Chapter 17 #2
She will come, because she always meets her obligations. She will come, because she is too proud to flee without taking her leave. She will come, because a part of her knows that leaving me entirely ignorant of her intentions would be unkind.
Even as he thought it, he wondered if the last argument had any truth to it at all.
He had not meant to overhear her.
He had followed her into that shadowed corridor only because he had been unable to bear the sight of her moving around the ballroom with deliberate care, her chin high, her smiles perfectly measured.
He had wanted to speak to her. To feel her flinch or flush or do anything that proved the night at the lodge had not erased itself from her veins.
It had not. He knew that now. He had heard it in her voice when she spoke with her friends.
“I must go alone.”
“He means to send me to St. Agatha’s in less than three weeks.”
“I will work. I will earn my own living.”
Her words had struck him with unpleasant force.
She had saved money. Counted coins in the privacy of her room like a thief planning a robbery. All the while, he had been moving her across the board of his own convenience, tallying coin and evenings, never thinking to ask what her endgame truly was.
He knew now.
She meant to disappear.
Not into a convent either, but into some distant cousin’s house in Cheltenham, where she would turn herself into an employee. Where she would work for her bread and forget him.
He ought to be relieved. She would be beyond Howard’s reach. Beyond scandal’s reach. Beyond his own reach.
But the thought niggled at him.
He had sent that note with more haste than was wise. It had gone out with a footman who owed him too much to question his instructions. Now, he waited in the hunting lodge, ringed by quiet, his mind racing too fast for comfort.
She might not come. She had every reason not to. Her words still echoed in his head.
“There is no future for us.”
He had wanted to disagree.
A sound outside pulled him out of his thoughts. Hoofbeats. The soft jingle of the harness. The crunch of wheels on gravel. He straightened, every nerve suddenly alert.
A moment later, a knock sounded at the door. Not the sharp rap of a servant, but a gentler tap.
He crossed the room and opened it.
She stood on the threshold, her cloak pulled tight around her, her cheeks flushed from the cold and exertion. A few strands of hair had escaped her coiffure, curling at her temples. Her eyes were bright, but not with joy.
“Your Grace,” she murmured.
“Gwendoline,” he answered.
For a single heartbeat, neither moved.
Snow drifted past them, cool against his face. The sight of her in the doorway made something inside him settle and then tense all at once.
“Come in,” he said at last.
She stepped inside. He shut the door behind her, and the lodge closed around them, warm and quiet and too full of everything that had happened in it.
He studied her with the eyes of a man who had spent the day trying not to picture her.
She had come straight from the ball; the pale blue silk of her gown gleamed beneath her cloak.
Small diamonds glittered at her ears. Evening gloves still covered her hands, although they were a little wrinkled now.
“You were quick,” he noted. “I was not certain you’d come.”
“I considered ignoring your note,” she admitted.
He did not flinch. “And yet you are here.”
Her lips curled into a mirthless smile. “And yet I am here. Though I do not have a lot of time.”
He gestured toward the hearth. “Sit. You are cold.”
“I had no time to fetch a warmer cloak,” she said, but she went to the chaise near the fire and sank down, arranging her skirts with careful grace.
Victor watched her for a moment longer before taking the chair opposite. The small table between them held a decanter and two glasses. He poured wine, more from the need to keep his hands busy than the need to drink, and held one out.
She accepted it, though she did not raise it to her lips.
“How did you escape in the middle of the ball?” he asked. “I doubt your stepfather is the sort of man who misses anything.”
A shadow of genuine amusement crossed her face. “Arabella fell into a footman.”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“She did it on purpose,” Gwen explained.
“At least, she claims she did. The resulting avalanche of crystal provided me with a sufficient distraction to swoon politely and request to be taken to the withdrawing room. The maids settled me on a sofa and went away. The side staircase was mercifully empty.”
Victor stared at her for a moment, before a reluctant huff of laughter escaped him. “You faked a fainting spell?”
“I did feel faint,” she said. “With nerves. That must count for something.”
He shook his head, still picturing Arabella Barker hurling herself into a footman’s path with romantic abandon. “Your friends are troublesome.”
“They are loyal,” she corrected.
“So loyal they assist you in deception.”
“So loyal they assist me in survival.”
The words tightened something in his chest.
Victor set down his glass, untouched. Silence stretched between them, broken only by the quiet pop of the fire. He felt her retreat even as she sat there, some steel shutters sliding back into place behind her eyes.
“You summoned me,” she said, looking into the flames rather than at him. “You wrote that I had avoided my obligations.”
“You had,” he affirmed.
“I am here to remedy that,” she said. “And to say that our arrangement must end.”
The words landed like a blow he had not seen coming, though he should have. He kept his face neutral.
“Must it?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “I have changed my mind. I no longer need your assistance. The nights we agreed on need not be fulfilled. You may consider your obligation discharged.”
He watched her closely. Her posture was too straight. Her voice too level. He knew a lie when he heard one because he had spent too many years listening to men in meeting rooms trying to mask losses and debts beneath polite phrases.
