Chapter Nine

in which sam then wins

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

The timid maid scuttled ahead of me up the grand front stairs, then down a long gallery. My high-school gym teacher would be proud of the hustle I showed following her, because she seemed just as keen to be the hell out of Lewis’s sights as I was. The lamps in their sconces were turned low. They threw out just enough light along the walls to make sure no one tripped over the fancy pedestals topped by statues, flower arrangements, and other costly yet sentimentally hollow bric-a-brac that the wealthy have been decorating their houses with since the invention of disposable income.

“This is your apartment, miss,” the maid said, her voice a cowed murmur.

The more I took in her mannerisms, the more I despised Lewis.

We entered an opulent private room. It was furnished with a wardrobe, vanity, washstand, and chaise.

And a bed.

A big, four-poster, curtained, frilly abomination of a bed. Everything was covered in costly textiles, and the soft furnishings were overstuffed and luxurious. It looked like something out of an immature Playboy fantasy. My twenty-first century clothing was discarded at the foot of the bed, apparently having been deemed worthless.

The maid was quick to light the candles on the vanity from the taper she carried, then stepped back, the perfect picture of a docile servant.

“If you’ll have a seat, mistress, I can see to your toilette.”

A porcelain basin and pitcher were already waiting for us, steaming gently and filling the air with damp and a faint trace of roses.

I really didn’t like how prepared this whole thing was.

Too sore to move just yet, and still in shock from my new revelations about Fenton, I couldn’t seem to make myself sit. To submit .

“Mistress, please ,” the girl said, eyes flicking to the closed door behind us, fearfully anticipating the damning ring of Lewis’s footsteps in the hallway. She gave the impression of a girl because she was small and timid, but the silver dusted at her temples told me that she was older than me. Either that or made prematurely gray by virtue of being a veteran of Lewis’s staff.

“Yes,” I croaked, my throat dry and bruised. “Of course.”

Immediately the maid was behind me, undoing the complicated ties that had kept my dress from falling the rest of the way off. As soon as my stays were loosened, my wallet and phone thunked to the floor with all the ominous gravitas of a guillotine blade. She bent to scoop them up, but I beat her to it.

“Ignore those,” I said, not sure if this was the kind of order I was allowed to give. Or if she would listen to me above her master.

“Yes, mistress,” she said. When I placed them on the vanity table she didn’t so much as glance at them. The stays were folded into a drawer but the shift and my muddy stockings went along with the dress into a laundry basket beside the wardrobe, and I was standing there absolutely stark naked.

She handed me a folded bit of cloth, already damp with warm rosewater, and when I clearly didn’t know what she wanted me to do with it, looked pointedly between my legs.

Christ. In front of the servants? What the actual hell.

I cleaned myself quickly, while she busied herself with retrieving and shaking the wrinkles out of a new shift. She tossed my used cloth in the basket. For laundry or burning? A second cloth appeared and she wiped the rest of me down as quickly and efficiently as currying a horse. She was gentle around the new bruises on my knees, and while curious about the stab wound under my right arm, washed around it carefully and did not ask.

The new shift went over my head, and I let the maid manipulate my arms like a doll. This garment was so thin as to be practically nonexistent, not the kind of thing I could wear to flee into the English winter. Which was probably the point.

It was invasive, and dehumanizing, and awful.

But it also wasn’t her fault, and I tried to steel myself against flinching at every brisk and comfortless touch. She offered me a toothbrush and powdered chalk and charcoal to clean the foul taste off my teeth, and a spittoon for the waste.

Then the maid pulled back the vanity chair and held it toward me invitingly.

The thought of sitting in a hard-backed chair to be poked at was not appealing in the slightest. It was, however, more appealing than a black eye, so I plopped down.

The maid tipped my head back and washed the tear tracks off my face with a tender sweep of the warm washcloth. It was more soothing than I expected. She pressed a cold cloth, dipped in water from a different pitcher, to the rug burn on my cheek.

As she worked, my mind spun.

How was I going to get out of this mess?

Yes, I owed Fenton Goodenough, but I sure as hell didn’t owe him this much.

Fuck that guy anyway. Fuck any guy who would see exactly what kind of a monster his bro was, then left a woman alone with him anyway.

