Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Might?” Nanny scoffed. Then she stood up, dropping her fists on her hips.
“Always, miss, you have been the practical one. You have seen what happens to foolish girls. You have seen your father with a clear-eyed gaze knowing what he wants and what he will ignore. What did you tell me when you were a child and wanted to become Betty? What did you say to me?”
Janelle turned away, the words stuck in her throat.
She knew exactly what Nanny was driving at, but she didn’t want to admit it.
The words had been bouncing around her brain ever since her first nighttime fantasy of Gabriel.
They were what kept her from ending her engagement before.
They stayed her hand right now. But what if all it took was for her to be bold, to face the worst and still carry on?
What if all she needed to do was be brave and she could have everything she wanted?
“What did you say to me?” Nanny pressed.
“That Papa looked for advancement. So long as I acted the proper miss and married who he declared, then he would see nothing else. He cared for nothing else.”
“There’s more,” Nanny said. Her tone had gentled, but there was still steel behind her words. “Say it all.”
Janelle looked into the eyes of her closest friend and companion.
She studied the woman’s long nose and clear eyes.
She knew there had been men looking at Nanny some years ago.
She might have married one of them and gone off to a new life free of deception.
She hadn’t. And maybe that was because she had dedicated herself to helping Janelle gain her dreams.
“I told you he cared for nothing else than advancement. His love was for that, not for me. He might care for a girl in a distant kind of fondness, but only if I did not challenge that.”
“And in all this time, has he given any indication of a change? That his feelings are more tender toward you than you thought?”
Janelle’s eyes watered, but she did not shed the tears. She had spent too long crying as a child as she tried to gain tenderness from her only surviving parent. “No,” she whispered.
“No,” Nanny repeated. “Indeed, I have heard nothing from him except delight at your upcoming nuptials. He has crowed to friend and foe alike. My grandson will be an earl. That’s what he says from the moment he wakes until he stumbles drunken back into his bed. I will be the grandfather of an earl.”
Janelle knew it was true, and she hated it with a blistering fury.
She wasn’t the first girl to be nothing more than a token to be traded for social advancement.
Indeed, that was her sole purpose, according to her father.
If only he would see her as Betty. If only he valued the things that she did, as Gabriel did, as even Lord Benedict seemed to.
“I have been so lucky,” she said. “I have found a life I love, and a man who values that I do it.”
“Can he support you as you have been here? Can he give your children the life you’d have with Lord Benedict?”
Of course not. Few men in the world were as wealthy as Lord Benedict.
His children would be educated in the best schools, would have royals as their playmates, and she would see that they pursued their passions, whatever stirred them.
The girls as well as the boys. It was possible if one could pay for the right tutors.
“What if I love someone else?”
“Then you do what every other woman of your set does. You take him as a lover. You keep chaste until the children come, and then you—”
“He won’t do that. He has already said so. He is too honorable.” She nearly spit out that last word.
“Then he is too good a man to take you away from Lord Benedict even if he does love you. Especially if he loves you.” Nanny leaned over and picked up Lord Benedict’s letter.
She forcibly opened Janelle’s hand and set the missive there.
“You’ll find a way to get what you want,” she said.
“You always do. But you can’t do it in the open. I thought you knew that.”
She did. But just once she wanted to step into the sunlight and declare her future as only a man could.
She would be Betty and damned to all the things that had stopped her from doing it before.
Forget her comfortable life, ignore a wealthy, respectable future.
She could scrabble for coin. Midwives made enough.
But could she do it to her children, too? Could she damn them to a peasant’s life when they could be born into privilege? What kind of mother did that to her children? Especially when it was perfectly normal for a woman of her set to marry wealth then take a lover.
Damn it, why had she fallen for a man of honor?
“Is it settled then?” Nanny pressed. “Do I need to talk more reason to you?”
“No, Nanny,” she said, her words slow as she thumbed open Lord Benedict’s letter. “I am rational again.”
Rational, yes. But stubborn, too. As soon as Nanny left her room, she set the letter aside and dressed as quickly as she could. Then taking her heart and her determination in hand, she knocked lightly on her father’s bedroom door.
He was awake, shaved, and in his dressing gown as he sat by the fire. He greeted her in the usual way, not even looking up from the racing sheets. “Why are you interrupting me? It’s hours before teatime.”
“Father,” she began, “what if I fancied a man different than Lord Benedict?”
He looked at her, his expression flat. There was no interest in his gaze, no curiosity in his expression.
Then he answered her with the hard end of a cane.
She hadn’t seen it near his hand or she would have been more careful.
But it had been on the other side of chair, and he could be fast when he chose.
He hit her with stunning force, knocking her to the floor and cutting off her breath.
He knew not to beat her face, but he could crack a rib or two without killing her. Especially when he dropped the cane to use heavy fists.
No soul came to save her, and she had nowhere to run in this house. The servants supported her silently, keeping her secrets and filling her bath. But when it came to a choice between herself and her father, their allegiance was clear.
Her father’s valet held the bedroom door closed so she could not escape.
And in this way, she knew that any attempt to change her wedding plans would have to be a complete break. Her father would give her no quarter, no forgiveness, and no choice whatsoever.