Free An Untitled Lady by Nicky Penttila Page B

thumb. This was foolish fancy, not the sort of thing ladies engaged in. If she were truly a proper lady, she would be concentrating on the wreckage that was her future, not trying to recall that of her past. Maddie stiffened her shoulders and nearly ran the final few steps to the window.
    Heedless of her hem, she sank onto her knees. The view out the window was the familiar green of the meadow beyond the walls, but it failed to soothe her. She rested her fists on the bottom edge of the frame. It was still loose. She pushed it aside to reveal a leather necklace, and the key. It fit easily inside her hand now. Before, she’d had to wear it under her dress to hide it.
    Back then, she’d stand, back to the wall, as she’d seen the servants do, and he would walk down the hall, passing her, and then snap his fingers. “Mouse!” If she did not scurry fast enough, he hit her. Then he would hand her the key. “Get my tools ready.”
    Scurry ahead of him, to his dressing room, where the dark oak chest lurked. Twisting the key in the lock, and pushing with both hands, she could slowly, painfully, open the lid. On one side were his tools. She didn’t look at them as she pulled them out. Because on the other side were Mr. Bun-bun and all the rest of her toys, taken one at a time as punishment for her infinite misdeeds.
    She had no toys now. She didn’t want them anyway. They had chosen My Lord Viscount.
    How she wanted to burn that chest, burn the whole house down. But the one time she’d tried she’d only spilled hot tallow on her arm, burning herself.
    My Lord forever promised to return Mr. Bun-bun, once Mouse had learned her place, but she never could. And she was always caught when trying to run away. Four-year-olds are easy to run to ground.
    Finally, midsummer festival arrived, with a huge moon to light her way the long, long way to the castle. It had taken her all that long night; she’d tucked herself away in the hayloft just as the groomsmen were stirring. She hid that damned key where My Lord would never think to look for it, and then slept like the dead until it grew dark again.
    By the time a groom discovered who she was, it was too late to send her home. Lord Shaftsbury himself decided against it. “When they ask us, that’s when we’ll tell them you’re here.”
    No one ever asked. After a few days bedding down with the housekeeper, she saw My Lord’s carriage pull up. She made herself so small no one could see her. Later, when she turned up starving for supper, the housekeeper brought her up to the earl, who told her about her new life, as a boarding-student way away south. It sounded marvelous.
    Maddie saw she was swinging the key like a pendulum. Now it was just a key, one that likely didn’t fit in any lock. He’d likely changed the lock, all those years ago. Nothing to fear. And if school had not been completely marvelous, it had not harmed her, either.
    The slights and fears that stung in those early forms were gnat’s bites when seen through the eyes of adulthood. The terrors she’d felt at Wetherby House were likely the same, just childish fantasies. What had Lord Wetherby done to her that lords hadn’t done to poor relations for ages? Her case was common enough, now that she understood more of the world. Then, she’d thought him a cruel, cruel tyrant; now she saw him as an unmarried man saddled with a traumatized, nearly wild infant. Small wonder he thought to take her to task; small wonder he did not know how to treat little girls.
    But had the Lord Shaftsbury done any better? He’d had her raised to expect the world, or at least a peer as a husband, when the truth was she was more likely to be the governess than the lady of a great house. The disappointments of childhood paled in comparison with this latest letdown. Who had done her the most lasting harm—the lord who pretended she was a princess when she was a pauper, or the one who took pains to remind her how pauperish she was?
    She’d