He’d believed her. He’d believed she’d make the best of a passionless marriage and take pleasure in the tasks expected of a lady. Because Creath was the kind of girl who would compromise her very soul in order to avoid conflict. The kind of girl who would square her shoulders, lift her chin, and get on with her life no matter what happened.
Clearly something had changed.
“What on earth happened?” Joseph reached to smooth the straight reddish-blond hairs that had escaped her usually neat bun.
She flinched from him, her arms wrapping around her middle. “He tried to bed me,” she stated bluntly. Creath could be honest to a fault. “He said he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t change my mind, make sure no other man would want me if I did change my mind.” Her lower lip quivered. “If you’d seen the look in his eyes, Joseph—I believe he is insane.”
“Holy Hades.” Something had changed, all right: The man had proved himself an animal. “He…he didn’t succeed, though?”
She shook her head, biting her lip to stop the quivering. “I begged, and then I fought, and he was hurting me. I grabbed one of Father’s heavy bronze statues and brought it down on his head. He dropped like a sack of flour…and I ran.”
It wrenched at his guts, watching her struggle for control. She clearly wanted to act like her normal, levelheaded self. But she didn’t seem to know how.
The knave had really shaken her. Joseph wasn’t a violent sort of fellow, but right then, he’d never felt more capable of murder.
“May I hide here?” she asked.
“Of course you can,” he told her, though he knew that was his father’s decision to make.
Joseph’s title was just a courtesy title. Someday he’d be the Earl of Trentingham, but until then his father was the lord and head of the family. Still, he knew his parents would agree to give Creath safe harbor. They loved her like a daughter.
“We’ll keep you safe,” he promised, hoping they could. “I think we can assume Sir Leonard didn’t follow you, since he would have arrived by now.”
“I hope he’s still knocked out,” she said darkly.
“Do you think he’ll guess where you’ve gone?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. He doesn’t know me very well.” It had taken quite some time for the authorities to trace the Moore lineage back far enough to find and verify her father’s heir—Sir Leonard had arrived only last month. “I’m hoping he doesn’t know which neighbors are my friends. If I can hide for ten days, I’ll turn sixteen, and he won’t be my guardian anymore. He won’t be able to make me marry him then.”
“I’m not so sure, Creath. He’s a Justice of the Peace.” That appointment was another reward from Cromwell—Sir Leonard boasted of having fought beside him in the war. “Marriage is a civil matter now, no longer any business of God’s. If a Justice of the Peace can marry others, who’s to say he can’t also marry himself? He just has to write your two names in his register. The old ways are gone…”
“Oh, mercy, they’re all corrupt, aren’t they?”
“Not all. But certainly some.” Probably most. And he strongly suspected Sir Leonard was among the corrupt ones.
“I cannot marry him. I cannot.” Creath had always been a lovely pale English beauty, but now she looked positively white. “I’ve seen his true colors. He came from nothing, and he’s not a nice man. He’s a baronet now and has a government post, a solid position in society. But he wants more. He’ll always want more. He thinks marrying me will satisfy him, but it won’t, because he will never be satisfied with anything. He will grow to hate me and torment me till the end of my days.”
By the end of her speech, her pretty green eyes were leaking steadily.
Joseph plopped onto the stool beside her, and they both sat silent for a long time. The wind howled outside, making the canvas billow overhead. The weather was kicking up. Grasping for a solution that seemed just out of his mental reach, Joseph heaved a frustrated sigh.
“Well, there’s nothing for it. You’ll just have to spend the rest of your days in hiding,” he said lightly. If he couldn’t solve her problems, perhaps he could at least revive her good humor. “Remember the priest hole?”
The priest hole was hidden beneath the false bottom of a wardrobe cabinet—they’d played in it as children. She gave him a wan smile. “Alas, I’m not sure I could last even one day in there, let alone the rest of my days.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have that many,” he quipped. “You’d die of starvation quick enough.” In Queen Elizabeth’s time, more than one priest had starved to death in a priest hole. The secret rooms were originally built to hide fugitive Catholics, who’d sometimes languished in them for days or weeks when the priest-hunters came around.
Creath’s little smile turned lopsided. “I’d wager I’d succumb to madness first. It’s pitch-black in there, and I loathe the dark.”
“I’ll take that wager—and see you well supplied with candles.”
He thought she almost chuckled. “You’re too—” Her smile faltered.
He waited. “Creath?”
“I’m sorry.” Her red-rimmed eyes seemed to focus on something far away. “Thanks for trying,” she whispered.
They fell into another silence. The canvas continued flapping, and a few snowflakes found their way inside. Joseph rose and took his time adding another log to each of the four fires, considering all the aspects of her dreadful dilemma. Examining the problem from every angle. Wracking his brain for any possible way out.
At last, it was Creath’s turn to heave a sigh. “Maybe he’s not as corrupt as we fear. Maybe he’ll give up once I’m sixteen.”
“And if he doesn’t?” he said, returning to her. “If your name ends up in his marriage register?”
“I don’t know what I’d do.” Her
