Lucie poured the tea. “In summary, Blackstone flaunted his paramour, and he was bloody to you.”
“He claims she was a friend,” Hattie murmured.
“I still hate him,” Lucie said, and added three lumps of sugar to Hattie’s cup before handing it to her.
“She … she was caressing his cheek,” Hattie said, and the memory of it curled her left hand into a claw.
Lucie’s gaze briefly lingered on that claw. “I see,” she said. “How did you catch them together?”
“They were in plain sight in the drawing room.”
“The drawing room,” Lucie said, baffled. “Why, then he is either evil, or truly innocent.”
“In any case,” Hattie said, “I refused an introduction, as is only proper, but then he was put out that I was snubbing his friend.” And he had called her a brat.
Lucie blew on her tea. “Do you wish to leave him, then?”
“Leave him?”
“Yes.”
“Move to the country, you mean?”
“No. I mean whether you wish to properly leave your husband.”
Her mind blanked. “A divorce.”
Lucie’s eyes were intent. “Assume it would be possible, without consequence to your reputation. Would you leave him?”
“Oh my,” she said, and disturbed, “I don’t know.”
Her answer should have been an unthinking, resounding yes. She sipped her tea until the hot, sugary liquid slowed the merry-go-round in her head. “Does it sound terribly indecisive when I say that until this morning, I didn’t resent him, only the power he has over me?”
Lucie gave her a rueful smile. “No,” she said. “Not to me. I love Ballentine with all my heart—sometimes I look at his beautiful face and can’t breathe from how much I love him. I still shan’t marry him as long as it would make me his property. But now you are married, and if you don’t wish for a divorce or allow me to dispose of Blackstone in cold blood, we must work within those constraints. It is promising that you didn’t resent him at first—you normally have a good intuition about people’s character.”
She stared at the crumpled handkerchief in her lap. “I leaned in for the kiss that caused everything,” she said softly.
“So there is an animal attraction,” Lucie said, nodding, “however, that alone does not a good marriage make.”
“Animal attraction,” Hattie repeated. “Is that what it is?”
Lucie regarded her with some astonishment. “What else would it be, my dear?”
A sense of recognition between them, a forbidden pull … a warm response of her body to his scent and touch … well, yes. Very much an animal attraction. Part of her was intrigued, but her face was red again. Unlike Lucie, she hadn’t spent the past decade rigorously unlearning the deeply injected litany about female virtues and a woman’s natural lack of desire.
Lucie refilled Hattie’s cup, then she proceeded to move around the study, pulling folders from the cabinet and rooting through drawers. “A carnal attraction is a fortunate thing,” she said as she piled documents and writing utensils onto her desk. “That said, your husband sounds very unmanageable, while you—your stubborn and inflammable nature aside—are sweet-natured at your core. So, if you decide to return to Blackstone, please keep in mind that ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is a fairy tale. You do know the tale of the Beauty and the Beast?”
“Of course,” Hattie said. “You are still speaking in riddles.”
“The Beast traps the Beauty,” Lucie said, and sat down behind the desk, a fountain pen in hand. “In the end, Beauty saves the Beast—and herself—thanks to her gentle nature, self-sacrifice, and loving heart—so loving, she becomes smitten with an ugly, probably smelly monster that wanted to murder her father and kept her imprisoned.”
“It sounded more romantic when Fr?ulein Mayer read it to me,” Hattie said.
“Ah well,” Lucie said as her pen was flying across a page, “it is easy to become distracted by the enchanted castle. But the conclusion of the tale remains: no matter how beastly a creature, a woman’s self-sacrificing love shall eventually turn him into a beautiful prince.”
Hattie cut her a sullen look. “Why don’t you speak plainly?”
Lucie rolled an ink blotter over her lines. “Blackstone won’t turn into a prince, no matter how loving and patient you are. Fairy tales express our hopes, not reality. The tale of women being tied to men they don’t want is as old as time, so of course we want hope. However, the reality is, a woman’s martyrdom will not change a man who doesn’t wish to change. Do you remember Patmore’s infernal poem?