Page 62 of Red Masquerade

I knew the answer. I felt his incredulous stare on me. A scoff, almost a laugh.

“Why, yes—”

“Then this cannot be done,” I said, and turned to take my leave.

A tight grip on my arm halted my steps, and I whirled around before he could say anything, willing as much strength into my words. “If you think you can lay your hands on me because my brother and my mother have given you leave to do so, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Ire flashed in his eyes, and the kind man he was not twenty minutes before disappeared. I saw the heir then, his real self, staring down at me, taken aback by my words. “Helena,” he said again, and I recoiled.

“You may as well return to England,” I said, mustering all the courage I had.

“I will not.” His grip only tightened, and I winced at the pain rocketing up my arm. If he’d handle me like this, I wondered how many other women he’d been rough with. Was this what I could expect as his wife?

“This is atrocious behavior,” he scolded, like already he owned me.

I attempted to wrest away, but he was deceptively strong.

“You’d be wise to calm down,” he threatened, voice low. “It is already done. Angering me will only make this harder.”

“I don’t care,” I seethed, ripping myself away, already feeling the bruise begin on my arm. I marched back toward the door to the inside. The garden’s walls only felt constricting, closer and closer, like they were moving in to trap me. “You can rip up whatever contract Lucas got you to sign.”

“Really, Helena,” Lord Highsmith called. “This is ridiculous. Is having my children really what is making you refuse?”

“It ismarryingyou,” I said over my shoulder.

He followed, but did not touch me again, only scoffing in disgust. “You only need to have one. Then you can take whatever man you’d like. So long as you’re discreet.”

And he could continue his gallivanting with any woman in the city, while I was stuck and locked away in the countryside. I didn’t care to be so controlled, to have to hide what made me happy. I didn’t want anyone’s child if I did not want it, much lesshis. I didn’t want his mother watching my every movement, didn’t want to have to live amongst such a family. I didn’t want the responsibilities, whatever they were, of a Baron’s wife. I didn’t care about the title, didn’t care about the money. I didn’t know a thing of England, or London, or the rest of those countries. I didn’t want to live somewhere I couldn’t reach Flora. I didn’t want to waste my life away as this man’s wife.

These thoughts whirled in my mind, creating a tornado that churned and churned until I wanted to scream. At my mother, at Lucas, at Lord Wright Highsmith. All of them.

Scream until I was finally heard. Until the sound of my anger seeped so deeply into their bones, a worm in their ear, that they couldn’t escape my anguish, and they’d know,they’d know, just what they’d done to me.

Twenty-One

Ishoved open the garden doors, the wooden panels slamming against the interior walls. Mother came rushing around the corner as I stalked down the hall. My heart peaked at the sight of her, at the sight of Lucas following. It took only a moment for them to understand, to read it on my face.

“Helena.” Mother tried to stop me, following me into the foyer and up the stairs.

“Quintrell,” Lord Highsmith warned, calling my brother into action. Warning him of whatever mutually beneficial agreement they had come to.

Mother grabbed her skirts, frantically trying to keep up. “Stop!”

But it was Lucas who caught up first, reaching the landing just as I did. He pushed me into the drawing room upstairs, gathering me in his arms and shoving me through. I heard Mother protest before the door was slammed shut. The lock flipped with finality.

He was breathing heavily, and I realized I was, too, as I stepped away from him. I felt like a mad rat in a cage, stuck within mazes and walls, never able to find my way out. I ripped the barrette from my hair.

My brother stood across from me, his chest rising and falling, his jacket ruffled in his manhandling of me.

It was not the first time.

“I won’t do it.”

The words, as I uttered them, chilled me to the core. I had angered him before—he was only ever angry at me—but never before did I outright disobey him.

Lucas’ sneer was full of disgust, for me, as it always was. He could not look upon me without a distasteful expression, as if the sight of me forced his brows lower, the corner of his mouth to slant, his eyes to narrow.

And in that moment, for a reason I do not know, I was reminded of how we were as children: how he would look at me with fondness, his laughter lightening his countenance, an ease to his posture, a permanent smile pulling at his cheeks. How we were the best of play-mates, he and I, always together.