“Let’s take you out of that pretty dress,” Noel murmured almost to himself, moving around me to the buttons along my spine.
I kicked out with my legs but cried out when the movement nearly wrenched my shoulders out of their sockets.
“Still,” Noel ordered as he unclipped the last button and my gorgeous wedding dress fell to the ground at my toes, leaving me only in lace white bra and panties.
He hummed a merry tune as he walked away to a wall covered with impact implements. After careful consideration he chose one that was achingly familiar.
A black snake whip.
I whimpered as he moved back to stand in front of me.
“Why are you doing this? I just became your son’s wife for God’s sake,” I beseeched him.
“Such a fool to marry a nothing slave girl. At least his Italian bitch mother had money to her name. You have nothing but beauty me and that will fade, trust me, it always does.”
“He’ll find out you’ve done this,” I warned him. “He’ll kill anyone else who hurts me.”
“He won’t find out because I cut the CCTV’s. We’ll blame it on a guest.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“You won’t,” he said with a tsk. “You won’t because you won’t be here to do it. I’m going to beat you for your wicked enchanted over my pathetic first born and then you are going to run far away from Pearl Hall and never come back.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” I asked, still struggling to slip my damp wrists through the tight bounds.
There was no way out. At least not physically. If I wanted to leave, I had to manipulate Noel into letting me go.
“If you don’t leave, I’ll kill him,” Noel suggested simply.
I gaped at him, wondering how it was possible I had never seen the psychopath lurking within him show his face before.
“Why would you kill your only heir?” I demanded.
The door at the top of the stairs pushed open and Noel smiled.
“Perfect timing,” he said over the sound of two descending pair of shoes. “Because I have a spare.”
“You disowned Edward and he would never agree to step in if you murdered his brother.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right of course.” He waited a long beat, long enough for the two bodies to emerge from the shadow of the staircase and into the light.
My breath crystallized in my body, tiny shards piecing through my lungs and throat until they burned.
“Love,” Mrs. White greeted me with a shaky, but proud smile as she wrapped her hand around a boy of eight or nine and thrust him forward slightly. “I’d like you to meet our son, Rodger.”
I blinked at them, my mind working furiously to process the information.
Mrs. White’s cryptic words about making the most of a bad situation, her crying over Noel’s lap, and finally, her mention of offering the Davenport men something of value when she knew I was pregnant with Alexander’s baby.
Which meant, obviously, that it was her who had told Noel and who in turn had shown up at the Grammar ball to push me down the stairs so that I couldn’t produce an heir to rival his own.
“I’ll kill Alexander if you don’t run off like a good little mouse,” Noel sneered as he ran the whip lovingly through his hands. “Because I’m still young yet, at least young enough to train my third son in my image.”
“He’s a bastard,” I pointed out, desperate to make sense of this horrible situation. My chest burned with the ache to scream even though I knew no one would hear me. “He won’t be able to inherit.”
“Well,” he drawled as Mrs. White stepped forward to show me the simple gold band on her wedding finger. “You see that isn’t actually true. Mary and I were married nine years ago this past May, a few weeks before Rodger was born.”
The wheel turned with audible clicks and whirrs in my brain and then, I understood.
“You killed Chiara so you could marry Mrs. White and ensure you have another spare in case the first two failed you.”
“Edward was already a lost cause, too much like his mother. I had high hopes for Alexander, especially after Chiara’s death, but then you show up and well… love makes fools out of everyone.”
I shook with fury in my chains as Noel turned away from me and collect his young son, taking him to the wall so they could pick out his tool of punishment together.
They were both going to whip.
Just as Alexander had been forced by this father to whip Yana all those year ago when he was Rodger’s age.
I looked at Mrs. White. “Please, please, don’t let them do this to me. I truly thought we were friends.”
She wrung her hands and bit her lip, her eyes trained down on the floor in such an obviously engrained show of submission, I was shocked I hadn’t noticed it before.