Today's Reading
Alexandra surreptitiously pressed clammy palms against her skirt and stood from her spot on the floor. Black spots scudded in front of her eyes and she nearly swayed. She took a last long, deep breath of fetid prison air, gathering courage for another kind of ordeal. She knew she would never forget the smell.
The warden stepped aside so she could exit and then at once slammed the cell door and turned the key.
And for the first time in five years, she tipped her head back to take in the dizzying view that was her husband.
He'd always seemed to her hacked from granite in stark, almost brutal, lines: a jaw made of severe, hard angles, a bold nose, battlement cheekbones, legs like pillars, a shoulder span nearly twice the width of her. A few tiny pinprick scars were scattered in the hollow of his cheeks. Another thin, white scar bisected a thick, dark eyebrow. He had survived both illness and combat.
When she'd first met him, she'd been unable to decide whether he was ugly or magnificent.
But even in the gloom of Newgate, he looked indestructible.
I do think we'll suit, Alexandra, he'd said gently, the day he'd proposed.
Two months after they'd met.
He had brushed his lips across her knuckles.
She was fairly certain he was seething now. It was difficult to tell. He excelled at cool inscrutability.
He'd been seething the last time she'd seen him, too. But then, she'd given him a good reason.
In her current dazed state, she could almost imagine he'd seethed nonstop for the nearly five years he'd been in Spain.
She turned to the warden. "Thank you," she told him. As though he'd been her host for the evening. Because she was well-bred, and the social niceties were what knit the world together.
"Madam." The warden bowed ironically. Brightwall did not extend his arm to her. Ah. So he was seething.
She supposed she could hardly blame him, given the circumstances of their reunion.
But she was certain the warden would notice that sort of thing, and he would likely happily tell everyone of his acquaintance who would listen that Brightwall refused to touch his estranged wife.
Her husband opted for a subtle, ironic "shall we?" gesture with his chin instead. Clearly the outside of a jail cell wasn't the place for the get-reacquainted chat.
She smoothed her palms down her skirts and rearranged her shoulders and took her place by his side.
Thusly, much the way she'd been installed into a cage by a man, another man retrieved her from it, as if she was a parakeet with clipped wings.
Lack of sleep and the steady diet of terror and acute, constant alertness made her feel as separate from her body as a kite aloft on a string. As though she did not belong to herself anymore.
"Fare thee well, Alexandra! I'll name me bairn for you!" Lizzy called after her.
She turned around. Suddenly, bizarrely, her heart ached at the sight of those eyes staring at her through bars.
She was reminded of something Magnus had once said to her on a sweet, breezy spring day, about heroes, scoundrels, and boors, and how applying a label to someone could be a foolish tactical move. She hadn't realized then that he saw the whole of life the way a chess master saw a chessboard.
And that included people.
And that included her.
"Oh, thank you, Lizzy," Alexandra called. "I'm honored. Godspeed and good luck, ladies." She paused a beat. "And Bunty."
Bunty spat again on the floor.
"Good luck to you," Agnes called. "I think ye was safer in 'ere."
CHAPTER TWO
The landau to which she'd been led seemed startlingly, sparklingly new. Blissfully comfortable, seats plump, redolent of leather and polish. Worth two hundred pounds, if she had to guess. Four matched bays pulled it.
No crest was apparent on it. Did it belong to Brightwall? If so, when had he commissioned it?
Magnus hadn't spoken since the driver had assisted her aboard and closed the door upon them. And he hadn't said a word to her.
"Thank you for coming for me," she said to her husband, finally. Subdued.
Her raspy voice shocked her. It was shredded from shouting over the prison noise.
For long seconds he didn't reply.
...
