Chapter 28
“Iris!” Camelia had not yet put on her day dress; her hair poured over her night rail in a disordered spill, and the pale-blue wrapper sat askew over the gentle swell of her belly. “What is... Are you hurt?”
Iris’s valise bumped against her calf with each step. Behind her, on the pavement below, Mrs. Henkings and footmen would be marshaling trunks and bandboxes, arguing with carters, fighting to protect her from overcharging drivers as if she were still Viscountess Hentley.
Camelia seized Iris by the forearms, pulling her from her thoughts. Her urgent eyes swept over her as though looking for blood.
“I am not hurt.” But her voice was not quite steady. She felt the admission tremble through her.
I am not hurt; I am only undone.
Camelia’s gaze dropped to the valise at Iris’s side. “You have your bag. Oh, Iris, what has happened?”
“Nothing has happened; I have never actually felt better,” Iris answered and could not help the faint, wildly inappropriate little laugh that escaped. “Or rather, an entire opera has happened, but it is over now.”
“Iris.” Camelia’s voice sharpened the way hers used to when they were children, and one of them had tried to slide past with a half-truth and scraped knees. “Come in. At once.”
Camelia led her to the small sitting area by the window, where a low, cushioned settee waited beneath gauzy curtains.
The air smelled faintly of roses and the chalky scent of the limewash they had chosen together last Season.
It was a pretty room, and the walls were hung with Pamela’s sketches: airy country scenes, a river, and a field of wild primroses.
“I will call for tea,” Camelia said, but Iris caught her hand.
“Later.”
Camelia’s fingers felt warm and sure around hers. “Then sit. That bag looks as if it has weighed a mile of pavement.”
“This little bag contains all my belongings. That is how little I owned.” Iris said shakily.
Camelia perched beside her, tucking one leg beneath her and giving Iris all her attention. “You are jesting. I am terrified, Iris. What is going on?”
“I am not jesting.” Iris stared at her gloves. Her knuckles showed pale through the skin. Methodically, she peeled one glove off, finger by finger. “I am… relieved. In a sort of way.”
“You have fled your house at dawn.” Camelia’s tone went dry. “Forgive me if I struggle to see the relief in that.”
“I apologize, sister.” Iris set the folded glove in her lap. “I left in good order.”
Camelia exhaled. “Then tell me why. What did he do?”
Blaise. Camelia did not say his name, but it pressed into the space between them like a thumb to a bruise. Iris struggled to get rid of every memory of him, but he was wrapped around her like a tightly bound corset, and she had to get away from him.
Iris looked up and met her sister’s eyes. “He did everything he promised.”
Camelia stilled, her face was open with pure bewilderment.
Then, slowly, she said, “Begin at the beginning?”
“I did attend the garden party. I was sad not to see you there. Is everything all right?” Iris felt guilty, troubling her sister whilst she was heavily pregnant.
Camelia tutted. “I was just unwell, but I am recovering now. Please go on?”
Iris curled her bare fingers into the fabric of her skirt, feeling the linen bunch under her nails. “Do you recall you used to tease me that I would die without a blemish on my reputation, and what a tragic waste it would be?”
“Yes.” Camelia’s brows knit together. “What did you do?”
“I allowed a man to… pleasure me,” Iris whispered. “I invited him, in fact.”
Camelia’s hand flew to her mouth. “Iris—”
“As you know… it was His Grace. We have been... Acquaintances is not the right word, but I have not yet found a more suitable one that does not signify.”
“Oh, Iris, is this why you left?” Camelia asked softly, and her gentleness almost undid her.
Tears gathered in Iris’s eyes, and she struggled to hold them back.
“No, that is not the reason why I left. I would enjoy more of it, Camelia. I left because I became a tale worth whispering about.” Her lips felt dry.
“I overheard some ladies who never knew I existed until I provided entertainment. They were very concerned about my moral health living with a duke, unmarried.”
