Her spirits were low as she picked at her plate of cold meats.
“Do you still have the headache, my dear?” her grandmother asked.
Arabella looked up blankly. For a moment she had no idea what her grandmother was talking about; then she remembered. “No.”
“Did you use Hungary water? Very beneficial, I find. A dab at the temples, or perhaps a handkerchief soaked . . .”
Arabella stopped listening. She pushed her food around the plate. She had refused St. Just’s offer in a manner calculated to cause him the least hurt—but his opinion of her must now be abysmal. Tears pricked her eyes. She blinked them fiercely away.
After luncheon, she found herself unable to concentrate on her needlework or the book she was reading. Even the pianoforte and a piece by Beethoven—a combination she usually found easy to lose herself in—failed to hold her attention. Finally, she asked her grandmother for permission to visit the British Museum.
“Again?” Lady Westwick asked.
“There’s a horse’s head I wish to sketch.”
Her grandmother’s face softened into a smile. “How like your father you are.”
Arabella bit her lip and stared down at the carpet, a particularly fine Kidderminster in blue and red.
THE HORSE’S HEAD was one of the marbles brought to England by Lord Elgin. It had staring eyes, flared nostrils, and broken ears. A war horse, Arabella decided, opening her sketchbook and extracting a pencil from her reticule.
“Miss Knightley.”
Her heart gave a frightened little skip. She dropped the pencil. “Mr. St. Just! What . . . what are you doing here?”
“I followed you.”
“Followed me?” She glanced around for Polly and found her by the window, studying horsemen galloping across a frieze. “Why?”
“Because I want to talk with you. That tale you told me this morning . . . was it true?”
Arabella swallowed. “Yes.”
A frown creased between St. Just’s eyebrows. “Why did you place those dice in Lord Crowe’s pocket?”
“I thought that was obvious. To ruin him.”
“But why?”
“Does the reason matter?” Arabella asked, holding her sketchbook tightly. “I was responsible for Lord Crowe’s ruin, and his death. Isn’t that enough?”
His frown deepened. “I want to know why.”
Arabella looked at the pencil lying on the floor. She bit her lip.
“I’ve always approved of Tom’s choice of victims. So I want to know . . . why Lord Crowe? Why so harsh a punishment?”
Memory came rushing back: her mother’s cries rang in her ears, the smell of blood filled her nostrils.
“Crowe was one of your mother’s . . . protectors, wasn’t he? After your father’s death.” St. Just’s voice was low. “What did he do, Miss Knightley?”
Arabella cleared her throat. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Miss Knightley, you can hardly tell me that you ruined Lord Crowe and then refuse to tell me why.”
Yes, I can. She blinked back tears.
“I should inform you, Miss Knightley,” St. Just said in an affable voice, “that I’m a stubborn man. If you don’t tell me today, then I shall ask the same question of you tomorrow, and the day after that. It will be easier for us both if you tell me now.”
His hand cupped her elbow, drawing her towards a window embrasure. Arabella glanced around for Polly. She was still studying the horsemen.
St. Just released her elbow. He removed the sketchbook from her grasp and placed it on the windowsill. “Now, Miss Knightley: tell me. What did Crowe do?”
The undertone of kindness in his low voice brought more tears to her eyes. Arabella groped in her reticule for a handkerchief. St. Just handed her his own, a neatly folded square of white linen. “I beg your pardon—”
“I am perfectly fine,” Arabella said, annoyed with herself. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose defiantly. She found it impossible, though, to look him in the face. She folded the handkerchief. “Lord Crowe was the last of my mother’s protectors—as you called it. He . . . had a very violent temper. My mother was afraid of him, but . . . he was generous with his gifts. She hoped to save enough money to buy a house, so . . . we stayed.”
“And?” St. Just prompted, after she’d been silent for several seconds.
Arabella gripped the handkerchief tightly. “And one day he hurt her. Very badly.”
“Why?”
Arabella shuddered. “Because . . . he touched me.”
She wasn’t looking at Adam St. Just, but she was aware of him stiffening. “He what?”
She glanced at him fleetingly; his face was as grim as his voice.
“He came early to my mother’s rooms and . . . and he was drunk, and my mother wasn’t ready . . . and—” She could still feel Lord Crowe’s clumsy caress, still smell the brandy on his breath. “My mother came in and told him to take his hands off me and . . . he lost his temper.”
“You were right to punish him!” St. Just said. “By God, if Crowe was still alive—”
Arabella glanced at him again. “I didn’t punish Lord Crowe for touching me; I punished him for what he did to my mother.”
St. Just observed her for several seconds. “What did he do?”
She looked down at the handkerchief. “He beat her and kicked her—” The smell of blood was in her nostrils, nauseating. “There was so much blood. I thought she was dead.” Arabella no longer saw the handkerchief; instead she saw her mother’s face: broken, unrecognizable. “She lost a lot of her teeth. Her arm was broken and her ribs, and . . . she was blind in one eye afterwards.”
“Dear God,” St. Just said, half under his breath. “But she recovered?”
Arabella lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “She was half senseless for weeks. It took months before she was well enough to get out of bed, and by that time her savings were gone—” She turned the handkerchief over in her fingers. “That was my fault. I paid too much for everything. I thought— My mother’s maid, the woman Crowe had hired for her, took us in. She told me how much it cost for the room, how much for the doctor each time he came and I . . . I
