Page 36 of The Proposition
“Only if you can withstand an onslaught of new company. It is a very full house at present,” Clemency told her, pretending to study her cards, but really waiting to see how she might react. “Tansy’s father and uncle reside there, and now William, my brother, has come, and of course I am there, as well as Turner Boyle….”
The effect was immediate, and so was Clemency’s regret.Delphine went even paler than her normally ashy hue, her lips parting on a silent sound of shock. Her cards scattered to the table between them, and she jolted to her feet as if struck by lightning.
“Oh. Oh, I see. Now it all becomes much clearer. Damn you, Audric.”
Delphine grew instantly cold and withdrawn, and hugging herself went to the fire, slipping the toes of one slipper under a dog’s side, as if for protection.
“I have said something to offend you.” Clemency scrambled to stand too, turning the same shade of plum as the sofa.Stupid, clumsy, unfeeling fool…“If so, it was not my intention—”
“So many things have now come sharply into relief,” Delphine murmured, cutting her off. Her huge, wounded brown eyes traveled across the carpet and then up Clemency’s entire form until their gazes met. “You are part of my brother’s games. I should have assumed as much, but then I had begun to like you, and regard is so utterly blinding. I should know.”
She showed Clemency her back, hunching, becoming impossibly small as she shook her head and leaned toward the flames.
“Forgive me, Miss Ferrand, I did not mean to wound you. I will go—”
“No.” Delphine’s head came up quickly and she twisted in profile, swallowing a sniffle. “No. Stay. I want you to stay; I do like you, and therefore you deserve to know just what it is you have stepped full into.”
Something caught her attention behind Clemency, and a wave of horror passed over her face, then she mastered it and sneered. “There you are, brother. And just in time.”
“Delphine.” The warning in Audric’s tone was unmistakable. He loomed in the corridor, watching them. “Do not say another word.”
“I will say as many words as I please,” she hissed. “Come. Join us, Audric. It is only fitting that you are here while I tell thisfriendof yours our truth.”
Audric prowled the edge of the room, far more intimidating and feral than the two massive hounds curled up at Delphine’s feet. He was dressed for the club, in a sharp black coat and snowy cravat, close-fitting tan trousers tucked into glossy, knee-high boots. His low-simmering green eyes flicked to Clemency, and a horrible quivering nausea traced over his face as he looked at her.
She felt suddenly trapped, and sick, and wrung out her hands, wishing she could bolt. But she felt bound to stay and sensed that leaving would hurt Delphine more than staying to hear what the girl wanted to say.
“What has he told you about me?” Delphine asked, her voice high and almost babyish. Mocking. “That I am ill. That I am frail. Has he told you what was between Turner Boyle and me? Only that was not his name when I knew him, was it, Audric? No, he was Morris Alston, a gentleman, or so I thought. We met at the opera in Paris. Normally my brother would accompany me to the performances, but I begged him to let me go with an acquaintance. She and her mother were far less watchful than Audric. It was five winters ago now, but it feels like a lifetime has passed…since…” She almost swooned but caught herself. Audric strode urgently as if to catch her, but Delphine put up a hand, keeping him at bay.
He stood near the abandoned table with the brandy andcards, his shoulders bunched up around his ears as if he were coiled to strike.
“N-No, I will tell it all. I must. If you are to join Audric on this damned crusade of his, then let it be with eyes wide open,” Delphine stammered. Clemency couldn’t help but admire her; it must have taken immense strength, for each word seemed like an agony. “We courted in secret. He said we would be married, that he had claim to a fortune, that when he returned to Paris all would be settled, and our lives would begin.”
At last Audric spoke, but only to growl, “She was sixteen.”
“Yes!” Delphine cried. “A girl. A reckless, senseless girl. I loved him and I believed him, and of course none of it was true.” She balled her hands into fists and a spasm gripped her, a tear sliding free down her cheek. “There was a child. I had survived cholera not long before that, and the babe…It nearly killed me. And now it is gone, for it had no father, and it did not deserve a mother that would look at it only with hatred and regret. Audric found it a loving family, or so he says. I do not know! How could I know? I do not even know if it was a boy or a girl!”
She whirled again to face the fire, a sob overwhelming her as she dropped her face into her hands.
Clemency trembled, and stared, and felt her body go numb as Audric went to his sister and held her. A hurt had been building inside her, and it was high as a wall now, brick by brick, indignity by indignity. She’d thought Turner Boyle very low indeed, but he had sunk now to a depth she had never thought to encounter in her life. Her simple, sheltered life in Round Orchard. The occasional voyage toLondon, but there only to clean and lovely assembly halls and gleaming ballrooms. And so she had led a narrow life, walking down a single hall, unaware of the paths snaking off it and into the darkness. That narrow life had made her an easy target for someone like Turner Boyle, but now she was building that hurt, brick by brick, and she would build it wide indeed.
How easily she could have been Delphine. How easily she might have fallen prey to Turner’s easy, charming manner when first they met and he worked so hard to woo her. Clemency had sworn never to marry, and Turner had scaled even that high wall.
Delphine startled her, racing out of the room, brushing by Clemency close enough to ruffle her hair. Still, she could not move, frozen by the unfairness and the sorrow that felt potent enough to choke her.
“Are you satisfied?” Audric whispered, bent toward the hearth, his right hand braced on the mantel, a broken man, a silhouette of fire.“Are you satisfied?”
“Why did you not tell me?” Clemency whispered, hoarse. “You ask for my trust and yet you keep such things from me. I would faithfully guard such a secret! I should have known. What if he had tried to do the same to me?”
The mere suggestion of that made him wince and groan like a wounded animal. “It was not my truth to tell. It is a pain so deep and ragged and raw that I dare not eventhinkof it, for whenever I do, it threatens to drive me mad. There is a howling in my soul, and it will not stop until the proper justice is had. Not the justice of courts and judges, but true justice. Poetic, unflinching, searing justice.”
An urge to hold him as he sagged against the hearth rosein her. She had never thought to see him a defeated thing, but all his arrogance was gone, and when he turned his head to look at her, his eyes still held the danger she had seen before, but now she felt it echo in her own gaze. Just to know what had happened to Delphine—just to glimpse that cruelty—made her want to be dangerous too.
“Delphine does not approve of your…crusade, she called it,” Clemency said slowly. Carefully. He began to stand again, regarding her with hooded eyes. “Why not?”
“She says it is a reminder of all she suffered,” Audric muttered, running a shaking hand through his graying black waves. When he spoke next, he sounded out of breath. “For years I have hunted other men like Boyle, men that use girls and drain them like that evening’s claret and toss them away to let them shatter. Whatever justice the woman wants, that is what I give—a lashing, a thrashing, just a look, or a word, whatever is required. But Delphine would prefer we never speak of her suffering again. That it is eventually forgotten. She wants to move beyond it. But what she cannot see is that one does not move beyond such things. The world should not move beyond such things. The world should stand still, and gasp and weep, and have to look at their dear little sister sprawled on a bed dyed red with her blood. The world should have to witness the ripping of a child away from its mother and hear its cries, and watch as it is taken out into the cold, and pretend it is just a sack of flour and not a much-beloved nephew.”
Clemency squeezed her eyes shut. “I am…so sorry. So, so terribly sorry,” she said. Audric seemed to ignore that, his face slack and his eyes wandering. “And I am so, so enraged. Devoured by rage. Trembling with it.”
