The violence of it—the gleeful hatred—made him want to retch.
He was glad Sera had not come. He would hate to see her watching this. The last of his anger melted, replaced by a fierce desire to go to her.
“It’s getting late,” he told the children. “Let’s buy pasties and take them back to the carriage so we can be home in time to see the fireworks.”
“No!” Addie protested. “I want to see the end of the procession.”
But he did not want his children to connect the flaming woman being beaten to the approving profane hisses of the crowd with the lady who had been a friend to them.
It took an age to procure food and find the carriage and by the time they did the pasties had gone cold and the children were crabbish at being made to leave. When they reached his house, he helped Marianne and the children down but did not go inside.
“I’m going with Tompkins to Miss Arden’s to check in on her,” he told Marianne. “Let them watch the fireworks.”
Tompkins did not look pleased to hear this. “Sir, I’m not sure Miss Arden would welcome company tonight. She’s likely asleep.”
“If she is, I won’t disturb her.”
They traveled the short distance up the road in silence. Finally Tompkins spoke. “Mr. Anderson, Miss Arden won’t like me saying this, but she isn’t ill. She sometimes has . . . spells of turbulent emotion. She’s wont to drink more than she ought. I don’t think she would wish for you to see her when she’s in that state.”
“Too late,” he said, his gaze fixed on the silhouette of a tall woman who stood far too close to the precipice of the cliff, her hair whipping in the howling wind.
“Hell,” Tompkins muttered.
He thumped on the carriage roof to signal to the driver to stop.
“You take the carriage home,” he told Tompkins. “I’ll bring her inside.”
He called Seraphina’s name as he stepped out into the night.
She looked up at him but did not wave or smile. She merely turned her head back to the horizon and listlessly lifted a bottle of wine straight to her lips, like some bawd from a Hogarth etching.
The closer he came, the more he could see she was not herself.
“Sera,” he called. “Step back from there.”
“Don’t be a bother,” she slurred.
He reached out and took the bottle from her. She reached after it unsteadily, making some incomprehensible sound of protest. It was nearly empty. Had she drunk a liter of wine herself?
He moved it out of her reach and pulled her forward. She shrugged him off and sat down on the rocky ground. He sat down beside her, using his body as a barrier between her and more of the alcohol she had clearly had too much of.
She reached across him to grab the bottle. “Go away.”
“Sera, love, why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Drinking yourself ill. Alone.”
She made a sound of derision. “Go.”
“It’s not safe for you to be out here like this. Let me take you home, at least.”
She stood up angrily, but she was unsteady getting to her feet and stumbled backward, closer to the ledge. In the distance, the fireworks began, booming like an eruption of artillery. The fire in the sky flashed in Sera’s eyes, making her look possessed. He grabbed her and pulled her toward him.
“Stop it,” she said angrily. “Leave me be.”
“Seraphina, you are going to hurt yourself.” He pulled her to more solid ground. Perhaps with too much vigor, for she nearly fell on top of him.
“If you’re going to be rough with me, at least make it enjoyable.” She ran her hand down his shirtfront with a leer.
He drew a breath. This was how his father had behaved to his mother when Adam had witnessed his visits as a boy. Defiant and lecherous and grasping, breathing clouds of boozy air.
The stinking sour smell of wine on her was enough to make him sick. The sky crackled with gunpowder. He felt like he was in Hell.
“Let’s get you to bed,” he said.
She reached for him. “Only if you’ll join me there.”
“Not tonight,” he said, dodging her. “You need to sleep.”
Her hands went for his shoulders. He edged away, but she clutched him closer, fumbling at his neckcloth.
He grabbed her wrists more tightly to get her attention. “No, Sera.”
She stopped trying to kiss him and inhaled with a sharp breath. “Yes. Hurt me, just like that.”
He dropped her wrists, feeling scalded.
“Don’t stop,” she rasped. “Throw me on the ground and fuck me.”
She stood with her hip cocked out, arms crossed. He could tell she was not trying to seduce him so much as to shock him into leaving her alone.
He wanted to.
His every impulse was to abandon her to her drunken tantrum.
But he could not stand to leave her to take her chances with the cliff’s edge. He put his arm around her back and began marching toward her house. “Come inside. You will regret this in the morning. The sooner you sleep, the sooner you can get started.”
“Don’t you dare insult me,” she hissed.
He turned around. “Insult you? What have I said that isn’t true? You disappointed my children after making a promise, and here I find you are not ill but bloody soused.”
She narrowed her eyes into slits. “Oh, maybe if I had a child, I’d understand? This again?”
“That is not what I mean. I know you have not had an easy life, Sera, but I have seen what becomes of people who would rather drink their unhappiness away than face it, and I assure you it is not a pleasant end.”
“What do you know of my unhappiness?” she whispered. “You know nothing. Nothing.”
Not for lack of bloody trying. How many times had he asked about her past, only to be given dismissive answers about a tragic tale? She did not want a confidant. She wanted a witness to her self-destruction.
He was tired of playing the part.
“I have known plenty of my own unhappiness without needing to borrow yours,” he said.
She stuck out her lower lip, petulant like a child. “You’re nice, I thought. Be nice to me.”
He’d done that. It hadn’t taken.
He tried to keep his tone gentle. “The nicest thing that I can give you right now is honesty. I admire you, Seraphina. But seeing you in this state is hard to bear.”
“Then leave,” she said.
She staggered past him and marched back toward the precipice. She plucked her abandoned wine bottle off a rock and brought it to her lips, imbibing with all the elegance of a sack-sopped seaman. She marched back toward him but tripped on a rock and fell down, landing on her elbow with a foot dangling off the cliff.
He heard gravel falling down and crashing on the rocks below. Panic, pure and feral, sent him running.
“My God, stop it,” he shouted. He slung his arm heavily around her waist, dragging her up six paces away from the precipice. “Do you wish to fall to your bloody death?” he screamed.
She muttered something that sounded like “what business is it of yours?”
“That’s it. Come with me up to your house or I will carry you.”
She wrenched away from him and stalked off up the hill to the path, but was so unsteady she fell forward to her knees, yelping in outrage.