Chapter 27
Hermy froze when List uttered his threat and as soon as the butler shut the door after him, she ran to the top of the stairs to her chambers. Greg stared after her. How could he have been so naive as to think that List would let him win this round.
Greg wanted to see her to discuss what she’d witnessed. When he came to her door, he knocked, but there was no answer.
He knocked again.
Silence.
“Hermy?” He turned the knob and went in.
Under the shifting shadows on the balcony, Greg found Hermy, her eyes as deep and mysterious as the night. The rustle of her gown and the soft whisper of the leaves from the garden in the background were the only sounds in the tense air between them. He took a deep breath, gathering the shards of his courage before they could scatter in the wind.
Although her back was toward him, he saw her wipe tears from her face.
“I’m imprisoning you, Greg. And the Ton will be after me when they see the engagement announcement in the papers.” A delicate but sorrowful heave escaped her, and Greg’s chest hurt with pain his heart couldn’t contain. “I am your doom. Scandal is attached to my name, and I can never shake it off. You love the Jews, they are more than your friends, Greg. They are where you belong.”
“So what? They’re happy to be your friends. And I don’t care about the scandal, nor the Earldom attached to you. I only ever cared about you, Hermy.”
“But I’d seal your fate with Christian children if you marry me, I’d make it impossible for you to return to their ranks.” If a Jewish man married a Christian woman, their children would be Christian.
“Hermy.” He kept his voice steady as he placed a hand on her shoulder. Her skin was cool, but the heat of her emotion burned underneath. “My decision to marry you is not a crossroads; it’s a path I’m already on. I’m taking it because I have always wanted to.”
She faced him.
“This path, my life, and the direction I’ve been on are not of my choosing, I admit it. I always envied Fave and Arnold for their family, and I have envied them for their wives and babies. Don’t get me wrong, Hermy, I love their children as if they were my own and their wives have become my friends, but when I shut the door to their house, I’m alone. I’m always alone, except when I’m with you.”
“You’d be even more alone with me because I’d set you on a path without return. You’d be shunned for the Ton because you’d be marginalized.”
“My parents already did that, Hermy. They set me upon a path they knew nothing about, dictating the course of my life as if it were theirs to command. I’m not Jewish; I wasn’t even born Jewish, despite our bloodline.” He paused, his gaze fixed on her, searching for any sign of understanding. “They thought it would be easier to go through life as a Christian, to get a title, and to wield political power in parliament. Yet, I don’t think my father ever asked a single nobleman about the burdens he suffered and whether he’d take this path if he had the choice. No, my parents pushed and prodded, sent me to get a gentleman’s education, and bestowed upon me what they thought was a dazzling future, and now I am the ungrateful and unsuccessful son bringing shame to their efforts and sacrifice because I’m cracking under the burden.”
She swallowed and lowered her gaze. “I’m adding to this burden and making you crack.”
“No.” Greg lifted her face by her chin, then gently stroked her cheek. “It’s selfish of me but I’m hoping you’d shoulder it with me.”
“I was raised for this life, Greg, it’s my duty.”
“You were, as was I. But our duty doesn’t lie in entertaining society and throwing balls, it lies in leadership of our country, loyalty to the citizens, responsibility to our ancestors.”
“You speak like a Baron with a long line of forefathers.”
“I’m not that person, but I hope to create a new line, a branch, so to speak. As a Christian nobleman, I can do something to honor the Jews in my line and what they stood for. That’s why I’m trying to get the bills to pass, to lift the Jewish Disabilities Act and allow them emancipation. Just look at Fave and Arnold, and at what freedom can accomplish for Jews; they are more valuable to society than some aristocrat swanning from ball to ball. Arnold forged a trade route, his wife lifted poor Londoners out of their misery by building a factory, and all the Crown Jewelers are setting Prince George up with riches that demand respect from the whole world. If these few Jewish men have made such contributions to England in the turn of a generation, imagine what the future could hold.”
“And yet, you cannot be free to live among them and fit in.”
“It’s a cruel jest, is it not?” Greg continued, a bitter laugh escaping him, though it held no humor. “To be pushed and prodded towards a future that feels more like a prison than the freedom it’s supposed to offer. My heart aches with the weight of their expectations, expectations that clash so violently with my own desires but I don’t despise the path because it brought me to you.”
