Her mother had been lonely, two years a widow.
Amanda could well understand that. She could understand, too, how her mother could feel sorry for Sir Frederick's motherless children, Edwin and Elaine. What she could not understand was how her mother could not see Sir Frederick for what he was.
Not three months after the wedding, he had dismissed Amanda's beloved governess, claiming that since his spinster sister was well educated enough to teach his own children, she would be adequate for Amanda. Amanda's nursemaid went next. She was too old, he claimed. And what need for Amanda's pony, in the city?
Then, when Sir Frederick realized that instead of his being elevated to his wife's social position, the former Lady Alissa Carville was demoted to the fringes of the polite world that he inhabited, she became nothing but a burden to him. Amanda's mother was a frail burden, moreover, too sickly for his baser needs. Worse, her widow's annuity ended at her marriage, and the bulk of her wealth was in trust for Amanda.
Sir Frederick should have looked a little harder before he leaped, too. It was a bad bargain all around, with Amanda the loser. She lost her mother to despair, having to watch her pretty parent fade into a fearful shadow that disappeared altogether after five years of drunken tirades and ungoverned rages.
Amanda vowed not to make the same mistakes, and vowed to escape Sir Frederick as soon as she was out of mourning and her stepsister was older. That was three years ago. Sir Frederick had other ideas. Having himself declared her guardian, her stepfather rejected any number of suitors, claiming they were fortune hunters or philanderers, when he actually had no intention of parting with her dowry, her trust fund, or the interest they brought.
No matter that Mr. Charles Ashway was above reproach. Sir Frederick was going to turn away his offer for Amanda's hand. Further, the baronet had shouted that fateful morning, he intended to refuse any other suitors she managed to bring up to scratch. By the time she reached five-and-twenty, he swore, he intended to see her fortune dissipated to a pittance.
"Bad investments, don't you know."
She would be a penniless spinster with no hope for a home or a family of her own. The servants, no, the whole neighborhood, could hear her opinion of that. They all saw the red mark on her cheek from where Sir Frederick had struck her, threatening worse if she went to the solicitor or the bank.
She went to Almack's that night anyway, certain to find Mr. Ashway there. Surely such a worthy gentleman as Mr. Ashway would understand Amanda's plight, would be willing to wed her in Gretna if need be, then fight in the courts for her inheritance.
Mr. Ashway turned his back on her.
She boldly placed her gloved hand on his sleeve. "But sir, we were to have this first dance, recall? We spoke of it yesterday."
Mr. Ashway looked down at her hand, then toward his mother and sisters, who sat on the sidelines of the assembly rooms. He adjusted his neckcloth, then led her toward the room set aside for refreshments.
"I take it you have spoken to my stepfather?"
Mr. Ashway swallowed his lemonade and made a grimace, whether for the insipid drink or the distasteful Sir Frederick, Amanda did not know. "You must not pay heed to whatever my stepfather said. We can circumvent his control; I know we can."
"The same way you circumvented the rules of polite society? I think not. After all, I have my sisters' reputation to consider, and my family name."
Amanda was confused. "What do you mean? What could he have said?"
Her onetime suitor put his glass back on the table. "He said he could not let a fellow gentleman marry soiled goods. Need I be more specific, madam?" He turned without offering her escort back into the ballroom, where Amanda's stepsister and Sir Frederick's sister, their chaperone, waited.
Amanda did not seek them out. She called for her wrap and went home in a hackney, too furious to think clearly beyond telling the doorman that she was ill. She had to let herself into the house, since the servants were not expecting them back until much later. She was not sure what she could do, yet she could not simply do nothing. Her good name was being destroyed, her dowry being siphoned off to her stepfather's account. Soon she would have nothing left, and less hope.
A light gleamed under Sir Frederick's library door, and she was so angry she went in to confront the fiend with this latest crime. If nothing else, she would make him see how blackening her reputation would reflect poorly on his seventeen-year-old daughter, Elaine, whom he had hopes of marrying off to a wealthy peer.
He was not in the library. The fool had left an uncovered candle burning, though. Amanda went to extinguish it, but she tripped over something that should not have been lying on the Aubusson carpet.
A gun? Had Sir Frederick become so dangerous then, or so drunk, that he was threatening the servants with loaded pistols? Suddenly realizing her own vulnerability, Amanda was glad he was not home after all. She picked the pistol up carefully in case it was loaded, to put it back in the drawer.
She screamed. What else could she do, finding Sir Frederick there behind the desk, with blood and gore and one sightless eye staring up at her? She screamed and Sir Frederick's butler came, buttoning his coat, his wig askew.
"The master always said you were no good."
Then she put down the gun.
Too late. Oh, so much too late.
The servants were shouting or crying. The Watch pushed them all aside. Elaine and her aunt rushed in. Elaine fainted, but Miss Hermione Hawley started shrieking and kept at it until the physician came, and the sheriff's men.
They dragged her off, Amanda Carville, granddaughter of an earl, hands bound, in a wagon, to a dark-paneled, crowded chamber. The room was filled with poorly dressed people and the stink of unwashed bodies. A rough-handed guard shoved her forward, her wrists still bound, to face a bewigged gentleman who never looked up from his papers. She could barely comprehend his words when he spoke to her captors, so numb was she, seeing nothing but her stepfather's face-what there was of it. She never got a chance to speak before her guard led her away. She did hold onto enough of her wits to hand the guard her earbobs, in exchange for his promise to get one message to the family's solicitor, another to an address in Grosvenor Square.
"There will be a better reward for you if you keep your word. My godmother is wealthy and generous. She will untangle this mess."
Amanda had no idea if the guard delivered her messages or simply kept her earrings. He left her in a tiny room, a closet, perhaps, without a candle or a crust of bread. The next morning a different, larger guard, this one with missing teeth, pulled her out, back onto a wagon with other manacled prisoners, all crying and shouting their innocence. Amanda was shoved into a fenced yard with scores of ragged women, women she would have tossed a coin to if she saw them on the street. They grabbed for the cape she still had on, her gold ring, the lace off her gown, her gloves, even her silk stockings.
"No," she screamed, "I did not do anything."
They laughed at her.
"' At's what we all say," one old hag told her through broken, blackened teeth as she snatched at the hairpins holding Amanda's blond hair in its fashionable topknot. "You won't be needin' these where you're goin'."
Someone tossed her a scrap of wool. The blanket was tattered, filthy, and likely infested with vermin, but Amanda huddled under it, away from the coughing, wheezing women who were fighting over her belongings or trading them to the guards for bottles of gin or chunks of cheese. She spent a night and another day there, with no food and no one to listen to her protests or pleas.
On the third day she was hauled up from her corner and taken to a hearing in front of a high bench. Someone must have received her messages, she thought thankfully, for a dignified barrister stood beside her in elegant black robes. At last someone would listen to her.