Running away, though plausible, would certainly do no good. It wasn’t like there was a Canadian embassy I could flee to, and I would bet dollars to donuts that the police, if such an establishment existed, were already in Lewis’s pocket. There was no one who could protect me from the captain or the judge and his intentions. And yet the idea of life on the streets was more appealing than one as Lewis’s beaten wife.

So I had to find a job. Run away, find a job, find somewhere to stay without any references or credibility, or family to recommend me, or even a personal history. In Georgian fucking England.

Jeeze, I was a miserable Canadian, I didn’t even know how to make a fire without a lighter! I could drive stick in my dad’s pickup truck, play with HTML coding, and I was a whiz at marketing charitable crowdfunding, but what good was any of that, here and now?

Here and then ?

Whatever.

I was doomed.

The maid picked through the worst of my weather-wreaked tangles. Even after two months, my hair still wasn’t as long as a proper woman’s ought to be, and I could feel the disapproval radiating off her.

But the repetitive motion felt good, the gentle scrape of the fine-tined comb against my scalp was just as soothing as the warm cloth had been. This was probably the last moment of comfort I could expect to have anywhere in the near future, so I closed my eyes and put myself at her mercy.

Funny, now that I had accepted the reality of my time slip, I was still fucked in a fun new way.

I wanted a tub of H?agen-Dazs, some stupid social media to doomscroll, and Dahlia.

But I couldn’t picture her. When I tried to recall it, her face was blurry, her strawberry-matcha scent stifled by salt and rosewater, her voice the distorted ripple of an underwater scream. It was like my mind had locked her away, protecting her from this place, and I was losing her all over again.

I was not proud to admit it, but I kicked the vanity hard in my frustration, rattling it so badly that most of the delicate glass bottles tipped over in a piercing clatter.

“Lord in heaven!” the maid shouted, springing away from me in an instant. “Mistress, are you . . . ?” The maid couldn’t finish the sentence, and I didn’t blame her. What could she say? Are you well? We both knew the answer to that one, didn’t we?

“Fine,” I lied. “Sorry. I won’t do it again.”

The maid hesitated, and I could see how little she believed me in her reflection.

“It’s fine,” I assured her. “I’m sorry.”

Tentatively, she finished washing my hair with the now-tepid water. I didn’t blame her for her being apprehensive—I’d be scared of the crazy soon-to-be wife of my abusive boss too.

I assessed her via the mirror. No bruises on her face, but her nose was slightly out of alignment in a way that didn’t look genetic. There were deep pockets under her eyes, and she kept darting nervous glances at the door. Her nails, while clean, were bitten to the quick.

“What’s your name?” I asked as gently, as warmly, as I could manage.

She still flinched at the unexpected sound. “Susan, mistress.”

“Nice to meet you, Susan. I’m Sam.”

Her crooked nose wrinkled. I wasn’t sure if it was confusion or derision at the masculine diminutive. Still, she said “ Yes , mistress,” like a poppet. She started working floral-scented oil through my hair.

“Suppose we’ll be getting to know one another pretty well in the next while, eh?”

“Of course, mistress.”

“Gonna learn some secrets.”

“Yes.”

“See some things we’re not gonna talk about.”

She only nodded this time.

“Try to find ways to support each other.”

Her eyes met mine in the mirror, confusion turning, slowly, to collusion. “Yes, mistress,” she said slowly.

“Be good friends to one another?”

Her hands paused in their work.

“ Help each other?” I ventured.

“I . . . I don’t know, miss—” she said nervously.

“Are you my lady’s maid?”

“Just a chambermaid, miss.”

“Would you like to be my lady’s maid?”

“I—” Her eyes went wide, mouth dropping open.

Dahl had made me sit through Downton Abbey . I knew what a huge step up the promotion would be. And what it would mean for her security. I turned to meet her eyes directly.

“A lady’s maid does stay by her mistress’s side, yes? All hours of the day? So she’s never in places where the master may corner her alone?”

“ Yes , miss.” Susan nodded frantically.

“And as a lady’s maid, it would be your job to make sure I didn’t make any missteps, right? Correct me when I was being unmannerly? Drop hints when I’d made a mistake?”

“It could be.”

“Then can you explain to me why I am staying here tonight? Alone, with no chaperone, in my fiancé’s house? It seems rather untoward.”

