Not theirs.
Maybe not even my own.
Being his provided me with a mental shield I was desperate to hide behind. I couldn’t be responsible for my actions because Alexander was, and if he couldn’t be there, then mentally, neither was I.
I knew the moment the double doors banged open one day that Noel’s patience was at an end. The air gathered around him, sucked to the magnetic force of his fury as he prowled across the marble to my side where I lay curled on the ground with my chains looped over my arms for something to cuddle in cold comfort.
I peered up into the shadows of his face, his frame entirely backlit by the oppressive light of the spotlights encircling us. He’d never looked more sinister or more apt.
“You will get up,” he promised darkly.
My mouth was too dry to part with words, so I answered with my stillness and my silence.
“You will get up, Ruthie, because I know your hamartia is your good little heart. You can’t stand to see people suffer, can you?”
My throat clenched and rubbed like sandpaper as I swallowed hard.
“No, you can’t,” he agreed with arrogant satisfaction. “So, you will get up because if you don’t…” His sly, smug contempt plumed in the air between us as thick as cigar smoke. “I’ll kill the servants one by one.”
My eyes widened before I could school my expression.
He couldn’t be serious.
Only I knew well enough by then to understand the extent Noel would go to in order to get his way. He was a psychopath who had murdered countless women in cold blood, including his wife and the mother of his children.
Of course, he would kill the servants. They were nothing more to him than automated responses to his basic needs.
He would probably take pleasure in killing them.
The urge to cry waterlogged my heart and set my pulse to a heavy, drowning beat.
I refused to give into the impulse.
If I was going to capitulate, I’d do it strong until the end.
Alexander had taught me that.
My body ached as I maneuvered myself onto my feet, legs wobbling as they attempted to hold my weight for the first time in days. Noel reached out to slap at my breast so hard, I hissed.
“Your skin is blue. Bathe and dress in the clothes I’ve left with you, then go below stairs to help the servants prepare dinner. I want you serving me everything with your bare hands,” he instructed with dark amusement before lifting one of my hands and sucking a finger into his mouth. “I want each course seasoned with the taste of your flesh.”
“You disgust me,” I told him.
I was on the floor the next instant, my cheek blasted with pain so bright it rendered me momentarily blind. Before I could recover, Noel’s hand was on my chin in a punishing grip I knew would leave a bruise as dark as blackberry juice.
“Talk back to me again, Ruthie,” he warned almost idly, a direct contrast to his words and his grasp. “And I’ll make sure no one ever calls you beautiful again. Understood?”
I nodded, rebellion so hot on my tongue it burned.
Impossibly, his hold on my face cinched tighter. “Answer properly.”
“Yes, sir,” I said with the utmost respect so that he wouldn’t hit me again for saying sir when he would have liked Master.
He made a short noise of approval in his throat and then released me with a light push so that I went falling back onto the floor. “Go to your old room. Mrs. White is waiting for you there.”
My throat seized up as I thought about the woman who had taken part in every single step of my torture at the hands of Noel. Anger doused my brittle body, and I went up in flames.
By the time I made my slow, painful way down the corridor to my old room, my skin was burning with the fire in my blood.
Mrs. White was waiting in the same black dress and white apron she had always worn, her curls tucked up in a habitual bun. She was older, but her face retained a girlish plumpness that made her seem younger than she was.
Why was it the worst people I knew wore the most beautiful masks?
It made it nearly impossible to see past my instinctual love of their beauty to the demons lurking beneath.
“Good afternoon, dearie,” she greeted me with a genuine if tremulous smile. “It’s so good to see you alive and well again.”
“Well?” I asked, the air hissing from my body like steam from an overworked engine. “You think this is well?”
She bit her lip and tittered nervously. “No, perhaps not well, but alive then. I wasn’t so sure after what happened in New York.”
“As if you didn’t know what he had planned,” I accused as I stalked toward her. She took one step back for every two I progressed until she was backed against the windows, and I was pressed deeply into her soft body. “You knew back then what would become of me, and when that didn’t work out, you still tried to see me killed.”