“It looks wonderful.” Tilly stood with her hands clasped in front of her, sorry for her absence of late. Sorry she couldn’t be there as her siblings needed her to be. Patrick and Imogen were too occupied with their own families to help. And Imogen especially didn’t wish to tangle her reputation with that of her sister. Having an actress in the family was shameful to her.

Which is probably why she had married a vicar and lived in the north now.

And while Tilly felt a little sorry for herself, she was thankful her younger siblings reliably made her life chaos. She drove herself because she wished to provide them with a fine life, with fine schools, and the best social connections possible.

“Miss,” Mrs. Tufts interrupted. She was a mouse of a woman, petite, and silvered hair under her cap and her gold-framed glasses were always dirty and sat askew her short nose. “Children, this mess must be cleaned up. It’s too early to decorate. It’s bad luck.”

“I’ve told them so.” Tilly glanced toward the housekeeper, and her stomach sank. The woman’s green eyes were filled with worry, and Tilly knew without a doubt who was behind it.

“He’s here to see you,” she whispered. “I tried telling him you weren’t home.”

“But I see that you are, and I guess I am correct once again.” Roger strutted into the room in a large black overcoat, and removed his top hat, smiling at Tilly as if he had just arrived out of her dreams to whisk her away.

She felt sick.

The merriment was instantly sucked out of the room, and the Brennan siblings quieted.

“Morning calls exist for a reason, Roger.”

“Have you been practicing?”

“She’s been trying,” Ethan shouted from upstairs.

Daniel muttered a comment she didn’t hear, but the tips of Roger’s ears reddened so perhaps he had.

“Let’s leave them.” Maeve gathered the others and quickly ushered them upstairs and out of sight, just as Tilly preferred. No sense in letting Roger terrify everyone in the Brennan household.

Roger Haskett was tall, and probably considered handsome if his personality wasn’t so horrid. He walked with his broad chest puffed out and his tawny hair slicked back, and he always smelled of cigars.

Another reason why her stomach always turned as soon as he was near. The smell made her sick.

“Are you going to offer me a seat or some tea?” He tossed his top hat to the table in the hallway under a large gilded mirror. It knocked against the potted poinsettias.

“Why are you here?”

He narrowed his blue eyes on her, then stalked closer. “You left after the opera last evening without coming to see me. We had arranged for you to see me.”

“I had a headache.”

“We should see a doctor, then. Seems you suffer a lot from them.”

Tilly wrapped her arms around her waist and shifted her body away. Running off to Dublin and placing the Irish Sea between them still wouldn’t be enough distance.

“Well, don’t beg off from what I’m about to ask of you. You better find some miraculous cure for your headaches. I have arranged for you to attend a Christmas house party that the Duke of Maitland is hosting at Haddington Court. Lots of deep pockets in attendance. You will be performing for him and his friends.”

“I’ll be away? For Christmas?”

He reached out and snatched her wrist, squeezing to make his point. “You will be there, or I will expose you. I will ruin you.”

“You have said that for a few months now, Roger.” She yanked her wrist away, rubbing at the red bruise blooming on pale skin.

“Do you want to test me, dove? Want to see how warm a Christmas is out on the streets?”

“It’s not as if I am without family. I could return to my parents.”

“And you’ll dirty your pretty hands will you, with the sheep farming? Your father is frail enough as it is.”

Tilly lifted her nose at the ugly man.

“Don’t look at me that way. I hate when you look at me like that.”

“Stop threatening me and my family.” She balled her fists at her side, her heart thumping against her ribcage, feeling as if it would burst. How she hated this man. Just as much as she hated the man who left her with child when she was only a child herself.

Matilda Brennan was talented, she knew that, and so did the stage managers who tried to leverage her success to fill their pockets. Once she was pregnant with Ethan, she had left Dublin and the stage. She waited a year after his birth to return to the theater and started in smaller provincial circuits in England. She dropped her stage name, went by her family name, and had finally signed for her first of several performances at Drury Lane.

Roger had discovered her at a smaller production and offered her a role last year. That began a frenzy of other theaters fighting to gain her as an actress in their production as well.

And now he wished to take it all away because she didn’t want him.

“You don’t own me, Roger,” she spat out.

He reached out and squeezed her cheeks in his hand, gripping until tears sprang to her eyes, and she dragged in a breath. He hauled her close, pulling so tightly she thought her jaw might break from the force.

“You signed a contract with my theater, Matilda. You are mine. And I will have you or you will kiss everything I have given you goodbye. You’ll be another miserable, hungry mother with ten brats to feed in Ireland and no coin to do it.”

She met him in the eye the entire time, even as she wished to curl up and cry. This was nothing. She had a bruise on her arm from last week. He was always careful not to bruise her face. But today, that careful consideration seemed close to slipping.

“You’re pathetic. You’d be nothing in this Town without me. Remember that, dove. Nothing. And when London discovers the truth about Ethan, they’ll turn their backs on you, too. No one can afford to befriend a scandal. And that’s all you are. You’re a lying adventuress with a bastard child. London will find out.”

“Keep his name out of your mouth.”

Roger narrowed his eyes, grabbed her dress by the bodice, ripped off the green rhinestone brooch pinned at the top, then pushed his mouth against hers in what was supposed to be a kiss. For him.

For Tilly, it was torture. She stood there, frozen as his mouth moved over hers in greedy possession.

“Mine,” he said, stepping away and stuffing the brooch into her pocket before stalking down the hall. “Pack your things. A carriage will be here in the morning,” he shouted.

The door slammed, and Tilly startled, slowly remembering where she was.

Alone, in her home, with her siblings and son.

Roger was right. And without London, she would have nothing even if that meant leaving everyone behind for Christmas.

She would see them safe and untouched. Tilly would go to Haddington Court and spend Christmas away from those she loved because if she didn’t, she feared Roger might finally reveal her secret.

Henry sipped his tea, thinking of one thing or another before tripping on a stack of books in his apartment. The china cup flew from his hand and shattered onto the rug. The small fragments scattered everywhere, and the tea splattered and stained his new shirt. He would need to dress once more.