Susan swallowed hard. “His lordship has secured a special license,” she whispered. “You’re to be married straightaway, in the morning. Your inhabiting the house will be respectable before anyone of note ever learns you were even here.”

My stomach dropped at the revelation. But I wasn’t surprised. It seemed like exactly the kind of thing a manipulating asshole like Lewis would do: lock it down before anyone could protest.

Coward , I understood at once. He’s scared of what others will say.

“Is that so?” I asked. I cleared my throat and turned back to the mirror. “And respectability matters to my husband-to-be?”

“Enormously,” Susan confirmed.

She sectioned my hair, rolling it up in rag-knots. If she thought she was going to get lovely springy locks, she was in for a nasty surprise. The only thing that happened to my hair when it was curled was a beast Dahl called frizzilla .

“He’s desperate to put the rumors to rest and—” She cut herself off, flushing with mortification at her slip. I waited her out, letting her decide if she wanted to add more or not. I could already guess what the rumors said, anyway. “The mamas of the Ton will not treat with him. He is barred from Almack’s. Do you take my meaning?”

“The stair is broken, and no one has the power to fix it, only warn others not to step on it?”

“Precisely, mistress.”

“And why hasn’t the broken stair been reported to a tradesman to repair?”

“If the Bow Street Runners were to look more deeply into that aspect of his life,” Susan said with extreme care and tact, “then there, perhaps, may be other aspects of his business dealings they may uncover, and that his lordship would not appreciate being meddled in.” She met my gaze again with pointed meaning.

Message received .

“And so there must be a happy wife, and a happy home, and a bouncing baby boy nine months after to quell the rumors?”

“Just so, mistress. Just so.” She stepped back. “Now, was there anything else you’ll be wanting?”

Keep me from being dragged to a church tomorrow, I thought. There wasn’t anything she could do to stop it, though. And I didn’t know her well enough to trust that she wouldn’t go straight to Lewis and report our whole conversation.

“No. That’s all.”

“Very well. Is there anything specific I can tell cook to make to break your fast tomorrow? A food from home, perhaps, that you crave?”

Greasy breakfast sandwiches from the café in the uni quad. Tim Hortons double double coffee. A steaming, cheesy bowl of poutine.

“No. But some willow bark tea, if you can swing it.” I touched the rug burn on the side of my face demonstratively. “And bananas.”

“Bananas?” Susan balked. “That’s food for sl—plantation workers, mistress. We don’t eat those here .”

Slaves , she was going to say.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick, I’m in a world where people are still enslaved. Disgusting.

Eighteen thirty-four and abolition in the British Empire couldn’t come fast enough.

I racked my brains for another luxury fruit. “How about pineapple?”

The maid shook her head. “They’re far too expensive, mistress,” she explained.

That piqued my interest.

“But it’s possible to get one?” I couldn’t help the small mischievous smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth.

“Oh, yes, mistress,” she said. “But it will be at no small cost.”

“S’not my money,” I offered.

“Of course not, mistress,” she said, her mouth stretching into a matching grin as she followed my reasoning.

“Well. See you in the morning then, Susan.”

Susan scooped up the laundry basket and wash basin. “Sweet dreams, miss,” she said, and bustled out of the room.

The lock clunked shut behind her.

Oh.

Sure.

Of course I was locked in.

Why not?

That was what made a bully: both the desire and the ability to take freedom away from people smaller and weaker than them.

Let him try , I thought as I jammed the vanity chair under the door handle. It wouldn’t stop him if he really wanted in, but it would make enough noise to wake me up so I could fight back. I buried myself in the bed, pulling the covers over my head as if they would protect me from the bogeyman I was engaged to.

There was a lot I would have to get used to if I was going to manage to live any sort of comfortable life in a place where my worth was tied to my womb, and my safety to my submission. There was a lot I would have to talk myself into accepting, no matter how badly it clashed with my values, my upbringing, and my desires. There would be resentment I would have to soothe, frustrations I would have to let go.

But I was never going to be one of his wilting English flowers. I was a Canadian, born of resilience and resistance, a woman of the twenty-first century. I came from a time when I could vote, I could choose if and when to get pregnant, and I could decide to whom and when I got married, if ever.

Yes, I could be deprived of food and rest. Yes, I could be broken and made to bleed.

