Chapter Nineteen
There was something so miserable about rain.
“When is it going to stop?” asked Irene, apparently to herself, as she peered out of the drawing room window. “It’s been like this all morning!”
Jessica nodded and hummed her agreement as she turned a page of her book. It was the very least that she could do in response and keep her sister happy, though it earned her a scowl from her sibling.
“You know how rain bores me,” Irene said.
It took all Jessica’s self-control not to nod and hum again. What was she supposed to say? I’m sorry that the rain is dampening your mood. Why don’t you try a little heartbreak instead to lighten your spirits?
“Wilfred and I were planning on going for a walk across Green Park.” Irene sighed, dropping into an armchair and plucking at the arm. “I was going to invite you so Mama wouldn’t feel the need to send a chaperone along, though I know you’d rather not.”
“Not in the rain, no,” Jessica said vaguely as she turned a page.
“Well, obviously not in the rain!”
There is something about rain that makes tempers fray, Jessica thought darkly as she wondered if there were any way to make her sister less irritable. Something in the dampness in the air, perhaps. Something that made it impossible to fully understand another’s point of view.
Not that it mattered. The only person whose point of view she wanted to understand was entirely incomprehensible to her.
A doorbell clanged and Jessica saw out of the corner of her eye that her sister immediately brightened.
“Maybe it’s Wilfred, after all?” Irene said, her voice lively. “Perhaps he wants to go for a carriage ride.”
“You know, I am here,” Jessica said somberly, trying not to allow the pain in her voice to be too obvious. “You don’t always have to wait around for that friend of yours to turn up before you—”
She cut herself off abruptly as the door to the drawing room opened and the stern looking Mrs. Kinley, daughter-in-law of their previous housekeeper, appeared, kneading her hands together at the front of her dress.
“Yes, Mrs. Kinley?” Jessica said eventually.
“It’s a gentleman, Miss Chance,” said the housekeeper uneasily.
“Send him in. The blighter is late,” Irene said with a grin. “Honestly, Wilfred knows he doesn’t have to go through this rigmarole.”
“It is not His Grace to whom I am referring,” said the woman, glancing at Jessica. “It is a young man who calls himself Baron Llyne.”
Jessica’s book slipped to the floor.
“No!” Irene gasped with what appeared far too dramatic a tone, then turned immediately to her sister. “You must see him!”
“No,” Jessica repeated, though her meaning was quite different.
Reginald, here? Lord Llyne that is. What is he doing here? What was he thinking? Why did he—
“You have to see him, Jessica,” her sister hissed, rising and crossing the room in mere seconds. “You simply must! He is clearly here to apologize!”
“We cannot know what he wants and most of all, I do not care,” Jessica lied, her pulse hammering and hands somehow clamming at the mere thought of Lord Llyne in this house.
This was her safe place. Not just her safe place against the world, a place where she never had to worry about what she said or how she looked, a vital component of a wallflower’s existence—but it was a place where she had been that Reginald…that Lord Llyne had not.
There were no shared memories here. No pained reflections that may attack her as she stepped into the dining room. No pangs that would confront her as she quietly ate breakfast. No recollections could assault her as she lay in her bed, attempting to find sleep.
Reginald had not stepped foot here, and so it was safe from any suggestion that he may return.
She would not end that safety.
“Tell Lord Llyne that we are not at home,” Jessica said in what she hoped was a clear voice.
“Jess!”
“Now, please, Mrs. Kinley,” Jessica continued, not looking at her sister. “Thank you.”
For a moment, she wondered whether the family housekeeper would question her order—Jessica was unaccustomed to giving them, in the main, and she knew the head servant’s curiosity would be piqued. After all, the woman had cared for her father for decades.
But the old woman nodded, curtseying as she left the room.
Jessica attempted not to listen to the woman’s footsteps, tried to prevent her ears listening out for the muffled tones at the front door.
The quiet close of the door was not the slam she would have given it, but then, she had not been the one to answer the door.
It was her sister’s sigh that alerted her attention. “I cannot believe you have done that.”
“Done what?” Jessica knew her voice was too defensive, knew that she was being ridiculous—but she could not help it.
Irene had gone back to sitting in the armchair by the window that was being heartily washed by the rain. “You don’t even want to see him?”
