Satisfying The Duke & Her Debts (Strong Women Find True Love 1)

"Am I interrupting your meeting?" Lady Duskwood asked, holding back a storm of emotions; some threatened to force sobs out of her reddened, tired eyes, while others drove the want in her to ball up a fist and strike Ellery square in his cheek. Her gaze met the frozen eyes on Lady Maryweather's face; she could sense nothing in those eyes, no emotion; no life. Only a faint undercurrent of barely-tangible contempt.

Perhaps this is what Ellery had meant, all those times he said he could read Isobel - just by her eyes.

"L-Lady Duskwood, I'm—I'm certainly glad—I pray you enjoyed your time in the garden, with Lilian?" Lord Brighton asked. Isobel glanced over one shoulder to see the scrappy maid had followed her out into the sunbathed foyer. Ellery stared through the two women, hoping they'd play along with the charade - ironically, they had become a lie all their own, one even Lord Brighton felt bound by. Isobel realized she, herself, had been a lie - perhaps Lord Brighton was not so free as he wished to portray himself as.

"...Yes," Isobel responded, broken, eyes watching the sun dance along the silvered dishware displayed proudly in a cabinet far off. It lay dusty, some pieces glinting with disrepair, just as she felt inside her. "It was a... a pleasant. Time."

"Certainly," Lilian responded; Isobel could hear the disappointment in the maid's voice clearly, the situation only stinging harder with the revelation.

"I wasn't aware you were visiting, Lady Duskwood," Lady Maryweather's soft and doting tone disguised the contempt Isobel knew laid just beneath the veneer of respectability. Just like the Duke of Thrushmore, Lady Duskwood knew that Lady Maryweather planned to take the Lord Brighton, no matter what - and all other words, nice or otherwise, shared in the interim were simply parts of her ploy.

"Only briefly," Lady Duskwood murmured. Footsteps broke a tense stare between the two women; Isobel hadn't even seen the damn specter, but he had been looming by the front doors of the manor the entire time; the carriage driver, Arthur, a wisp of a man with a tall and wide-brimmed black hat, ragged blonde hair, skin mired in age and that gaze that felt like something that Lady Duskwood would almost describe as truly evil. It made perfect sense, then, that he worked as a loyal chauffeur to the Lady Maryweather.

"M'lady, ought we take this opportunity to leave?" Arthur's voice, like his employer's, tried to be friendly, socially conscious; but he couldn't hide the snakelike slither in every unsettling word. "By midday those Merry Bandits will most certainly be on the search for a carriage just like our particular one, I'll wager." Lady Maryweather's empty eyes shifted back to Isobel, and for a moment Isobel felt an intense, almost otherworldly pressure on her; she couldn't help but look away, as if she feared the devil himself would emerge from the perfectly-pedicured widow and drag Isobel down into the fiery depths of a burning pit.

"Certainly, you know best, Mr. Ellsworth," Lady Maryweather answered, pointedly rising to her feet and, silently and with ghostly poise, she took Arthur's hand and followed his lead through the foyer, offering to Lady Duskwood a polite little wave and a girlish smile. Tension burned thick as they exchanged glances, the haughty widow staring down the young heiress from the moment she stood until the second her eyes left view. Isobel dared not glance upon the glare, nor the piggish, disgusting grin of Arthur Ellsworth as he accompanied his mistress through the door. Only when the doors slammed shut and sunlight ceased beaming through the threshold did Isobel finally release her breath. She felt Lord Brighton already rushing to her side, no doubt to try to explain himself. He'd find her scarcely interested in any explanation he had to offer, her arms held tight to her chest. Lilian put her hand upon the Lady's shoulder to support her, and Isobel's resolve only strengthened.

"That chauffeur of hers. I can't stand to look into his eyes - it's like staring into a black hole. He gives me a mighty shiver," Lord Brighton laughed, though he found no consolation in Lady Duskwood, who turned away from him to see Lilian glaring angrily at her master.

"Lilian, leave us, please," Lord Brighton said with a sigh; Lilian stood firm, watching Isobel instead, whose eyes began to redden and well weakly with tears.

"I'm here to try to help Lady Duskwood," Lilian said, defiant.

"And I am your master. I employ you, and you will listen and do as you're told," Lord Brighton said icily, in a manner Isobel had never heard; a manner that shook her hard. Surprised, Lilian cleared her throat and gave Isobel a squeeze on the shoulder - and Lord Brighton a brief glare - before shuffling back through the door from which she'd come, shutting the hall up behind her.

"I hate that I feel this way, and I should have known better than to be a foolish child," Isobel said, sniffling, a small stream of tears in her eyes. "It wasn't your mistake. It was mine - to believe that... whatever this is, meant anything more to you, than a simple arrangement of flesh."

"Did it ever mean anything more to you, than a way to get out of your father's debts? Have you listened to any of what I've said - or are you simply bearing this?" Lord Brighton pressed her, anger welling in his own voice.