He stepped closer, the distance between them now barely more than a whisker. “But what pains me most, Hermy, is the thought that in pursuing their dreams, I might lose the very essence of who I am. That in trying to please them, I might forsake the dreams I hold dear, the very dreams that make me, me.” His voice softened, a vulnerable note threading through the words. “And it’s mean, so terribly mean, that my parents did this without a thought to how it would wound me. As if my feelings, my hopes, my fears, mattered naught in the grand scheme of their ambitions.”
“You seem to think if you use your title you’re nothing but a soldier fighting for your parents, but you’re not disappointing them if you internalized a combination of their values with others that you respect.”
“Oh, but I have always been a failure in my parents’ eyes, ever since I stuck with Fave and Arnold at Eton and Oxford. Later, when I compromised you, my father’s gaze upon me shifted to disappointment and reproach. Sometimes I think my mother went blind so she wouldn’t have to see the pain in my father’s eyes when he looked at me.”
“Greg, no, oh no!” Hermy put her hand on his chest.
He looked away then, unable to bear the intensity of her gaze, afraid of what he might find reflected there. Would she understand? Could she see the turmoil that churned within him, threatening to tear him apart?
“I just ... I needed you to know,” he finished quietly, the confession hanging between them like a delicate silk thread, ready to snap at the slightest touch.
Hermy listened,each word from Greg weaving a tighter knot in her heart. She saw the turmoil in his eyes, a mirror to the storm raging within her own soul. As he spoke, a realization dawned upon her, gentle as the first light of dawn yet powerful enough to chase away the shadows of doubt.
She stepped closer, her presence a silent vow of support. “Greg”—her voice echoed his vulnerability—“I’ve long been acquainted with the burdens of expectations and the chains they forge around our hearts. But in you, I see a strength that defies the gilded cages of our station.”
A spark of resolve flickered to life in her chest. “I’ve seen what that title can do, how it’s wielded like a sword by those who know nothing of its true weight. But in you, Greg, I see its potential reborn. You wouldn’t use it as intended, no. You would redefine its very meaning.”
Hermy’s gaze held his, unwavering and full of an emotion too vast to name. “You bring noble to ‘nobility,’ Greg. With you, the title would not be a tool of oppression but a beacon of hope. You envision a society where worth is measured not by birthright but by one’s actions and kindness. And I ... I wish to be part of that world. Not as a figure returning to society but as one standing by your side, helping to build a society where everyone has the chance to excel.”
“It is not what your brother intended and I’m not whom he wished to pass the title to. I’m not supposed to have you, Hermy, and yet I want you with every fiber of my being.”
“Who is to say what’s right and wrong in using the Earldom? And why shouldn’t I follow my heart? Have I anything left besides my love for you now that I’m the only living member of my family?” The air around them seemed to wait, the moment suspended in time. “You are not just my calling, Greg. You are my revelation. With you, I see a future not of constraints but of boundless possibilities. A future where love and meritocracy reign supreme.”
Hermy’s confession, whispered in the garden’s hush on the balcony, was more than words. It was a promise, a declaration of a shared future in which they could transcend the limitations imposed by their birthright together.
“Neither of us has done enough on our own, Hermy. Our stations give us a voice and we ought to use it against those who wish to control it like List.”
“Together, we can change the world.”
“For those who deserve it?” His gaze was piercing and courageous, the man who’d sailed around the world and amassed more wisdom than his age betrayed.
“Yes, but not in the old way, not by telling them who may or may not rise. List wants to stop us from rising together because he knows we’d stand against him.” Hermy put a hand on Greg’s chest. “Society has suppressed me for far too long and I wouldn’t want anyone on the receiving end of this.”
“We’d open paths and push for laws of equality, so that everyone may earn their place?”
“And secure it for those who already have.” She inclined her head and they both knew she meant the Pearlers.
“Oh Hermy, we’d be reining from the margins.”
“Better than not to reign at all.”
In that tender moment, amidst the whispers of the wind and the rustle of leaves, they found not just love but a purpose intertwined, a calling that went beyond titles and societal expectations. Together, they stood on the threshold of a new dawn, ready to step into a world of their own making.