Chapter 32
Alice was numb. Numb as she walked through the gardens. Numb as she took the servants’ stairs to the kitchen. Numb as she sat at the table.
Martha tried a few times to get her to talk about it, but she was unsuccessful. Eventually, the woman just put a smattering of treats in front of her and went about her work, keeping as many servants out of the kitchen as possible.
All this time, she’d been falling for Henry Ainsley. Had been falling for his charm and humor. For his evident care for his sister and kindness for others. But the problem with falling, is that one eventually had to stop. Eventually, the ground came up and met you.
And in an instant, she had been shattered.
She’d thought the worst thing was his dependence on drink. Thought she knew him so well, but evidently there had been more. Debts piled high enough to warrant forcing his sister into marriage. Debts that could send him to prison.
And if that hadn’t been enough, the callous way in which he’d stated it all. Not as one who wished to fix it, but as one who wished to end the relationship they’d been forming. Never mind if she could have forgiven him; he hadn’t given her a chance.
Her head fell to the tabletop.
Had her heart been trying to warn her? Perhaps all the unsettled feelings had been because this moment was coming; this moment where she learned that much like his perceived sickness at the start of the party, what she’d seen of Henry Ainsley was not the full truth.
But deep down, she knew her heart had been as blinded as her mind. It had not been throwing out warning signs in the least. Every odd feeling and unexplainable pull she’d experienced had been the result of a singular thing.
She’d learned that what she had with her late husband had not been love. It had been, perhaps, a mutual respect. A symbiotic relationship of sorts. But not love.
She had fallen in love with Henry Ainsley, instead. All-encompassing. Devastating. Real.
Moisture gathered in her eyes, but, surprisingly, as the benumbment faded, it was not grief that first reared it’s head. It was anger. And for the first time in a long while, she did not immediately squash the conflict-ridden emotion. She allowed herself to feel it.
She was angry with Henry. Livid that he’d led her to fall for him, angry at his debts, incensed at her life and previous marriage and at how she’d pushed herself to be a better person only to be left alone and brokenhearted.
Years. For years—most of her life even—she’d lived for others. For Mama and for George. How had she spent so much time on people to whom she was apparently disposable?
A single tear broke free and fell down her cheek, and that was when she’d had enough.
She sat up, brushing hands under her eyes. She was done living for others. She was going to do what she wished, and at the moment, that was not sitting at the kitchen table crying.
“Figured it out, have you?”
Alice’s eyes darted to Martha, where she was toweling off her hands, a little smile curling up her lips.
Alice nodded, picking up a sweet roll and standing. What would she do first? Anything she wished.
Martha nodded to the table. “You can take another of those for him. He quite enjoys them.”
Her gaze narrowed on the cheerful woman who had no idea what she was on about, but then she swiped another roll.
For herself. Henry did not deserve it.