“Inexcusable gossip,” Camelia said at once. “Iris, they do not even know the truth of your situation. But I am so sorry.”
“I am not.” The admission startled even Iris. “Or at least, I found that I could not manage to care.”
Camelia blinked. “You overheard women slandering you, and you did not care?”
“I listened.” Iris let her head tip back against the cushions, eyes fixed on the ceiling’s delicate plaster medallions.
“They spoke of me as if I were reckless, shameless, and desperate. When I left, I overheard someone speculating as to how many other lovers I had hidden in my closets. Imagine me hiding people among the linen. It was all rather imaginative. And as I stood there, invisible a few feet away, I realized something very simple: nothing about me had changed or was as exciting as they imagined, save that I had stepped into the light where they could see me.”
“You surely do not believe that,” Camelia whispered kindly.
It was only then that Iris noticed the tremor in her own hands. She folded them tightly in her lap.
“I am tired,” she said. “Seven years I have spent being very, very good. Paying my husband’s debts, cleaning his mess, wearing his name like penance.
And still, to the ton, I am either a figure of scandal and pity or of no interest at all.
Yesterday, for the first time, I understood that obscurity has its uses. ”
Camelia’s posture softened. “What uses?”
“One is that I might do as I please without bringing down the edifice of respectable London.” Iris gave a harsh little laugh.
“I am not a fragile debutante who needs to maintain a crystal-clear reputation. I am a widow, and the ton has made it quite clear over the past years that I am not important. The less important you are, the freer you are.”
“Iris…” Camelia shifted closer, so their shoulders touched. “If you are so free, why are you near to tears?”
Because I was not enough.
Iris swallowed the thought, but it left a bad taste.
She pressed her fingertips to her eyelids. When she spoke, her voice came low and raw. “Because I am a fool.”
“I do not accept that.”
“A stubborn, deluded, catastrophically foolish woman,” Iris persisted, because once started, the words would not stop. “I convinced myself I could enter into an arrangement with a man like Blaise and remain unscathed. That I could keep my heart and my dignity, no matter what he did to my body.”
Camelia inhaled sharply. “Iris, what sort of arrangement?”
“The sort you expected, I imagine.” Iris dropped her hands and looked at her sister. “Entirely outside the bounds of what a lady ought to do. And it began… with a bargain.”
“You and the Duke of Knoxford made a bargain?” Camelia spoke slowly as she tried to understand.
Iris nodded once. “He wanted my house. I did not wish to relinquish it, as you may have gathered.”
“That much I deduced.” Camelia’s mouth tightened. “What did you promise him?”
Iris exhaled loudly. “I promised him myself.”
Camelia flushed scarlet. “Iris!”
“Yes, yes, I know.” The words tumbled out faster now, and with them a strange lightness, as if every confession burned some of the weight away.
“You will be gratified to learn that all your dire warnings regarding married life, which I ignored for seven years, turned out to be entirely accurate when undertaken with a man who knows what he is about.”
Camelia grinned mischievously. “I want to understand how my very respectable sister decided to become a duke’s… a duke’s—”
“Convenience?” Iris supplied. “Diversion? The word does not signify. I did it because I could not bear to lose that house. Not for the reasons you or he believes.” She swallowed her lie.
Camelia’s eyes shone. “Iris. Then why are you crying?”
“I thought, with Hentley gone, that I could at least turn his wretched house into something worthwhile,” Iris continued, choking on her words.
“If I could keep it, make it sound, it would prove I was capable. Worthy, perhaps, of the notice I never seem to command without scandal. So when Blaise appeared and threatened to take it, I panicked. I let him do as he liked.”
Camelia’s brows snapped together. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” The answer came instantly. “He did not hurt me. And yet…” She broke off, groping for words. “Camelia, I will tell you something unspeakably strange. Being with him felt, at times, like relief.”