But the one thing Lewis absolutely could not achieve was to make me say “I do.”

~

I woke the next morning sometime around the ass crack of dawn to the sound of the household stirring around me. I wasn’t a particularly light sleeper, but I was alert to all the noises, for obvious reasons.

Clearly the sounds of servants getting ready for their own days above me wasn’t stopping anytime soon, so I crawled out of bed and did my stretches. The Sun Salutations helped me to center myself in my body and my mind, the meditation of movement clearing the way for acceptance and focus.

I couldn’t believe that Fenton had done this to me, but he had , and so I also had to believe it. And moreover, I had to get over it. I had to get past it. I had to get out of it.

There. Accepted. Dealt with.

Next.

My underarm throbbed as I forced myself flat against the floor for Chaturanga, blood flowing into the injured muscle, stretched and strained. It was a good hurt. It was a clear hurt. Groaning as my joints popped, I arched my back for Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, upward facing dog, and thought, Okay, next step .

Next step was to fuel up. I had no reason to suspect Lewis would poison me, so I should eat. Hydrate, even though I still hated the very idea of water. Save my energy. Make sure that when the time came, I escaped him healthy and ready to go .

So, breakfast.

I exhaled, felt the pain-sweat beading on my upper lip, trickling down the side of my face as I pushed my hips up and back into Adho, the downward pose, then bit back a whimper as I rolled up to standing.

The jolt of the healing muscle releasing scraped against my nerves.

“Get out of your head,” I scolded myself. I grunted my way through three more rounds of salutations before my mind finally went still.

“Good. Now get dressed and sort your shit out, Sammie-bear,” I said, and did just that.

I rang the bellpull for Susan, who had to be up by now, then retrieved the pink gingham square of fabric from my jeans pocket to bundle my wallet and cell phone into.

While I waited, I snooped. In the light of day, the room appeared even more garish. It was stuffed with impractical odds and ends and boxes of gewgaws and baubles that made my ears ache just imagining how heavy they must be.

I was tempted to stuff some of the shinier rings into my gingham go bag, but decided that when I left, it would be better to have nothing on me that Lewis could have me arrested for taking.

The only thing I would steal was myself.

I turned my attention to the bedside table and its stack of small, leather-covered books. I was surprised that Lewis would leave something as scandalous as a novel in his wife’s chambers.

I scanned the spines. Fordyce’s Sermons. That sounded dry. Poetry, Declarations on Purity and Sin, Household Management for New Wives, and . . . seriously? The Singular Joys of Marriage for a Lady.

“Absolutely not.” I pulled that one off the pile to flick through it. “You can fuck all the way off with that.”

~

I had been down in the breakfast parlor—different to the one I’d soiled last night, which apparently was an evening parlor—for about two hours by the time Lewis, looking the worse for drink, tromped in. I’d been dressed in what I assumed was my wedding gown. It was pale gray-green, several shades lighter than was flattering, but that might have complimented Daisy’s moonstone eyes. It was also way too long, and tighter around the boobs and hips than was likely fashionable.

The willow bark tea had dulled the pain of my bruises. I was on to a pot of the expensive Ceylon now. I knew it was the most expensive because I had specifically asked the parlormaid to bring me the most expensive. I longed desperately for coffee, and wondered if Susan could procure any for me, and how much of Lewis’s wealth that would eat up.

The man in question dropped into the chair opposite me. I sat as far back in my chair as it allowed.

“What in god’s name has happened to your hair?” he grunted.

“Rag-curls,” I answered, pushing an escaped lock of frizzilla behind my ear.

He grunted again, and reached for the teapot. He doctored his cup with a slice of lemon and a quantity of costly white sugar, sipped, and then scowled. “The fine Ceylon is for entertaining.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

A spiky green frond and hard peel sat on the side of my plate, the only indication that I had purposefully blown an extraordinary amount of Mr. Lewis’s food allowance.

“You ate a whole pineapple?” he growled as his eyes lighted on them. “Alone?”

“Oh dear.” I smiled. “If I’d known you liked them, I’d have saved some. Sorry.”

He shoved himself away from the table hard enough that the cutlery rattled. He perused the food on the sideboard, and grunted again. “Where’s the kippers, woman? Where’s the meat .”

“As your wife, it is my job to oversee household management, is it not? This is what I requested.”