She had. Weeks ago. She had resolved to forgive him—she had forgiven him. But he had seemed so unbothered. He had not come. Had not written.
Now, it was simply too late. For all she knew, he’d felt compelled to tell her he was sorry for what he had done, but he was moving on. He’d found some other match to save him.
“He was surely not here to beseech me to marry him, not after all this time,” Jessica said decisively, her stomach twisting painfully as she spoke the words, “so there is absolutely no point in seeing him. And besides, I… I am sure I would not accept him if he did ask again. Not after he did not fight for me.”
The words sounded certain as she spoke them, which was a relief, because she certainly did not feel certain. There was an edge to her voice because there was an edge to her soul.
She did not trust herself.
That was the truth, though Jessica was loath to admit it, even to herself.
The trouble was Reginald was that he was so…so captivating. So alluring. She could be convinced by him, she knew, in a way that no one else could. She could not risk seeing him—allowing him to talk to her could only make things worse.
Jessica picked up the book that had fallen to the floor. Her page was lost, but that hardly mattered. She had merely been turning the pages at regular intervals to give the impression she had been reading, after all.
“Well, the rain isn’t going to let up all day, I don’t think,” Irene mused as she gazed out of the window. “There’s hardly anyone about.”
“I do not suppose there would be many people out and about in this weather,” Jessica said, almost grateful for the neutral topic.
Is this what my life has descended to? Gratitude for conversations about weather?
“Except… What on earth is he doing?” Irene tilted her head.
Jessica remembered to turn a page. “Who?”
“There’s a man out there, standing on the opposite side of the street.”
It did not sound the most remarkable thing that had ever happened. Jessica turned another page, the words flickering in and out of her focus as she stared down at the page, unseeing.
“Yes, he’s standing there under an umbrella, just…just staring. At this house.”
“What house?” Jessica asked idly, turning another page.
Irene snorted. “Why, this house, obviously!”
And that was when Jessica froze. “This house?”
Book forgotten, she allowed it to fall to her seat on the sofa as she rose and moved across the room, taking care to do so as far from the window as she could possibly be. When Jessica reached her sister’s armchair, she crouched behind it.
“What on earth are you doing, Jess?”
“Who is it?” Jessica hissed. “Is it him?”
“Who?” Her sister appeared genuinely perplexed.
Jessica’s fingers tightened on the back of the armchair as she attempted to slow her breathing.
This is ridiculous. It was surely a sheer coincidence that there was a man standing outside the house.
The pavement was not owned by anyone. It was perfectly permissible for anyone to stand anywhere.
If they wished to do so in the rain, well, so be it.
Still. A part of her knew, even before she lifted herself over the edge of the armchair to look. She knew who it would be.
Slowly, inch by inch, Jessica rose to look over the back of the armchair.
“What are you doing?” Irene whispered, seemingly drawn into Jessica’s attempts at secrecy, even without noticing.
It was him.
Jessica could tell. Though the window itself was several feet away and the gentleman was standing on the other side of the road, even through the rain, she could tell it was him.
Reginald, Lord Llyne. He was standing outside her house and just…staring.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
Jessica swallowed as her sister’s quiet voice intruded in her thoughts. “Yes.”
When she looked down, it was to see Irene biting her lip. “What are you going to do? I can make him go away, if…if you want.”
If only she knew what she wanted, it might be easier to know what to do. If her parents were here and not out lunching with friends—though Jessica was not certain she could articulate precisely what it was that she wished them to assist with.
Her attention was dragged inexorably back to the dark figure holding a black umbrella under sheets of rain on the other side of the road.
Reginald. What does he want with me?
Jessica stood up quickly, her head spinning at the sudden elevation.
“Jessica?”
“He’ll never leave me alone unless I speak to him,” she said tightly. “One more conversation, then this can all be over with.”
Irene frowned. “And do you want it to be over with?”
Firmly ignoring her sister’s question and marching determinedly out of the room, Jessica strode down the hall and hoped that her courage would not fail her.
She had to do this. End this properly, once and for all.
“Miss Chance?” said Mrs. Kinley from the hallway. “Where are you going, unaccompanied? It’s pouring out there, you’ll be drenched—”