While she, too gentle even to force
His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
With pardon in her pitying eyes
“When—if—you go back to him, don’t endeavor to shame him into feeling remorse with your pitying eyes, Hattie.”
She felt a pang of irritation, for she might have endeavored to do exactly that. “So what would you have me do?” It came out a little petulantly.
Lucie struck a match to melt the sealing wax. “Had Beauty been a man,” she said, “he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill the Beast rather than fall in love with it. So I say, make your husband earn your goodwill. So few men respect things that are freely given.”
“Make him earn it,” Hattie murmured. “Easily said, when he has all the men and horses.”
Before her eyes, Lucie’s elfin face turned into the pointy visage of an evil pixie. “If he can’t behave, consider staying with Annabelle,” she said. “She would never turn you away, and even Blackstone is powerless against a duke.”
She shifted uncomfortably on the couch. Inconveniencing her friends with her self-inflicted turmoil to such a degree felt terribly wrong. The fact that she was currently sharing her marriage woes so freely with a friend already broke a great taboo.
“Montgomery is still recovering from his own scandal of marrying Annabelle,” she said. “And Mr. Blackstone has a lawful right to me—he can order me home. And if I refused, they could send me to j-jail … You know this.”
Lucie folded the letter into a square and sealed it. “You don’t have to make any grand decisions today.” She gathered the letter and other documents, tied them with a string, and brought the parcel to Hattie. “Your escape kit,” Lucie said. “To Mytilene.”
“Mytilene.” Hattie took the papers gingerly. “I thought the Amazons were relegated to legend status these days.”
Lucie chuckled. “Not these ones. This Mytilene is an enclave run by female artists, near Marseille, and few people know of its existence, because it is also a women’s shelter.”
“Marseille,” Hattie whispered. France. “You know I dream of France.”
“I do. Now, this one here contains ten pounds”—Lucie tugged at the corner of an envelope—“this here the detailed itinerary of how to reach Mytilene, and this one my letter of recommendation as well as a letter from the British consul granting you an unbothered passage to France from any British port.”
Hattie fingers tightened around the stack. “Merci?”
“The consulate letter is a forgery, of course,” Lucie said, “however, it is expertly done and has never caused any of my charges any trouble.”
She had known Lucie had a network of people smugglers at her fingertips, spanning across Europe. Her friend used it to make women disappear if they wished it. Her stomach roiled at the thought. She had never imagined herself being one such woman.
“Would you really have me go and live in France,” she said, “forever, and in hiding?”
“Of course not,” Lucie exclaimed. “But sometimes, a woman is in need of a ticket—one she may use independently of anyone else’s goodwill. This here is yours. You can keep it in a drawer and feel well in charge.”
Feeling well in charge sounded too good to be true.
She held the letters to her nose. “Mmm,” she said. “It smells like the Montmartre.”
Lucie was amused. “Montmartre,” she said. “What does it smell like?”
“Like adventure, fashion, and fabulous art.”
The one-way ticket seemed to radiate bright like a beacon from its place inside her bodice as she sat in the carriage to St. James’s. It would be best to spend the night at her parents’ house to make her displeasure known, but when she finally stood on the doorstep of her old home, she felt devious and ill at ease.
“Miss Greenfield—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Blackstone.” Hanson’s watery eyes had lit with delight when he opened the door, and he stepped aside with an animated flourish of his hand. Her heart ached a little at the familiar sight of the butler’s weathered face and severely brushed-back silver hair, and the rigid way he moved, as though his shirt and collar had been starched with iron …
“I’m afraid Mr. and Mrs. Greenfield are not home,” Hanson explained as he oversaw the maid taking the hat and shawl Lucie had lent Hattie.
“When shall they be back?”
“Past the time for supper, I’m afraid—they are attending an assembly in Surrey.”