He looked at her with a profound, terrifying intensity. The cynical armor he wore at the party was entirely gone. He looked at her wet, braided hair, her pale, furious face, and the rigid, unyielding line of her spine. "You're right," Henry said quietly.
Norah froze. "What?" "You are exactly right." Henry stepped back, running a hand over his jaw.
"I am marrying a monster for land. I have spent the last five years playing a miserable, suffocating game, smiling at people I despise, ignoring cruelty because it is polite to do so." He looked back at her. The gray in his eyes was like storm clouds.
"Then I watched you climb out of that water," he said, his voice dropping low. "I watched you stand dripping in the mud and refuse to cry. You shattered the entire illusion in 30 seconds. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
Norah's breath hitched. She tightened her grip on her bag, her knuckles turning white. "You are mad." "Perhaps."
Henry untied his horse. He didn't mount. He stood holding the reins, looking at her across the dirt road. "I am riding to the village."
"I will secure a room for you at the inn. I will pay for it." "I don't want your charity." "It isn't charity."
"It is a delay." Henry swung himself up into the saddle. He looked down at her, and for the first time he looked entirely alive. "Stay at the inn, Miss Lynfield. Do not leave the county."
"Give me three days." "Three days for what?" Norah demanded, stepping forward as the horse shifted. "To tear it all down," Henry said.
He turned the horse and spurred it into a gallop, riding back toward the estate he had just claimed he was going to destroy, leaving Norah standing alone in the dust. The room at the Boar and Whistle smelled of beeswax, old smoke, and the faint sour ghost of spilled ale. It was small, tucked under the eaves of the roof, with a single window that looked out over the muddy main street of the village. For two days, Norah had listened to the rain lash against the leaded glass.
The innkeeper, a wide-hipped woman named Mrs. Higgins, had asked no questions when Norah arrived, dripping wet and shivering. The Duke's gold coin, handed to the woman by a taciturn groom an hour prior, had purchased absolute discretion and a tin tub of hot water. But hot water did not wash away reality. Norah paced the slanted floorboards.
Three steps to the wall, turn. Three steps to the bed, turn. She had washed her morning dress in the basin and hung it to dry, spending the first day wrapped in a scratchy wool blanket. She felt like a ghost haunting her own life.
Give me three days. The words echoed in her skull, alternating between a promise and a cruel joke. Aristocrats did not tear down their lives for disgraced companions. They married their wealthy, vicious brides, secured their estates, and occasionally kept a mistress in a discreet townhouse.