“Please, Arthur,” Lady Harrington hissed.
“Just have Higgins throw him out before he soils another carpet.”
The stranger looked down at the mud spreading beneath his boots.
“If you have a cloth, I shall clean it myself.”
Lord Harrington laughed so loudly that Clara joined him without understanding why.
“Listen to the fellow offering to scrub my floor.”
Emily put down her needle.
“He is bleeding, Father.”
“Then he may bleed outside.”
The stranger’s eyes moved to her, and she saw that his exhaustion was genuine.
A narrow cut ran from his hairline to his eyebrow, but the deeper injury seemed to be in his leg.
He was holding himself upright through an effort of will that no one else at the table had noticed.
Emily rose.
“Sit down,” her mother said.
“There is a chair by the kitchen fire, and Higgins can bring hot water.”
“Emily, I did not give you permission to speak.”
The stranger straightened from the doorframe.
“I shall leave if my presence puts the young lady in difficulty.”
Arthur Harrington’s expression changed.
He had found an opportunity for amusement, and amusement was one of the few luxuries he could still afford.
“Not so quickly, my good man.”
He set down his glass and regarded Emily with a cruel little smile.
“You appear to have made an impression upon my eldest daughter.”
Emily felt her stomach tighten.
“Father, please.”
“She has been a burden to this house for twenty-one years, and no respectable gentleman has shown the slightest interest in taking her away.”
Lady Harrington folded her hands and said nothing.
Clara giggled into her napkin.
“Perhaps providence has finally sent her a husband.”
Arthur pointed at the stranger.
“What say you, fellow?”
“Would you take this solemn little creature off my hands in exchange for a dry coat and a hot supper?”
The stranger did not smile.
Emily stood motionless, feeling the old humiliation become something sharper and colder.
Her father had insulted her before, but he had never offered her to a stranger as though she were a worn-out chair.
“I am not yours to give away,” she said.
The room fell quiet.
Arthur’s face darkened.
“You will apologize.”
“No.”
The word surprised Emily almost as much as it surprised him.
She had spent years measuring every response against the punishment it might bring.
Tonight she had looked at a wounded man and discovered that she was more ashamed of her family’s cruelty than she was afraid of its consequences.
