Chapter 6 #3
The fear, the remembered taunts, the years of silent endurance all looked smaller from a distance. Faded. Like ink washed thin by time.
She was no longer that girl.
Lord Abbott had seen her. Truly seen her.
He had drawn her into his arms and kissed her with conviction beneath moonlight softened by spring haze.
He had whispered poetry, tender and sensual, and called her Botticelli’s Venus.
He had sought her company with purpose, with intention.
No man as admired as he was would do such things unless he wished to.
He had chosen her.
“He is,” Gwen said.
The words were crisp and clean as snapped linen. Unapologetic.
She had given him ample opportunities to turn away. Yet he had remained, pursuing her with sincerity and something tender that lived beneath the surface of his charm.
From the corner of her eye, she caught the swift flick of Octavia’s glance. Surprised, then fiercely proud.
Milly blinked. The reaction was faint, but it betrayed her surprise. That Gwen had answered with conviction seemed to upend her expectations. Her expression reassembled itself into something patronizing.
“Certainly, dear. An heir must ensure the continuation of the line.”
Broodmare, is it?
The inference stung. But Gwen did not flinch.
And why should she? Lord Abbott had never sought a wife. He had not paraded about Almack’s courting likely matches. He had admitted, with all the bluntness of a man caught unawares, that marriage had not entered his thoughts until her. It was not obligation that had led him to her door.
“Certainly,” Gwen replied smoothly, her voice like silk stretched taut. “That is his duty.”
She spoke with the serenity of someone holding a winning hand.
Milly’s eyes narrowed, her lips twitching.
She pressed a manicured hand to her curls, smoothing an imaginary flyaway as she delivered her next barb.
“Do not be alarmed when he grows bored and seeks the attention of more … lovely ladies of the ton. I, myself, was hailed as a diamond of the first water.”
The smugness was almost luminous. She tucked a curl behind her ear in a practiced gesture of self-congratulation, clearly imagining that Gwen would shrink beneath the comparison.
But she did not.
Gwen felt a strange, exhilarating lightness take root in her chest. Not giggling light, but the clarity that comes when shame slides away and the truth is allowed room to breathe.
Octavia’s head jerked forward in warning, her lips parting to deliver what would no doubt be a colorful retort. Her crooked teeth flashed like a wolfhound’s. But Gwen lifted a hand slightly, enough to still her.
She had this.
“I heard your Lord Tuttle is continuing his line,” Gwen said, her tone airy and pleasant. “His mistress in Cheapside is said to be increasing, I believe?”
Milly drew back a fraction, her upper lip twitching in a gesture that could have passed for a sneer, or perhaps, in that moment, a suppressed hiss.
It was well known, even if never spoken aloud, that men of the peerage often kept mistresses.
As Octavia had pragmatically noted the day before, such arrangements were common knowledge but never openly acknowledged, especially not in the midst of a modiste’s elegant shop.
“I am merely thankful,” Gwen said lightly, “that my betrothed is young … and besotted with me.”
She lifted a hand to her hair—those long, flame-kissed tresses that had earned her more ridicule than admiration in her youth—and twined a curl between her fingers with new appreciation.
The world had always insisted her coloring was unfashionable.
But in the soft moonlight, beneath Lord Abbott’s gaze, she had felt radiant.
He had compared her to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, not mockingly, but as though it had risen spontaneously from within his soul.
She was tall and willowy, certainly, and her hair did echo that legendary goddess’s vivid hue.
But more than that, she remembered how he had looked at her. Like she was art come to life.
And his interest had been no act. She had felt the truth of it, undeniable and arresting.
She was not some practical acquisition chosen for lineage or coin. She was a woman wanted. Passionately, irreversibly.
“Which is why,” she added with a subtle smile, “we shall enjoy our travels to Italy once we are married.”
Lawks. The thought had tumbled from her lips without due caution.
A flush of heat rose beneath her collar as she registered what she had just revealed. Was she overstepping? Had she claimed too much? She had only meant to speak her hope aloud, to stake a small claim in the bright future that now shimmered within reach.
But for the first time, Gwen felt what it was to own her circumstance, to believe in the sincerity of Lord Abbott’s intentions and the wild possibility that something resembling her parents’ great love might be blooming anew.
To believe that she could be cherished.
To imagine children whose eyes lit when they looked upon their parents. Secure, adored, proud.
Milly gave a dismissive huff. “We shall see.”
It was a weak parry. A final flick of the foil with no strength behind it.
Gwen smiled, radiant and firm. “We will.”
Octavia’s eyes glistened with pride, her entire posture bouncing with barely concealed triumph. Her mistress, at long last, was standing her ground.
Gwen caught the expression and made a subtle face in return, as though to say, Good heavens, did I truly say all that aloud?
Still, the thrill of striking back instead of fleeing sent a fizzing energy through her limbs. Lawks, she thought again, half-amused, half-alarmed. I hope I have not overstepped.
She did not wish to be one of those girls who grew vain at the first taste of triumph, only to have her pride crumble with the next social blow. But Lord Abbott had seemed sincere, and everything Octavia had relayed about his family spoke of kindness and honor.
Perhaps … just perhaps … this truly was her time.