“You have found another way to make money,” he murmured. “So quickly?”
“I have reconsidered my needs,” she offered. “I will manage with what I have.”
He thought of the little purse he had seen in her hand, of the desperate calculation in her eyes as she spoke to her friends. Manage was a generous word for what she was planning.
“You told your friends otherwise,” he said quietly.
Her head snapped toward him. “You were listening?”
“Yes. Unintentionally at first. Then less so.”
Color rose in her cheeks. “You had no right.”
“Perhaps not,” he conceded. “But I have it now. I know you mean to leave for Cheltenham.”
She hissed out a breath, as if struck. “Then you also know that I do not need your money any longer. I will work. I will earn my own living. I will not be beholden to you.”
“You would rather be beholden to a distant cousin who has never lifted a finger on your behalf,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered. “At least she does not wish to purchase my body in exchange for charity.”
His anger flared. “That is not what I am doing.”
“That is precisely what you are doing,” she shot back. “Or did you think I would be grateful to be kept like a mistress for seven nights and then dismissed?”
The word mistress cut deeper than it ought. Victor heard his father’s contempt in it, the scorn of men at White’s when they spoke of women who lingered in their beds too long.
“You agreed,” he reminded her, more harshly than he had intended.
“Yes,” she hissed. “I agreed in desperation. That does not mean I cannot remedy my own folly.”
Folly.
He had not thought himself capable of feeling wounded by such a simple word. Yet hurt settled in, low and unfamiliar.
“You regret everything, then?” he asked.
She hesitated. Her mouth trembled. For a moment, the truth shone in her eyes. “Yes,” she lied.
He saw it. The small flutter at her throat. The way her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass until her knuckles blanched.
She did not regret a thing. She was suffering. There was a difference.
I know you do not.
He crushed the thought.
“If that is your wish,” he said, forcing his tone into cold courtesy, “then the arrangement ends.”
She swallowed. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“You will not accept more money?” he asked.
“No,” she replied. “I will keep what you have already given. It will help. The rest I will obtain elsewhere.”
“By becoming a governess,” he said flatly. “In a house with children and unfamiliar men and no one to shield you from insult.”
“I do not require shielding,” she snapped. “I am not a child.”
He leaned back, studying her. Her chin was tilted stubbornly. Her eyes shone suspiciously.
To his surprise, He found that he did not wish to let her go.
“This is foolish,” he muttered. “You could be safe with me.”
“At my own expense,” she retorted. “You are not safety, Victor. You are a reprieve.”
The use of his name did something uncomfortable to his ribs.
“And what exactly do you imagine Cheltenham will be?” he asked. “A paradise?”
“A beginning,” she said. “One that belongs to me.” She rose, setting her untouched wine glass on the table with care.
“I have told you what I came to say. Our… arrangement is at an end. I wish you a good night, Your Grace. And good fortune with whatever perfectly suitable bride your mother chooses for you.”
He stood up as well, his irritation flaring hotter. “You walk into danger out of pride.”
“And you invited me into sin out of curiosity,” she returned. “We are both at fault.”
She turned away before he could reply. The swish of her skirts stirred the air. She crossed toward the door with the same grace she had entered, but he could see the tension in her shoulders.
He could let her go. In truth, it was the simplest thing. She wished to leave. He had already told himself he must not care.
Yet, as her hand reached for the knob, another image rose in his mind unbidden: Howard Tull’s temper. The sharp, cold way she had spoken of it. The vulnerability of a young woman traveling alone to a town where she knew no one but a distant relative. The way rumor clung to her name like burrs.
He also saw with unwelcome clarity the way she had looked when she shattered under his hands. The trust she had not meant to give and he had not deserved.
If she left under the cover of some hastily devised plan, with little money and fewer allies, a single misstep could ruin everything she had bled to preserve.
“Gwendoline,” he called.
She paused, half-turning.
“If you insist on ending this,” he said, keeping his tone even, “then so be it. But running will put you in danger.”
Her eyes flashed. “You know nothing of it.”
“I know enough,” he insisted. “Enough to see that you mean to vanish like a heroine in some romance novel, without considering that the world does not bend for courage. It breaks it.”
“I would rather risk breaking than remain here,” she said stubbornly.
He believed her.
She opened the door. “You have made your opinion clear. I will still go.”
She walked out into the night, her cloak swirling around her. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving him alone with the fire and the echo of her defiance.
Victor stood very still. He had wounded her pride, and she had wounded his.
That was the superficial account. Beneath it, something deeper tugged.
If he did nothing, she would attempt her escape. She might succeed, she might not. A thousand small threats lurked between London and Cheltenham. A hundred ways for a woman to disappear.
He realized, with a clarity that settled cold and hard in his chest, that he could not allow it.
He did not know yet what he would do. He knew only that he would not watch her walk into danger and then comfort himself with the lie that it was none of his business.
Whatever they were or were not to each other, whatever terms they had set and broken, she had become more than an obligation on a page.
And he was not finished with her yet.