What was she to do? Justine gripped the edge of her lace pillow, twisting the velvet in her hands. Even the best servants were prone to gossip. To create a scene would make it all so much worse. When the footman announced Mr Montague, she gave the smallest of nods. And now the villain was in the room with them, his eyebrows arched in surprise at the presence of Margot.
He flashed a look in the direction of the servant, not wanting to speak until they were alone.
How much protection could the poor footman offer to them, should they need him? The boy was barely thirteen and Montague outweighed him by several stone. With another, helpless nod of her head, Justine dismissed him and instructed that the door be closed.
The moment it was, Montague dropped into a chair opposite them. His insolent slouch was meant to remind her how complete his mastery was over them and the situation they were in. ‘Well played, Justine. I see now why you have been ignoring my instructions to meet.’
‘I suspect she had been too busy, what with my arrival yesterday,’ Margot responded for her, fancying herself the diplomat between two warring states.
‘Silence, child.’ Montague did not even glance in her direction, making it clear that she was a point of contention rather than a part of the discussion.
‘I was ignoring your instructions because I did not wish to meet with you. In fact, I do not wish to see you, ever again. If you continue to threaten me, or my sister—’
‘Justine!’ The sharp rebuke came from Margot, who must think she was being overly dramatic.
‘—I will tell Lord Felkirk all I know and accept the consequences for it.’ She spoke louder, to be sure she could be heard over the protests of her sister.
‘That would be extremely unwise,’ Montague said, staring at her as though expecting he could shatter her resistance with a single icy stare.
‘It is the only choice I have,’ she said. ‘I am but a weak woman, unable to settle my disputes with violence, as some do. Nor can I survive any longer on a diet of lies and deceptions.’ To speak thus was the boldest thing she had done in her life.
She was rewarded with a flash of cold fury in his eyes and a momentary pause that told her he had no easy answer to this. It had never occurred to him that some day she might rise up and fight.
‘Honesty is the best way to deal, in life or in business,’ Margot said softly from her side, as though hoping her agreement would in some way bind the other two together.
‘Yes,’ responded Montague, seizing upon the words. ‘If we are all to tell the truth, it is time for your sister to be honest with you and tell you what she has been willing to do to secure her place beside me in the shop. There is much you do not know, I think.’ He looked to Justine then, in challenge. ‘Is honesty still so attractive to you, I wonder?’
‘We do not need to involve her in a thing which is just between the two of us,’ Justine said. Surely he would not reveal the sordid nature of their relationship. It would reflect just as poorly on him as it did on her.
‘If it involves the shop, it involves me as well,’ Margot interrupted. She looked at Montague pleadingly. ‘You have always promised me in your letters that I would help you there. I should have done so, long before now.’
‘I gave your sister the power over that decision and she has refused to allow it,’ Montague answered without hesitation.
She could not call him a liar, for the statement was at least a partial truth. ‘His offer is not as it appears,’ Justine said.
‘You will not allow me?’ Margot looked more than disappointed. She was furious. To her, it must appear as if Justine had no care for her wishes at all. ‘You tell me time and time again that you do not want the shop. You do not like Bath.’
‘Yet, she was willing to trade her virtue to keep her place there,’ Montague announced, then feigned sorrow at the sudden revelation. ‘You were always better suited to work at my side. But your sister would hear none of it. She used her beauty as a weapon against me. I knew what we were doing was wrong, but I could not resist.’
‘That is not true,’ Margot said. She was very still now, waiting for her sister to explain that it was all some horrible lie.
‘That is not the way it happened,’ Justine said. And it was not. She’d had no choice in the matter. To pick between her freedom or Margot’s had been no choice at all. ‘He forced me...’
‘As I forced you to come here?’ Montague countered. He turned to her sister again. ‘You know she is pretending to be married to Felkirk, pretending to love him, engaging in Lord knows what vice. And all because she wants the diamonds.’
‘Justine?’ Justine watched as her sister’s expression changed from doubt to horror. She believed him. How could she not? There was more than enough truth in what Montague was saying and it matched very closely to what she had told her sister.
But he had omitted one important detail. ‘Montague struck him. With a poker. If I had not brought him home to heal, he’d have died on the floor of your precious shop and we would both have been hanged for murder.’
It was plain that the facts made the story no better. Margot stuffed a fist into her mouth, as though she could not decide whether to scream or be sick, but desperately wished to avoid either. Her hand muffled the sob that matched the tears starting in her eyes. Then she was up and gone, probably to her room, where she’d have been all along had she followed Justine’s first order.
The door shut and silence fell in the room again, as though Montague expected her to speak first. Justine reflected that the wait for words could be prolonged, since she had no idea what to say next. Even if she managed to get him to leave again, it would take some time to calm her sister and to explain things in such a way that did not make her seem like a conniving whore.
Perhaps that was what she was, after all. She had thought herself the victim. But Montague’s version of the truth seemed equally plausible. In either case, it was possible that her bond with her sister was irretrievably broken. Margot would never again look with trust upon either Justine or their guardian. Who did that leave to support and encourage her?
‘What have you to say for yourself?’ Montague said at last, as though dealing with a recalcitrant child. ‘You see all the trouble you have caused, trying to get around me and disobeying my wishes? Next, I suppose you will tell me that you’ve learned nothing of the stones and the whole trip has been for naught.’
‘Not for naught at all,’ she said with a sigh. She sounded as tired as she felt. ‘I have not had to endure your touch for several months. In my opinion, that is almost as good as a holiday.’
‘Then your holiday is at an end,’ he said, rising from the chair and standing over her. ‘You will be coming away with me, today, while Felkirk is away and cannot ask questions. Tell your sister to pack as well. We are all going back to Bath.’ There was something in his voice that made her wonder if that was their destination at all. Perhaps he meant to take them only part way. There was likely a cliff or a crag somewhere between there and here, where three might walk out and only one would return. He would be safe and there would be no more troublesome women, threatening unfortunate revelations.
‘No,’ she said, feeling rather proud of herself. ‘I do not mean to stir a step from here. When Will comes back, I will tell him all and he can decide what is to be done with me.’ She looked up at Montague, trying to raise some real defiance to disguise the apathy she felt creeping over her, now that all was lost. ‘Since you cannot carry me bodily from the house, you might as well go away.’
‘I will take your sister, then,’ he said.
‘She will be nearly as difficult to move as I am,’ Justine said, with a slight smile.