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“I am.”

“Whatever for? My father will set the dogs on you!” I gripped the lapel of his jacket, my knuckles white. “Are you mad?”

Azriel gave me that self-assured grin, stroking back my hair. “Perhaps, beloved. But there are some things you need to know, and I think it best you hear them directly from the man who decided your fate.”

21

A JOURNEY HOME

The impromptu trip to Leicester threw the household into a whirlwind of activity. Mary hurriedly packed my clothes into steamer trunks, while I merely sat by and watched, unsure what the days ahead could possibly bring with them, and yet entirely certain I did not wish to know.

Facing Aunt Adelaide had been dreadful enough. To now face my father after all this time, to enter my family home on the arm of the man who effectively owned them all, and had seen to my downfall… The very thought had me hanging my head in my hands, still trying to comprehend why Azriel felt all this was necessary. But no matter how many times I asked him for clarification, he refused to elaborate, insisting my father had to be the one to tell me.

Tell me what?Yet more questions, and I could barely take any more of those.

We were brought to the train station promptly at 10 o’clock, and boarded the huffing steam train to take us north. While I was a mess of frayed nerves, Azriel was the picture ofcalm. He insisted we play cards to pass the time, and my lack of attention meant he won every round.

A fitting allegory for our marriage.

The train whistle blew, an enormous puff of steam enveloping the carriage as we pulled into Leicester station. There was no escaping it now. I was home.

Azriel called over a porter, who scurried across the platform, deftly swinging his trolley between the passengers.

“Have these bags taken to The Bell,” Azriel said to him, pressing several coins into the lad’s waiting hand. “The name is Caine, and we have a reservation for this evening.”

“Right you are, sir!” The porter loaded our trunks onto the trolley, and rushed off with them as quickly as he had appeared.

Azriel turned to me with a smile, offering me his arm. “Mrs Caine? Shall we?”

I had been Mrs Caine for three years, why should it feel so different to hear it come from his lips?

I curled my gloved hand around his arm, pulling my shawl tighter around my neck as the chill wind blew past us.

Leicester was much as I remembered it, perhaps a little more bustling, perhaps a few more houses, but otherwise, not much had changed. The bare branches of the trees rattled as we crossed the slick paved street to the carriage that awaited us.

“And? How does it feel to be home?” Azriel asked me as the carriage began bumping along the road.

I gazed out of the carriage window, and sighed. “It hardly feels like home anymore. I feel rather that I no longer have a home, not a real one.”

“No?”

I gazed over at him, at his brilliant blue eyes that somehow looked even more iridescent in this grey and rawweather, a beacon in the dark. “Your father was not exactly eager for me to take on the role of woman of the house.”

Azriel’s mouth twitched pensively. “No, he was not eager for that at all.”

“Did he ever speak to you about me?”

Azriel held my gaze, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Not often. Usually only when in company, and drunk. There was one time…” He trailed off, averting his gaze to the scenery as it passed us by. “I believe he only spoke to me about you in order to lord his possession of you over me.”

“Do you think he knew?”

Azriel turned to me with a raised eyebrow. “Knew?”

“Of your… longing.”

He drawled out a laugh. “You mean, did he know that I would watch?”

My cheeks burned, but I did not avert my eyes from his. “I suppose that would be obscene, wouldn’t it? If he knew his own son was watching him bed his wife and did nothing about it.”