Page 9 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

F elicity rose from her chair the very instant that the last of her hour of obligation ended, wordlessly turning toward the door, and this time—this time, Ian did not stop her.

But then, he’d said almost nothing in nearly three quarters of an hour, since each and every inquiry he had made of her had been met with nothing but stoic silence and palpable disdain.

Eventually he had gotten the message. Had redirected his attention to his work and to his dinner, and emitted nothing more than the occasional caustic sound as he had scratched through lines upon the pages before him and scribbled his own notes into the margins.

She had no idea what, exactly, he had been doing.

But she had not intended to ask, either.

The same maid who had delivered her tray was waiting when she emerged, and Felicity nearly leapt straight out of her skin to find herself ambushed with a curtsey directly outside the door.

“I’m Mary, madam,” the girl said. “I’m to show you to your room.

” Of course. It shouldn’t have irked her quite so much that he had anticipated even this.

But she had been within his home only thrice now, and she couldn’t possibly have expected to find her bed chamber in a house of this size.

She tamped down on the roiling pit of anger that burned in her chest. Mary had done nothing to merit even a sharp word.

“Thank you, Mary,” she managed to say. “Of course, madam. If you’ll follow me.

” Felicity followed along in her wake. The house was larger than she had expected; the relatively modest front facade concealing a surprising depth stretching back toward what she assumed must be the garden.

“My things?” she asked as Mary led her down a hallway and stopped before a large mahogany door polished to a high shine.

“Already unpacked,” Mary said as she cast open the door and led her within.

“There weren’t so very many of them.” No; there never had been, Felicity thought as she stepped inside.

For years as a student she had shared a small room with two other girls and a single wardrobe between them.

And even when she had taken up a position as a teacher and had been allowed a room of her own, it had been quite small, with room for a half a dozen gowns at most to be tucked within her narrow chest of drawers.

“This is the dressing room,” Mary said, gesturing to a door on the left.

“Your gowns have been hung up, and your nightclothes and underthings have been folded and placed in the dresser. Will you require assistance in changing?” “No; thank you.” She’d been managing it herself all these years anyway.

“Your brush and pins have been set out for you at the vanity within the bathing room,” Mary said.

“Of course if you require assistance bathing, or with dressing your hair, you need only ring. Mr. Carlisle suggested you might desire the services of a lady’s maid—” “I won’t.

I’m quite accustomed to doing for myself.

” And her needs were few, besides. Only a brush to pull the tangles from her hair and a few pins to secure it into a bun.

There was no need to style her hair any more ostentatiously than that.

“Thank you, Mary. I don’t require anything further.

” Mary bobbed another curtsey. “Of course, madam. Breakfast is to be served at seven in the dining room, if it is agreeable to you.” And she left Felicity alone once more, in a room that wasn’t her own, and yet would be for the remainder of her life.

The counterpane upon the massive four-poster bed had been turned down, and a fire had been lit within the hearth.

It should have felt warm and inviting, but the sheer size of the room made it instead feel vast and unwelcoming.

Half the room was swallowed into the shadows, the light of the fire not nearly enough to beat back the unrelenting darkness.

Probably it would be different come morning, with the sunlight pouring through the windows wreathing the French doors against the far wall, which likely led to a balcony.

But just now, with the twisting pattern of shadows and light cast upon the walls by the flickering fire, she felt as if she had been shoved into the lair of some ferocious beast as a sacrifice.

Patently ridiculous. Ian had hardly even noticed when she had taken her leave of him, his head bowed over the paperwork upon his desk.

In the darkness she fumbled for the handle of the dressing room door, throwing it open and squinting within in an effort to deduce to location of the dresser.

In retrospect, she thought as she jammed her toes against the solid wood piece of furniture she’d been unable to see through the inky black, she ought to have asked Mary for a lamp.

At least her nightgown had been packed directly within the topmost drawer.

Once she had wrenched it open, her fingers had found it right away, worn to feather-softness and familiar beneath the touch of her fingertips.

