Page 2 of The Worst of Them

Redgrave looked up again, seeming surprised for a second time. “What?” he asked, the word only half-formed around the food in his mouth.

“I’m going to the Stintons’ estate,” she said. “I’m engaged to the baron’s son, and we are to be married this week.” She didn’t look at the walls, the swords above the fireplace, or the picture of her mother, as though any of them might stare back and demand why?

Quietly, as though to spare the house from hearing it, she told Redgrave, “You may have the house and all that’s inside.”

Save for her sword, which her father had made for her and trained her with, and a few other belongings. She would take those with her, and she didn’t expect him to protest.

Redgrave stared at her for a long moment, his mouth still half open. Then he shut it and began chewing slowly.

“I’ll want my dowry,” she went on. He kept looking at her with a vacant expression that made her stomach tighten. “My father saved for it, so I’ll need it.”

This seemed to snap Redgrave from his thoughts. “You don’t have a dowry.”

He said it so simply, almost flippant, like one might remark on the temperature of the day. Though he’d never given any implication that he was funny in any way, she nearly laughed for the first time in over a month. But when he just kept chewing with his dead, dumb expression, her brow furrowed.

“My dowry…it can’t be gone.” She shook her head, grappling with the impossibility. “My father saved for years. What happened to it?”

His chewing slowed again as he seemed to realize he’d said something wrong. “The estate has little money,” he told her with little inflection, his eyes wide like he deeply hoped she might accept his excuse. “I had to use what little we had.”

Her stomach turned. Two weeks. It had been two weeks, and Redgrave had managed to spend the money her father had saved for years? Money meant for her marriage, one of the last things he’d left for her.

Tears flooded her eyes. Not for grief this time, but betrayal.

“For what?” she demanded, then shook her head again, faster this time, because she didn’t want an answer. She already knew it. Redgrave had no money to his name, and had probably gambled all of hers away.

“Apologies,” he said in that same flat tone. “But…would it not have been too little for a baron?”

Cecily turned her knife over next to her plate, unable to look at him. The dowry was a courtesy, her family’s pride, but not the reason the baron’s son wanted her. Though she was a commoner, she had the comportment of one above her station. Beyond instructing her on how to wield a sword, her father had taught her decorum and manners for when he brought her along on business. With the right dress and a few refinements, she could fit in flawlessly with a higher echelon. He’d made sure of it, and her engagement to Oliver was the fruit of that.

There was no question they would still take her in without a dowry, but she’d be ashamed to arrive empty-handed, just as her father would have been to send her that way.

She had half a mind to leave right then. She stood from her chair, her heart keening but decidedly unwilling to stay there another moment. She smoothed her hands over her raven-black hair, braided and pinned in a coronet, as she summoned the resolve to tell him so.

Redgrave must have seen it in her face, and a beat of panic flashed through his eyes. “Stay the night,” he said, as though he were cordially inviting her to sleep in her own bed, but his bright tone was forced. “It’s too dark to go anywhere. And in the morning, I’ll give you what money I have, and you can take that as your dowry.”

He had no money, and she wasn’t stupid enough to believe otherwise. Nevertheless, he was right about the darkness, and it was a mercy that she could barely see him through the gloom.

Aside from the meals she made and the housework she did, she had no doubt he wanted her gone, and this was surely some move of his guilty conscience trying to soothe itself as he took everything that had been hers.

Without a word, she left the room and returned to her own. She would go to Oliver first thing in the morning and never see Redgrave again.

But a few hours later, when the night still reigned and morning was far off, she was awoken by a muffled voice saying, “This door?” Then two men burst into her room, grabbed her arms, and hauled her from bed.

She screamed incomprehensibly, the way one might cry out in a dream—because surely it was a nightmare. But their hands were tight on her, digging into the muscle she’d honed through swordplay, though she had no opportunity to reach for a weapon now.

Her heels dug into the wooden floor as they dragged her to the front door, over the threshold, and into the night.

When the cool air rushed over her skin, she knew it wasn’t a dream. She screamed louder, thrashing against them, and her cries finally became words.

“No, no, help!” She twisted, hoping her cries might wake her cousin. “Help!”

Dirt and rocks cut at the bottoms of her feet as they approached a closed cart, and she kept screaming, forcing her voice as loud as it would go. Surely they wouldn’t make it to the cart before Redgrave came out⁠—

The men threw her inside, shut the door, and locked it before she could scramble back out. She gripped the bars in the small window, screaming, “Mr. Redgrave!”

He had to hear and come rescue her. Awful as he was, even he wouldn’t leave her in distress. Even he would not be so cold as to ignore her screams.

Finally, her cousin appeared in the doorway, and she cried out at his appearance, reaching through the bars and calling his name. His eyes went to her as she sobbed and pleaded, “Help me, help me,” because he would help her. He had to.