She looked into his dark eyes, seeing the crack in his polished armor. I'll be here at dawn. She rasped. Henry didn't smile, but a muscle feathered in his jaw.
I don't doubt it. Morning tasted like old copper and bruised bone. Basia woke before the sun, her body entirely locked up. When she tried to push the thin wool blanket off her chest, her right shoulder screamed with a sharp, tearing heat.
She lay staring at the water stains on the low plaster ceiling of her rented room, mapping the fresh damage. Her ribs throbbed with a dull, sickening rhythm. Her thighs felt as though they had been beaten with an iron rod. She forced herself to sit up.
It took three tries. She didn't look in the cracked mirror over the washbasin. She already knew the damage. Instead, she wrapped a strip of clean linen tightly around her bleeding knuckles, pulled on a stiff, dry pair of trousers, and drank a cup of water that tasted faintly of tin.
The 50 guineas sat in a wooden box under her floorboards. She could have stayed in bed. She could have bought a week's worth of coal, a bottle of laudanum, and slept for three days. But the memory of the Duke kneeling in the mud, staring at her with something close to actual respect, gnawed at her.
Henry Cavendish didn't hand out respect. He bought people, used them, and dismissed them. She walked the three miles to Ashbourne Hall in the dark. West was already turning the carriage horses out into the lower pasture when she limped into the yard.
He stopped holding a leather halter and stared at her. "You look like a corpse, miss," he said flatly. "Good morning to you, too, Taryn," Basia grunted, heading straight for the tack room. She didn't ride Ruin that day, or the next.