Page 13 of The Phantom Duke
“Lawns and rose gardens are for the tame, Simon. I am not.”
But Damien did stop, turning to let his friend struggle to his side through fern and bramble.
“She will be well, by the way. She insisted on coming with me to get the supplies and seeing them delivered. But well. I am certain she will appreciate your asking.”
“I did not ask.”
“Precisely my point. Now, will you explain yours?”
Damien narrowed his eyes. He did not like explaining himself to anyone. Simon was the only person in the world who could expect to make such a demand and receive an answer. Damien used his stick to move aside a bramble that had ensnared Simon.
“She has become linked to Winterleigh. You know what will happen. Most will believe she chose to throw herself into my clutches. Those who do not label her as a witch will, instead, call her a whore. Her father may be among them. I do not know the man.”
“I have heard of him. By all accounts, a drunkard and a monster. You would get along famously.”
“I am not a drunkard.”
“Quite.”
“On the other hand, I have become a target for ghouls who wish to discover if Winterleigh is haunted. Whether the Phantom walks its halls and what happens to those who enter its grounds uninvited.”
“I do not wish to hear more on that. I have told you. I noted your servants talking of the dungeon and tried to shut my ears,” Simon shuddered.
“Do so. A wife and the appearance of respectability would go a long way to stem the flood of trespassers. And it would repair the damage to her name.”
“Her? She has a name, you know.”
“Her. She.” Damien insisted, waving a dismissive hand. “I do not wish an actual wife. Only the appearance of one.”
Damien lashed with his stick at a bog thistle that was rearing from amid a tuft of long grass. The idea of being forced to appear to be the same as the rest of society irritated him. But fear had not worked. It only seemed to draw the ghouls in.
“You will try and dispel the mythos by looking as ordinary as the rest of us,” Simon said, echoing Damien’s unspoken thoughts. “There will still be the draw of that monstrosity.”
He pointed through the trees to the dark bulk of Winterleigh. Ivy encrusted the deep gray stone and even reached in through empty windows where the glass had long since been broken. Jagged crenellations scored the sky, and a sense of brooding antiquity permeated it.
“What would you have me do? Tear it down and replace it with London stucco? Pillars that support nothing and baskets of fruit made of plaster pointlessly adorning the ceilings. Winterleigh is honest if simplistic.”
“As simplistic as a medieval fortress. Brutal is the word.”
“It is fitting.”
“Splendid, Maria! It could have been made for you,” Evelina proclaimed.
Maria stood in the doorway of the sitting room at Thornwall House, having changed out of her stained and, she had discovered, ripped gown. It was not a perfect fit, but Evelina was closest in size to Maria of all the women of the Corset Chronicles Club.
“Thank you, Evelina. I wish it were not necessary to be asking you for charity,” Maria said, smoothing her hands over the blossom-pink skirts.
“Nonsense. It is what one friend does for another. I am sure your situation is only temporary,” Evelina insisted.
Maria doubted it. She felt as though she were still trapped in that dead-end in which she had been assaulted. There was no way out that she could see. She knew her father well enough to know that he would not back down, would not reconsider. Not when he felt his honor had been tarnished.
For a man who lives in a bottle, he puts a great deal of store in his name and reputation.
“It is monstrous that he should cut off his own daughter over a refusal to marry a certain man,” Anna said, standing next to Maria and critically examining the hem of the skirt.
“Do you believe that he will really do as he says?” Theodora asked. She sat across the room, a long-forgotten abolitionist pamphlet abandoned on the sofa beside her. “Is it possible that your absence will have softened the man’s heart?”
“I am not so sure. He was so angry, far worse than I have seen before. I fear he means to destroy me out of sheer spite.” Maria sat down, waving away a plate of toast from a servant.
