Chapter 14 #3
Richard exhaled sharply. “Afterward, Lady Wood should have been free, should have been able to live on her own terms. Instead, she was left at the mercy of her husband’s relatives.
They withheld her stipend and forced her to live as a poor relation in the very home where she had once been mistress and had been manhandled.
She should have been able to walk away and rent herself a new home, away from her nightmares. ”
Sebastian felt a slow burn of anger rise in his chest. It was a common enough cruelty.
Widows cast aside, their security stripped from them the moment their husbands died.
It did not make it any less despicable. He thought of the painted room, of Lady Wood seated with her careful posture and her quiet eyes, and felt the anger settle into something heavier.
“I tried to help her,” Richard continued. “Repeatedly. I offered her legal assistance, a place to stay, anything she needed. But she refused. She told me I had done enough by freeing her from her marriage.”
Sophia let out a sigh, shaking her head. “She did not trust men. Not after what she had been through. And I do not blame her.”
Richard nodded. “Eventually, Sophia and I came to a conclusion. If she would not accept help from me, perhaps she would accept it from another woman.”
Sebastian frowned. He already knew where this was going, and it was giving him a lot to think about.
“We turned to Harriet,” Richard confirmed. “She had already begun this … this path of hers, trying to make amends. We asked her if she would extend an offer to Lady Wood in our place. She did. And Lady Wood accepted. Apparently, Lady Slight was most persuasive.”
Sebastian sat back, absorbing this revelation.
He thought of Harriet and Lady Wood together, the way they so often moved in unison, a widow’s solidarity that had seemed natural.
He had questioned how Lady Wood had come to be under Harriet’s roof.
Now, knowing the truth, it cast the entire arrangement in a different light.
“Lady Wood reports that she is pleased with the arrangement,” Sophia added.
“She enjoys the company of another widow. And Lady Slight seemed pleased, too. It has been a transition for her, shifting from the shallow social obligations of her past to something more meaningful. Together, they have found some peace and have been a good influence on each other.”
Sebastian exhaled, rubbing a hand over his jaw. He was not certain what he felt. Shock, perhaps. Respect, even. Harriet, for all her flaws, had done something extraordinary. He had come to this house fully prepared to leave England. He was no longer certain of anything.
And yet, the sting of betrayal still simmered beneath the surface.
“She never told me any of this,” he muttered.
“Because if she told you the good she had done, she would need to tell you why she had made those changes. She would have to tell you about the bad,” Richard replied. “I believe she has not because she has not forgiven herself for her mistakes, so she assumes neither will you.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened. He had no response to that.
“If you are the man I believe you to be, I think you can persuade Lady Slight that she has done enough,” remarked Sophia. “It is time for Harriet Slight to let the past go.”
* * *
The room fell silent.
Even Finch, usually so brash and full of sharp opinions, seemed to recognize that her earlier words had done little to ease Harriet’s misery.
The scent of tea and freshly baked biscuits hung in the air, but no one reached for them now.
Instead, they sat together in uneasy quiet, all their efforts to lift Harriet’s spirits having failed.
Finally, Evaline sighed, smoothing her skirts, her fingers toying with the fine embroidery as she searched for the right words.
“Men are a prison,” she said softly. “They trap your soul, repress your spirit. Cage you in expectation and duty, while they carouse about and keep mistresses without a thought for the women they have bound to them.”
Her words rang heavy in the air, and for the first time since their acquaintance, Harriet truly heard the bitterness beneath Evaline’s demur exterior.
“I spent years locked away in a house that was never mine,” Evaline continued, her voice steady but laced with pain.
“Told when to speak, how to act, what to wear. Forbidden to leave without permission. I lived like a ghost while my husband dined in clubs, drank himself into stupors, and took his pleasure elsewhere. He was never reprimanded for it, never scorned. But I? I was expected to endure. Because that is the role of a lady.”
She looked up, her blue eyes calm and unflinching.
“Perhaps there is no place for men in our lives. Perhaps we do not need them at all. Look at what we have built together. This house is filled with warmth, with laughter, with friendship. We have each other. Why should we allow men to dictate our happiness when we have already found something far more lasting?”
Belinda nodded in quiet agreement. Even Finch grumbled her approval, though she busied herself with refilling her teacup as if reluctant to admit that Evaline had put words to something she had long believed.
Harriet said nothing.
Because none of it was true about Sebastian.
He had never tried to cage her.
As a girl, he had encouraged her interests, treated her mind as an equal, invited her to explore the world with him, to share in his adventure on the Grand Tour. She had been the one to refuse. He had been the one to fight for the right to marry her all those years ago.
Even now … Harriet pressed her lips together, her throat thick … he had defied the duke, come to her the night before, clearly committed to a future with her. He had offered her everything until he had seen the painting.
And was it fair to be angry with him for his mistrust when she had given him so many reasons to doubt her?
She had lied. Again and again, she had deceived him.
She had tricked him into a courtship.
She had hidden the truth about her past.
She had denied him the one thing he had wished for. Honesty.
She could not blame him for being angry.
She could not even blame him for thinking she was having an affair with Richard.
Because had she not already betrayed him once?
Had she not taken his cousin Perry to her bed last year, leaving a trail of chaos until Perry had wed the country mouse and moved to Somerset?
It was a mistake she had never spoken aloud in this room, never once named among this small company of women who had become her conscience.
The shame of it sat differently now, not as a wound she nursed in private but as a debt she owed to a man who had deserved better from the very beginning.
The guilt of it crushed her.
Sebastian had every reason to turn his back on her.
And he had not learned of Perry yet. At least she did not think he had.
Yet, selfishly, she still wished he would not.
The fire had guttered to little more than embers, and the painted room had grown dim around them, but no one moved to tend it.
Some silences were not meant to be interrupted.