lift a hand to me. Such displays are beneath him, in his estimation. He left, and I hoped he would simply becalm himself at one of his clubs, but instead he came back with his solicitor and announced he intended to sue Jack for criminal conversation. I told them there was nothing between us besides intellectual sympathy and friendship, but of course they found the notion of my supposed intellect as suspect as Jack’s innocence. They bound my hands and carried me while I fought them, until my son heard the commotion and came upstairs. And then I walked to the carriage willingly, because I could not bear for him to see his mother as a hostage.”
Elinor released a quavering sigh.
Sera clutched her hands tightly. “Oh, E. I’m so sorry.”
“I can only think of how the children are faring. What they must think of me. What he’s told them. For my own sake I can withstand a bloody asylum but when I think of them—”
Sera took her hand. “They love you.”
Elinor just shook her head. “I can’t believe it’s come to this with Bell. We were never a great love match but I did care for him, when we married. But ever since the revolution he’s become so irascible, so suspicious and convinced the kingdom is about to topple underneath his feet. There’s no reasoning with him. And his friends—Pendrake and Carlton and the like—they only rile him further.”
“I’m so sorry, my darling,” Sera repeated. It felt silly to say it again, but what else was there to say?
Elinor shook her head. “Don’t be sorry, Sera. Use it. We must use my story, all of us. This is why the law must change. If he can do this to me, there is no hope for women with fewer friends or resources.”
Sera smiled. If she could make one promise, she could make this one: “Don’t worry, my dear. We are going to make him regret this.”
Elinor took a sip of wine. “You know, for all my anger I can’t acquit myself of the feeling that I caused this. He’s always been suspicious of my friendship with Jack and truthfully . . . while there is no affair, perhaps I am guilty of harboring more affection for him than is right of a married woman. Perhaps in my heart . . .” She shook her head.
Seraphina leaned down and kissed her friend’s temple. “If harboring affection for a gentle man when one’s husband is a tyrant is a crime, it’s the law that’s reprehensible, not the woman. You have done nothing wrong. You must not blame yourself for this.”
Elinor bit her lip. They were quiet for a moment.
“I liked your Mr. Anderson,” Elinor said. “He seems to care for you.”
Sera slumped, still feeling rather sick over the way their evening had ended. “Yes. He persists despite my attempts to disabuse him of the notion that that’s wise.”
Elinor frowned at her. “Would it truly be so bad, after all this time, to try with someone? Before you push them away?”
She kept remembering Adam’s face, looking up at her softly in the moonlight, whispering, I want to please you. She put her forehead on the table. “He has two children. A business. He couldn’t be with me, even if I wanted him.”