The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(39)

She couldn’t think logically. She couldn’t analyze. She could think of nothing but her hunger.

I could be more.

She had no idea what her future contained, but even the little hint of relief she’d felt at his admission—one less thing to fear, one worry put off after these last days of worry—seemed to ease her burden.

That feeling of false comfort stayed with her through the walk home. It buoyed up every step, elevated every breath. It buzzed through her as she greeted her great-aunts, as she went and washed and prepared herself for the evening meal. And it changed nothing. It only made the burden of reality feel all the heavier when its full weight descended on her shoulders.

By the time dinner came, Minnie found she couldn’t taste the soup.

Her great-aunts sat before her, eating steadily, conversing as two good friends who had spent decades in one another’s company were wont to do. The conversation ranged from the production of turnips to the uses for the far field come spring.

They chattered on as if nothing had changed, and she hated them because nothing had. Because on that fateful day when her life had upended itself, they had been the ones to come get her from London. They’d pointed her down this path.

If you come with us, Great-Aunt Caro had said, Minerva Lane will die forever. You will never say that name. The person who you are today? She will simply vanish.

Gruel. Nothing but gruel—and the fear that one day, there’d not even be that.

“Did you know that Billy is courting?” Great-Aunt Caro said.

“No! He cannot possibly be old enough.”

“He’s eighteen,” Caro said. “And heaven help me if I know when that happened. Why, it seems as if it were just last month that he was born…”

She couldn’t attend to the conversation. Minnie hadn’t just taken on a new name when her great-aunts took her away; she’d taken on a new personality. She hadn’t even known how to walk like a girl at first. For that initial year, her great-aunts had constantly corrected her behavior. Don’t contradict. Don’t speak up. Don’t step forward. Anything that drew attention was absolutely forbidden; she’d found herself shrinking smaller and smaller until a walnut could have encompassed her personality—and left room for it to rattle around.

She’d been small and quiet. Having known so much more, her frustrated, pent-up ambition had chafed. She’d seized on what little charity work was allowed to women, but it wasn’t enough. And now she faced a lifetime of this affliction—of being forced to make her soul as small and as tasteless as possible, in hopes that it would fit into the confines of her life.

You have steel for your backbone and a rare talent for seeing what is plainly in front of your face. I could make everyone see that.

Damn his eyes. Damn his letter. Damn that smile, the one that made her want to kiss him back, just so she could know that she’d put that light inside him.

Anything else would be a criminal waste.

Damn him, because even if he didn’t mean it—even if it was all a way to try to fog her mind and lead her astray—he had made her believe that she could change things. And that this time, when she did…

It struck her, that want, like a sharp fist to her solar plexus—painful and paralyzing. She didn’t just want. She hoped. She needed. She dreamed that this time, when she was revealed to the crowd for what she really was, they wouldn’t mob around her and throw stones. This time, they wouldn’t call her a beast or the spawn of the devil. This time, instead of stripping her of everything, someone would love her for who she was.

A yearning like that was too big for the person she had to be.

Damn the Duke of Clermont, for giving her that hope. Damn him for his admonition to look up. Damn him for making her believe.

Her eyes stung. She aimed her fork at her plate and stabbed blindly.

“Minnie,” Eliza said, her eyebrows drawing down in worry, “are you well?”

“I am—” Perfectly well.

She was supposed to say those words. Ask for nothing, admit to no discomfort. That was the way of a lady.

But the lie could not pass her lips. She was full to bursting with emotion. And somehow, instead of murmuring her excuses and leaving the room as she ought to have done, she felt her fork fly from her hand—clear across the dining table, striking the far wall with a metallic clang.

“No,” she said. “No, I am not well.”

“Minnie!”

“I am not well,” she repeated. “I am not well. How could you do this to me?”

Eliza shoved to her feet and took one step toward her. “Minnie, what is the matter?”

“You did this to me,” she repeated, her voice quivering with all those years of unshed tears. “You both did this to me. You made me into this—this—”

She found her spoon next to her plate, and flung that bit of pewter across the room, too.

“—this nothing!” she finished. “And now I am stuck in it and I cannot find my way out.”

Eliza and Caro exchanged a stricken glance.

“I have all of this inside of me—all these thoughts, these wants, these ambitions.”

Caro winced at that last word.

“And they are nothing,” she said. “Nothing, nothing, nothing! Just like me.”

“Oh, Minnie,” Eliza said, gently—as gently as a stable-hand to a rearing horse. “I’m so sorry. I promised your mother I would look after you when she passed away. Had I kept that promise, you would not feel that way now. You would never have known…”