Chapter Fourteen #4
She couldn’t submit to surgery with that cold specimen-seeking doctor, anymore than she would allow herself to be viewed, naked and defenseless, before a horde of his students.
She knew no women who’d ever submitted to such indignities, or none that would admit they had.
Surgery was a last resort for any complaint, since it was so often just that—a last attempt before the end.
And for what? What man would want her after they were done—with whatever it was they decided to do?
What would she be left with? For that matter, what did she have?
Perhaps it was better, after all, not to know and eternally hope, than to know there was no hope.
In any case, if she knew nothing else, she knew she could do no more, and that Gray Dylan deserved more.
There were some things that were simply never meant to be. Her major fault, she decided, had been in seeking what she ought to have known she could not have. Her lesser faults were still correctable. That, she was determined to do.
When she was finally done with the letter late that night, in her own rooms, it was a masterpiece of its kind. She sat, ankle-high in a welter of her discarded, crushed, and tom previous efforts as she transcribed her final version. It spoke from her heart, but it spoke most correctly.
“My dear Gray,” she wrote in her finest script, using bits and pieces garnered from frequent references to a copy of Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms, under the Chapter: “Love Letters,” subheading: “Unfavorable Replies,” so as to coat her own message.
“While I am grateful to you for your very kind invitation to dine with you tonight, I find I am unable, after all, to avail myself of your generous invitation.
Nor do I believe I shall be able to do so in the future.
I am fully sensible of your most excellent qualities and the compliment paid to me.
But there are some things that are not meant to be, however much we should like them to be.
Please do find it in your heart to forgive me.
“With the wish that you may soon meet with a companion in every way more able to ensure your happiness, I remain, Your friend and well-wisher. Hannah Roberts.”
The letter would end it, but it would spare his feelings.
And that, after all, Hannah thought as she signed it, was really the most important part.
For none of it was his fault. He might be insulted, or merely annoyed at her abrupt dismissal.
But he was resilient and would recover soon enough.
It mightn’t even seem such a heavy blow to him, she thought suddenly, fumbling for a new handkerchief.
After all, his newfound gallantry, the way he’d seemed to cease his campaign of seduction, might have even been a new form of seduction.
She might have imagined all his other intentions, as he might have wanted her to do.
Now she wondered if he’d even be more than peeved at her dismissal of him.
Oh, he was interested in her, of course she knew that.
But she’d never stopped wondering if the tug of commonality between them seemed as strong to him as the pull of sensuality that she also felt.
She might behave properly, but she had grown up in the theater.
As for that, as much as all the rest, she was hardly the best he could do for himself, and she knew it. Maybe he did, too.
She blew her nose hard, and sighed. Gray Dylan was handsome and clever, rich and well connected.
He wouldn’t grieve long, if he grieved at all.
Because for all their fellow feeling and even the desire, men, after all, did not take such things as seriously as women did.
And wealthy, handsome, popular gentlemen, she reminded herself sharply, as she felt tears trickling down her face yet again, perhaps never did feel the same things that unprotected women did.
Whatever he felt, she decided, snuffling, as she put out the light, and whatever he’d wanted, she could give him nothing but sisterly friendship, and that, she would swear, was the last thing he wanted of her.
After all, she thought fairly, although it was one of the many things she wanted to offer him, it was the least, if not the last thing she wanted to give him, too.
No matter, she thought as she finally lay down in her bed and prepared to sleep, she’d find a messenger service that worked on the Sabbath and pay their exorbitant price for delivery.
A telegram was too chilly a way to end things, and then too, they spoke of death and disaster before they were even opened.
No, it would cost her dear, but Gray would get the note, and he’d get the message.
He’d either be angry at her or disappointed in her, and then he’d soon replace her with someone more compliant in any case, and there was an end to it.
And she would have gotten to sleep much sooner if her pillow wasn’t so wet.
It was two in the afternoon by the time Hannah found a suitable messenger service, and it took another hour to persuade herself that the money she’d save by delivering it herself wasn’t half so expensive as the risk she ran of running into him, literally, if she did.
But at last it was done, and she was assured the message would be delivered before dinnertime.
It had grown cooler, if not yet cold enough for December, and so she passed the afternoon tending to her chores at home.
She washed some clothes, and cleaned her rooms, and finally, since she felt her rooms stifling, she decided to go for a Sunday stroll.
She headed home as evening shadows began to make the Elevated’s shadow creep up the sides of the buildings to the west of it.
Although she was in no hurry to be home again, she didn’t pause to go to dinner, as she didn’t find herself very hungry.
The human mind was very odd, she thought, as she came to her own doorway again.
For she’d half hoped to see his carriage waiting there as she turned the corner.
No, it was the human heart that was so strange, she decided as she came into her rooms after finding that he’d left no calling card either, because she discovered herself as shaken and dismayed at the obvious success of her letter as she’d been at the idea of its failure.
She sat in her darkening parlor and contemplated it, and wished she’d stop weeping as much as she wished she’d stop waiting for the sound of her landlady tapping on her door to announce a visitor.
Because she began to understand that so long as it remained Sunday, she would suffer so.
She would fantasize about his coming despite all she’d written, until the day was done.
At eight in the night, she realized, she’d be expecting him to come in haste, angry and urgent, demanding to know her real reason for breaking their appointment.
At ten, she might still be sitting here, waiting to hear he’d appeared downstairs, hearty and happy-go-lucky, to jolly her out of her sullens and coax her to have dinner with him as she’d originally promised, despite whatever foolish little female crochets had possessed her.
And cursing her own imagination, she realized that she’d even be awaiting his call at eleven, or midnight, when he might come disheveled and drunken, boozily asking for a more lucid explanation for her refusal.
No, she wouldn’t be free until the sun rose again, she decided. And so she settled into her chair for a long night’s wait to kill her expectations, and end all her fantasies.
That was why she was both surprised and not very surprised to hear light hurrying footsteps on her stair, followed by a knock on her door, only a few minutes later. But it wasn’t her landlady who was standing there when she opened it.
Nor did he look disheveled, amused, drunk, or angry. He was dressed in impeccable evening clothes, and he’d his cape thrown over his arm. His face bore an expression of bewilderment.
“What have I done?” Gray asked the moment she opened the door, his eyes searching hers. “Lord, Hannah, what in the world did I do?”
And then she knew it was worse than anything she’d fantasized. Because as she gazed into his eyes and saw the hurt and confusion there, she knew there was some pain and embarrassment she’d no right to run away from. And so she had to tell him no less than the truth.