Camelia’s hand found hers again, squeezed, urging her on without judgment.
“All my life I have worn this armor of goodness,” Iris said, her gaze turning inward. “I thought if I was very careful, very clean, no one could ever accuse me of failing again. But with him, I felt my shame loosen. As if, by daring the worst, I could not be threatened by it any longer.”
Camelia’s mouth parted, but she did not speak.
“I know how it sounds,” Iris added quickly.
“I can hear it as if I were one of those ladies at the party, clucking behind my fan. A foolish widow, letting a rake do as he pleases and calling it freedom. But in those moments...” She shut her eyes, memory flickering: his hands, his voice, the delicious, terrifying loss of control.
“I could stop being the woman who must always be good. I could simply be… a body. A wanting, flawed, shameless body.”
“And now?” Camelia asked quietly. “Do you regret it?”
Iris opened her eyes as the tears cascaded. She felt them, hot and treacherous, clinging to her lashes.
“I do not regret it,” she said, each word chosen with care. “It is all right that he does not want to marry me; I never expected marriage anyway.”
Camelia’s fingers tightened. “Did you ask him outright?”
Iris gave a shaky laugh. “Yes.”
“And when you left, he let you go.”
“He wanted me to stay, but I could not. Not like that.”
“I cannot believe he was so cold,” Camelia said fiercely. “From what I have seen, he—”
“He was not always cold,” Iris cut in. “I do not want to paint him in a bad light.”
Camelia brushed a tear from Iris’s cheek with her thumb. “Love does not often honor agreements.
“I am not in love with him,” Iris protested too quickly. But her chest burned, and the word felt thin.
Camelia tilted her head, and she seemed to see through Iris. “If you say so.”
Iris sobbed, and the sound surprised her.
She could not stop the tears from falling now; the floodgates opened.
Camelia immediately acted, allowing her tears to flow.
She reached over and wrapped Iris in her warm arms. They leaned into each other like they did when they were children and when they lost their mother.
“Can I stay with you, please?” she asked through her sobs.
Camelia sniffed. “Of course you can! Where did you imagine you would go?”
“A little place in the country,” Iris said dreamily. “Far from London. Far from him. A village where no one knows the Hentley name, where I could be Mrs. Smith and spend my days arguing with tradesmen over cabbages.”
“Dear heavens.” Camelia pressed her fingers to her lips, half laughing, half emotionally distraught. “Iris, you cannot simply take yourself off to a cabbage-filled village alone. What will become of this family?”
“Society has already decided I am shameless and that will ruin our family’s reputation,” Iris said. “I might as well earn the distinction.”
“They can all be damned!” Camelia cussed, earning a small laugh from Iris.
“Are you certain I can stay? It will just be for a little while, at least. Until I know what shape my life must take now that it is not arranged around Hentley House’s leaking roof.
And until I can bear to be… alone with myself.
” Her mind drifted as she imagined how she would build her confidence again after ruining herself.
Camelia pulled back and faced Iris fully with a soft smile before pulling her into a fierce embrace.
“Yes,” she said into Iris’s hair. “You can stay for as long as you like. We will make up a room for you at once. We will go through this together, as we always have, and someday, you will look back on this week and hardly recognize yourself.”
Iris let her head rest against her sister’s shoulder.
“Do you truly think so?” she murmured.
“I do,” Camelia said confidently. “You are the bravest person I know, Iris. It frightens me, sometimes, how much you think you must carry alone. I am proud of you for coming to me now, instead of locking yourself in a freezing house and pretending everything was fine.”
“I suppose that is an improvement,” she said wryly.
Iris thought of Blaise’s dark, intent eyes and how he had shown her that wanting isn’t a sin.
She looked at her sister, who was staring at her dreamily.
Oh no.
“What is it you are thinking about?” Iris asked cautiously.
Camelia laughed softly. “Who knows, Iris, the scarred duke might change his mind and come right to this door and propose.”