It was the work of only a minute to cast off her clothing and leave it upon one of the massive chairs set before the fire.

She slipped the nightgown over her head and finally wandered in the direction of the bed.

Her marital bed. A queer little shiver slid down her spine, her toes curling into the plush rug beneath her feet.

There had been a time she had wanted nothing more than this.

A time when she had thought she had found it.

She had been too young, mostly, to remember what her parents’ marriage had been like, too young to carry the same resentment toward the institution that Charity had.

Their father had left scars upon her—literal and metaphorical—but he had not soured her against marriage itself.

Ian had done that all on his own. Felicity plucked the pins from her hair one at a time and slapped them down upon the small table at the side of the bed.

Probably four of her could fit within the immense bed with room to spare, which gave some small amount of comfort.

His present taste for luxury was convenient, when it meant that she might curl up on one side and leave a wide swath of mattress empty between them.

Resentfully, she slipped into bed beneath the thick counterpane and settled back against the pillows.

Her own bed at Mrs. Lewis’ school was quite narrow, with a mattress so old and battered that even a routine tightening of the ropes beneath it had failed to relieve the sag in the middle.

Her room got quite chilly in the winter, without a hearth of its own to offer even a little extra warmth—not that they could have afforded the cost of extra coal even if it had—and she had had to pile her bed high with quilts only to keep her toes from freezing.

Ian’s bed had been warmed already, from the heat of the fire and probably a bed warmer passed beneath the covers shortly before she had arrived.

With a little sound of disgust she rolled onto her stomach and planted her face in pillows.

They didn’t smell like him. At least, they didn’t smell like she remembered—the tang of sea salt warmed by the heat of his skin.

She had loved that smell, once. And now it was gone.

Replaced by the scent of washing powder and shaving soap; clean, fresh, and with the faint spice of pepper and clove.

Not unpleasant, but not Ian . At least not the version of him she had known years ago, when his hair had always been wind-ruffled and shaggy instead of neatly trimmed and combed.

When his clothes had been as worn as her own and rumpled instead of starched and pressed to perfection.

When he’d been infinitely more likely to wolf down a beef pasty in a few harried bites or to scarf down roasted chestnuts a handful at a time instead of taking a leisurely meal upon fine china and with finer silverware.

She didn’t know how or when exactly it had happened, but one day he had been her Ian—and when she had next seen him, he had been someone else entirely.

Someone with prospects. Someone ever so much more refined than the lowly courier and occasional pugilist with whom she had fallen in love.

Someone who had so very suddenly thought himself above her.

Someone who had expected her to sacrifice the cherished dreams she had held dear, much in the same way that she had sacrificed the pin money she had once received from Charity to purchase those very same beef pasties and chestnuts of which he had once been so fond.

She had loved him when he had had nothing to his name.

And his love had turned out to be so fleeting; a thing she had watched wane by the day, until there was too little of it left.

Until the promise of a lucrative new career had outweighed the promises he’d made to her.

Once I’m settled in London, I will send for you.

We’ve waited this long already. What is another year or two?

She could still hear those words, rife with exasperation, as if they had never quite trickled out of her ears.

Felicity slammed her fist into the pillow beneath her head.

She had been so blind, so stupid. It had taken many long minutes for her to understand what he had been asking of her.

To set aside their plans for a wedding that he’d promised would be soon forthcoming for longer still.

Only to follow him to London at his convenience, leaving both her own career and the city that had become her home, on the strength of promises long stretched past their breaking point.

It had not been the first promise he’d broken, but she had made certain it was the last. That final betrayal had broken her heart beyond repair.

It was the last time she had sneaked from the house to see him—the very last time she had ever spoken to him.

Since then he had changed entirely. And she hadn’t.

She had simply—frozen. Time had marched on and still in her heart she was that same devastated young woman of just one and twenty, frozen in that last dreadful moment, holding the tatters of her shredded heart in her hands.