"I know that you've told me, over and over again, how the entire world is full of liars - our world, particularly. You presented yourself as a man free of the chains, but that?" Isobel gestured angrily towards the door. "It seems you're as much a prisoner as anyone. Not the affable, free spirit you try to pretend to be. You're a liar, m'lord. A liar."

"What do you expect of me? The Lady Maryweather is a viper - she'll pounce on any weakness she sees, and she'll pursue me until the day she marries me, or kills me and takes my estate in some manner of entangled court battle," Lord Brighton huffed. "It's a charade I need to maintain, until the spider find another gnat to tie into its web."

"A charade? A charade, you say? One of those charades you are, so proud, to hold yourself as being above?" Isobel snarled. "What other charades have you been living? This charade - with me? A charade for my body?"

"I did not make this problem," Lord Brighton roared. "Your jealousy is unbecoming of a proper lady."

"I was a sinner not but a few nights ago. Now I'm a proper lady again?" Lady Duskwood contested hotly. "What is this? A game? Do you hope to prove, perhaps only to yourself, that you can corrupt a noblewoman with not but your roguish charm? Is that what this means to you?"

"You'll never understand a woman like that," Lord Brighton said coldly.

"I understand that she's chained you, just the same as you claim the world chains me," Isobel seethed.

"Perhaps you're right. But we do what we must in life," he concluded resolutely, turning in anger to the stairs and storming out of the foyer. Tears welled in Isobel's eyes, uncertainty heavy in her eyes. She fled; she fled the room, the stinging memories; she fled pleasure and she fled pain, back to that damnable broom closet; anywhere but here, for her to sob.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Silence. Pained, deafening silence. Aside from the sound of her own sobs, and Lilian's occasional knocks on the door to try to bring her tea, or speak in comforting tones to her, Isobel had known nothing but lengthy and empty silences since the argument with Lord Brighton yesterday morning. What hurt most, perhaps, was an entire night alone - without Lord Brighton even trying to fetch her. It stung, and even as the bruise on her neck began to heal, it hurt more than ever - and not a good hurt, not the sort of hurt that burned memories into her skin and made her adrenaline flow hot and lusty. No, the sort of dull ache; a foreboding that made her fear if she would ever know happiness again, or if this jealousy and the lies had poisoned her too thoroughly.

Now, she sat in silence once more - at one end of a monolithic dining hall, a long time separating her from Lord Brighton, who sat at the opposite head of the table, sipping at a bowl of soup before him, eyes watching lackadaisically as Lady Duskwood arrived and took her seat. Werner had marched into the scullery and banged on the door to Isobel's diminutive closet to fetch the lady; he had barked at her orders and requests, each one making her progressively more uncomfortable. She couldn't stand that strict old man, or the uncouth nature of him; she began to think perhaps his manner had inspired the crude nature of the young Lord Brighton. She waited silent, her eyes rolling along the windows, until a servant silently placed a bowl of the soup - vegetables roasted in stock and herbs de provence, one of her favorites - before the lady. She regarded it cautiously; she glanced at Lord Brighton, but did so only in passing, their eyes never meeting. It felt like she had to follow his bedroom rules, here - no looking, without his permission.

Except denial here was of her own accord - and meant loneliness and pain, instead of a warm touch or a surge of pleasure along her arching back.

She took the spoon and sipped at the soup; quiet, demure. Never a slurp or an improper sound; she was a perfect image of the proper lady, just like he had said. She glanced into the bowl of swirling liquid, steam rising up from its surface, its color a faint shade of yellow-orange, flecks of spices dancing around in circles. She couldn't take this sensation, and stole another brief glance at the man on the other end of the table - who, to her silently furious chagrin, was not even looking at her! Instead, he watched the sunset out the tall dining hall windows, the panes of glass stained faint shades of orange and red, enhancing the natural glow of the falling sun. Sconces, wicks coated in oil, burned a homey glow along the opposite wall, but a darkness nevertheless encroached. She might even call it a romantic, dimly-lit darkness, if even a single flair of romance remained at the table. Instead she looked away, ignoring that gorgeous face, now belonging to a man she could feel little for save scorn.

The silence truly pained her; she had heard nothing but her own faint sobs and the sizzle of her memories for an entire day and more; only Lilian's muffled voice had been there to comfort the lady. A nightmare visit

ed her that night, and her lack of sleep had left her eyes darkened and exhausted; she wore only her worn-in nightgown and shawl to dinner, looking positively underdressed compared to the Lord's always-present, slick sense for modern fashions. She looked away, for a long time, until something drew her eyes to the other side of the table - a metallic clicking and clacking, persistent until it became distracting. She watched him, raising a brow in confusion as he scraped wildly at the bowl with his silverware, to scoop up every last bit of his soup that he could. When he noticed Lady Duskwood watching him he stopped, before smiling churlishly and shrugging his shoulders.