All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,39

and the hole burned in the membrane between nostrils.

“No,” she denied, not sure what he wanted from her.

His hand cracked across her face, hard, and she yelped in pain.

“A whore!” he cried, but she wouldn’t let herself agree.

“No.”

With a roar he dragged her by the hair and threw her across the room onto the bed, and she lay there, helpless, as he lifted her dressing gown and dropped his trousers.

“No,” she whispered. “No. No. No.”

TUCKER GASPED, sobbing, and tried to let go of the hairbrush, but the image shifted again, and he was stuck there, stuck in time, while….

SOPHIE COULDN’T look at her swollen face in the mirror as Bridget pinned her hair that night.

“I’ll kill ’im,” Bridget muttered.

Sophie shook her head, unable to stop the tears. “He’ll kill us both,” she said, voice leaden. “And his son will help him bury our bodies.”

She’d never fooled herself into believing that her husband loved her. But when he’d started to show her attention, there in her father’s yard, she’d seen her parents’ poverty and how hard they had to work to feed the children they had, and she had hoped. Hoped that this handsome, rich man could take the burden of her care off her parents’ hands.

Bridget crouched at her knees then, leaving her hair in tumbles down her back. “Sophie girl,” she begged, taking her hands. “Do ye have family? Someone you could hide with? Someone the old man wouldn’t think of facing down?”

“My brother,” she said, thinking. “James.” James had fought all his life, fighting through high school, boxing through his violent youth. He was a railroad worker now, a foreman, with broad shoulders and arms like steel cannon-shot. “He’d defend me. But he’s working in the railyards of Sacramento, Bridget. I don’t know how we’re supposed to—”

“Write him a letter,” Bridget said, her green eyes dancing deviously. “Write him a letter, and I’ll have the valet write a reply like ’e’s yer brother.”

“But won’t they—”

“They don’t think none of us can read. The valet has good writing, though—writes ’is daughter twice a week. If we make that bastard think ye’ve been summoned, we can get money to travel across the country, and maybe your brother’ll take you in—”

“Not directly to him, though,” Sophie said, worried for James. “He’s a good man, Bridget, but we don’t need to drag trouble to his door.”

“Someplace nearby. We can ask the telegraph office where’s a good place. We can stay there a while—”

“Money!” Sophie said, the exhilaration of escaping this vast tomb of whispers and lies suddenly so close to her heart that she could feel it beat faster. “Bridget, we need money to get away from—”

“Aye. It’s why we’ll have the fake letter from yer brother—they won’t listen to yerself, we both know that. But if a man bids you come, ye can ask yer husband, the useless sot. Tell him ye want to visit family, that ye need cash to travel. He throws money about like sand, Sophie. Make him throw some yer way.”

“We can write James for real when we arrive,” Sophie said, seeing the plan. “Tell him why we ran.” Oh, they could do it. Sophie may have been a virgin when Thomas had come to her father’s door, but she knew what her husband wanted in bed now. He would come and use her and go—but if she made a game of it, laughed like a wanton, he’d give her money so he mightn’t feel guilty about how long he stayed away.

Bridget looked up at her, face shining with tears. “Ye do that. But let us flee this place. What he did to ye today….”

She burst into tears, and Sophie stroked her curly hair back from her face. She took the brush Bridget had placed on the dresser, and while Bridget lay sobbing on her lap, Sophie pulled the pins from her hair, one by one.

The last one had a jewel on the end of it, a sparkly fake diamond, and Sophie touched it briefly. Bridget’s sobs had stilled, and Sophie set the pin down and began to coax that riotous mane from her face. “It’s the only frivolous thing about you,” she commented. She didn’t want to talk about that afternoon, or how Bridget had found her, half-naked, bruised, and bleeding, on the floor next to the bed. Her whole body ached, and would for days, but Sophie longed for her soul to fly free of pain.

“All ladies’ maids dream of being grand ladies sometime,” Bridget