“Oh, do not say you’re a follower of Dr. Chaney,” Lewis sneered. “Seeds and nuts, raw vegetables and fruit!”

“There’s milk soup,” I pointed out, pointing to the tureen of warm broth, cream, and soggy bread.

“This is what chimps eat. Not men like me!”

“Mmm,” I said, making it clear that I had opinions about his manhood.

Lewis threw his empty plate at the fireplace against the far wall, where it shattered in a glorious explosion of toxic masculinity, fragile as his ego.

He rounded on me, pulling himself up to loom furiously. Fear fluttered hard behind my ribs, tickling the air out of my lungs in a small gasp, but I steeled myself.

Bullies wanted reactions.

I wouldn’t give him the pleasure.

“I can make your life miserable,” he snapped, complexion puce.

“I can make yours the same,” I offered back blandly, finally meeting his enraged gaze.

“You would not dare —” he began, but I cut him off by slamming my teacup onto its matching saucer so hard that it shattered.

The last dregs of my tea sloshed along the fine tablecloth and down the side into a tepid puddle in my lap. It wasn’t my dress. What did I care if it was ruined?

“Or you’ll what ?” I asked, and couldn’t keep the small laugh out of my voice. Didn’t want to, anyway. “Beat me? Break my arm? Break my jaw? I can’t be seen in public then, now can I? And isn’t that what scares you the most? That people will talk? That people might worry? That someone might send the authorities around to check up on poor Mrs. Lewis, and then what will they disc—”

The slap came fast and hard against my rug-burned cheek.

It fucking hurt .

But it didn’t surprise me.

The force of it had turned my head, so I just turned it back and grinned , daring him to keep going. To make sure I had something blue for my wedding day.

“You strumpet ,” he snarled.

“Sticks and stones,” I tutted. I licked my lip and found a cut from the edge of my teeth. I deliberately probed it with my tongue, relishing the sting, opening the wound wider, pushing the blood out of my mouth to let it slide theatrically down my chin. “Oops.”

“Cease this!”

“You want to play this game? Fine, we can play. But know that I’m not coming onto the pitch unarmed.”

“Your place is to obey —”

“Yeah, but it’s not, though,” I interrupted. He puffed up, affronted by my audacity. “Just ’cause you think so doesn’t mean I do. You don’t know me, or what I’m willing to do to protect myself.”

“You will not make a fool of yourself—”

“You think I give a flaming shit about my reputation?” I asked, standing to meet his challenge with my own. “I don’t have one. You think I care what society thinks of me? I’ve been marginalized my whole life, I’m used to it. I have no maidenly shame to keep me in line. So maybe it’s time to rethink this whole marriage plan, and let me go before—”

He had one hand on my neck before I could finish my threat.

Too far , I realized too late. Sammie, you always take it too far —

He pushed viciously, shoving me over the table. All of my weight crunched against my right arm, and the shooting agony made me cry out. Whether this was Mr. Lewis’s intended result or not, he pressed my rug-burned cheek close to the hot teapot in a very clear threat to stay still. With a shove, my hips were jammed against the edge of the table, my skirts flipped up my back.

“No!” I shouted, wrenching sideways to glare over my shoulder at him.

His eyes were gimlet, pupils blown with blackout fury. He started undoing the buttons of his front fall with vicious, intent tugs.

“I told you we’d try again,” he hissed, giddy with cruelty.

Bravado abandoned me. Panic swelled against my rib cage, jabbing into the places I’d secreted my wallet and phone. I shoved, tried to drive him away, good arm flailing, but he batted it aside and grabbed a fistful of my hair.

“I do not need your cooperation, Miss Franklin,” he snarled. “I do not desire it. Scream. There is no one in this house who will come to your aid. There are none who will deny me my right to punish a misbehaving wife.”

He slapped me again, but this time on my other cheeks. The spank was more humiliating than painful, but I squeezed my eyes and my lips tight. He tugged my hair again and I managed to swallow my cry, turning it into a tight squeak. His blunt fingers dug into the hinges of my jaw, but still I didn’t scream, didn’t give him the satisfaction of sound. It was a battle of wills. If I lost now, I would continue to lose for the rest of my life, and I would not let that happen .

And then, thank fuck , someone rang the doorbell.