Page 1 of The Lady Who Left (The Flower Sisters #4)
Yorkshire, April 1903
“ A divorce?”
When Marigold first said—whispered, really, maybe even croaked—the word to her husband of thirteen years, she expected him to be incredulous, perhaps angry.
She did not expect him to be perplexed, like he was hearing a phrase in a foreign language and doing one’s best to parse its meaning.
Marigold’s right hand gripped the side of her skirt. Her maid would later bemoan how she crushed the delicate silk, just as she tsk ed each time she noticed her mistress had bitten her fingernails to the quick. Her left hand, the one bearing her wedding ring, clutched the bundle of tear-stained documents that had forced her to throw her universe into upheaval .
“That’s what I said,” she managed, then cleared her throat and spoke again, more firmly. She lifted the crumpled papers. “D-d-divorce.”
The Marquess of Croydon worked his mouth as though removing a lingering morsel of that morning’s liver from his teeth was more important than his wife’s words. He still had not looked up from the paperwork that covered his desk, a late baroque monstrosity that probably cost the lives of a dozen majestic trees and hours of labor from underpaid tradesmen.
Her husband had fucked his mistress on that desk while Marigold nursed their youngest child through a fever.
“What are you going on about, you daft woman? I can barely understand you.”
Her stomach roiled. Some men wrote their wives romantic poetry, but her husband curated a list of demeaning adjectives to describe her mental state—empty-headed, half-witted, addled, and simple, among his favorites.
Marigold would add one more for herself today—determined. “I want a d-d-divorce. You said you would allow Reggie t-to continue his schooling here, at home, b-but I received enrollment p-papers from Felton College this morning.”
The damning documents burned the flesh of her palm, but her husband rolled his eyes, as though she were acting as daft and addled as he accused her of being. “Lord Torcross will attend Felton College, like generations of Torcross men have done before him. The matter is settled. ”
“ Reginald— ” her son may be a lord, but he was only twelve years of age, “is not a man, b-but a child, and he’s having success with Nanny Emerson—”
“He’s a viscount, not a simple tuh-tuh-twit of a girl,” he mocked with a pointed glare, as though he faulted her for sullying the bloodline with a speech impediment.
Damn her infernal stammer. Before their first anniversary, her husband hired a variety of merciless tutors who attempted to stamp the repeated sounds out of her speech, but only succeeded in making her fear her own voice. The lesson learned was that silence was unlikely to offend, as her stutter was the first indication of her raised emotions.
Marigold could overlook— had overlooked for years now—the thinly veiled contempt her husband held for her, but the disgust he showed for their child ? Her throat began to burn, unshed tears bubbling into withheld screams of fury. She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, plotting her sentences to avoid any perilous starting consonants. “Your son is gentle. Felton will crush him.”
The marquess looked down again, already bored with this conversation. “Felton will wring the softness out of him, especially when he’s away from the debilitating influence of his mother.”
The words struck her like a blow. She’d never allowed herself to be angry, to acknowledge the simmering indignation and allow it to grow until it boiled over in rage. Her children— Reggie now and Matthew, only a year younger—were at risk, and Marigold Waverly Torcross summoned the collective fire of every mother who had walked the earth before, and let her claws, dull as they were, flash.
Her vision blurred as she tossed the papers down on his desk, and Roger—she’d only called her husband by his first name once, on their honeymoon, and he’d corrected her to insist she call him my lord— finally looked up.
“These say that Reggie is to b-be in Scotland by early September and won’t come home until spring.” She paused, breathed. The marquess exhaled his impatience, as though needing oxygen was one more strike against her. “Reggie is not a normal child. He needs his routine, the p-people he trusts.” Tremors had laced into her words, and she hated them, swallowed her fear and anger until they furled into a fiery ball in her throat.
His eyes narrowed as though he could scent her fear, and he pounced on the weakened prey. “Hysteria? Distrust of authority?” He tilted his head to the side as if puzzled, and her cheeks burned. “Where do you think he learned that?”
Her nostrils flared as pain wrenched up her abdomen, dragging its teeth against every rib in its path. You should be grateful to be a marchioness , he said. So often she wondered if the words were emblazoned on the Croydon coat of arms. The dowager handled these things much better.
Marigold was grateful. She had clean clothing, a roof over her head, and a full belly. She had two beautiful children, boys who owned her entire heart. For them, she would be strong. For them, she would want more .
“Felton College is a cruel p-place. The stories you’ve shared… How can Reggie handle—”
“My heir would be a proper young man if he didn’t have you as his mother. Felton will set him right, undo the damage you’ve done. Now get out of his way and out of my office.”
Marigold nodded, a shallow, weak gesture all too familiar in the face of her husband’s casual heartlessness. Acceptance, acquiescence, a message that she would tolerate whatever he tossed in her direction.
She had been willing to accept his abuse blindly for so long, she wondered if she remembered how to be any other way. But would she permit her children to suffer the same fate?
Absolutely fucking not.
“I cannot allow you to d-do this to our child. If you insist on sending Reggie to Felton, you will hear from my b-barrister.”
She spun on her heel—a move that sounded dramatic when she read it in novels but only seemed clumsy on her—and fled his office, slamming the door shut behind her. Several moments passed, yet she heard no movement, no sign he was following her.
A sick laughter bubbled up from low in her belly, pushing free in a sound somewhere between a morose chuckle and a sob. She pressed her back against the door and slid down its polished surface until her rear end hit the gleaming parquet floor.
Addington, the family’s butler, froze as he emerged and saw her. “My lady, what’s happened? Is something wrong?”
“Yes,” she said, her lips curling into a wry smile. “Everything is wrong. B-but I will make it b-better.”