Again, My Lord: A Twist Series Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bringing the statue here from the auction had been her reason for making the journey, the excuse for taking Harry away from home. If she returned to Herald’s Court with it, Richard would be infuriated. And he would suspect her of subterfuge.
    Staring out into the rain, she considered telling Jackson not to unharness the team now, and chasing after her family’s carriage. Perhaps this was a sign: her opportunity to escape.
Finally
.
    But Richard’s threat glued her feet to the floor. If she ever complained to her family, he would send Harry off to live with his sister in York—his sister who liked to use the cane on servants and children as often as possible.
    She would never complain. No one need know what her marriage truly was. And she had a plan: wrest Harry away from her husband by whatever means possible. If that meant returning to Herald’s Court with the assurance to her husband that Harry needn’t be a burden any longer, that he was remaining indefinitely with Evelina and her mother at Dashbourne, then so be it. That she might rarely see her son again was a misery she would endure for his sake.
    With agitated fingers she pulled off her boots and sat on the bed beside the crate.
    Her mother had written to her about this statue with such excitement. A private antiquities collector not far from Herald’s Court had recently died, and all the art was auctioned off. But the collector’s son knew that Lady Chance wanted that statue for the museum exhibit she hoped to mount in London someday, and he sold it to her via letter before the public auction. It was far too valuable to send by post, though. Calista had seized upon the opportunity to take Harry away: how wonderful, she had told Richard, that she could be courier for her mother, and then her mother and Evelina would entertain Harry for a month in return.
    Hotly possessive of her attention, Richard perpetually imagined himself in competition with his own son. The arrangement had made good sense to him. Screaming from the prickling pain of his gout, and shouting at every tiny sound Harry made in the house, he had declared that his wife must go, but hurry home immediately. When she asked to be able to go all the way to Dashbourne to see her mother, he forbade her to take more than a single night away. He needed her. If she remained away any longer, she would pay.
    She would pay.
    The same threat he always leveled. The threat he always made good on. And so she had come as far from Herald’s Court as she could in a single day, to this inn in this village a mere two hours away from the home she had returned to only once in six years: for her father’s funeral.
    She would find another way of transporting the statue to her mother. Until then, she would just have to hide it from Richard.
    The crate was nailed shut, but the wood was soft enough so that with the side of her palm wedged under the edge she could shove the lid open. Inside, wood shavings made a bed for the statue wrapped in folds of felt. Brushing the shavings aside, she pried the bundle out and lifted it onto the bed. Approximately two feet long, it was astonishingly heavy and made a depression in the mattress.
    Calista unfolded the felt. Almond-shaped eyes stared blankly up at her from a face of perfect classical proportions. Two thousand years old, the Aphrodite carved of alabaster was indeed a masterpiece. With cascading hair and a garment that caressed the goddess’s curves as though it flowed from her very skin, she seemed almost alive.
Real
. Full of love and affection and desire and lust and all the joys that the Goddess of Love bestowed on mere mortals.
    Foolishness
.
    Hauling the stone into her arms, Calista placed it on the dressing table, the single piece of furniture other than the bed in the room, beside a basin and pitcher of water for washing. What she had seen of this inn as yet seemed unexceptionable. The stable and foyer were well kept, the rugs cozy and the bed linens clean. But the