He cleared his throat. Her jaw tensed.
“I was hoping to be able to talk this morning.”
Of course he was. What little hope she’d held of getting through this breakfast in peace faded away.
“Then talk.”
“I only wanted to…” he trailed off, leaving Augusta without a clue as to what he wanted.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye, growing more and more suspicious of his attentions.
“Are you attempting to ask me something?” she asked, her hackles raised for the inevitable fight that was about to ensue.
“I suppose I do have some questions.”
“Do you?” she asked coolly, fully intending not to answerwhatever he asked.
A pause brought her brief reprieve, but soon his voice once again broke through her reading.
“I do not wish to have you take offense.”
In a fit, Augusta snapped her book shut far too aggressively. “I am supremely tired of this, my lord. Please say whatever it is that is on your mind or leave me alone.”
The blow landed, if the flash of fire in Sebastian’s gaze was anything to go by. Once he had composed himself, he spoke in a steady voice. “I only mean to ask how long you thought you would have gotten away with it.”
She could not think about it without aching and wishing for a reality in which shehadgotten away with it. “I suppose we shall never know now.”
“Did you truly believe you would ever be able to have your own practice?”
And what of it if I had?
“No,” she said honestly, sighing. “No. Truthfully, I knew that Reginald would eventually catch me and force me to stop.”
She said no more on it, fearful that her tears would come on before she could stop them.
“And what if someone else had caught you? You would have been run out of society.”
“What a pity that would have been,” she grumbled. Her hands itched to return to her book.
“It is not a joke,” he said, and there was that terrible censure that Augusta could not abide. “You could have lost everything.”
“Everything?” she said with a disdainful laugh. “It might have escaped your notice, but I have nothing. I own nothing. Nothingis mine.”
He gave her a tiresome look. “You know what I mean, Augusta.”
“It is alright, my lord. You do not need to harp upon my foolishness. I already know that you believe me to be a simpleton.”
He choked on his surprise. “I have never called you simple.”
“You did not have to. The very fact that you chose me for your ruse tells me all I need to know. And now you believe me simple because I chose to believe that I could have something that I so clearly cannot.”
“That is not what I have said.”
“Of course not, my lord. You would never say such an ugly thought aloud.”
His jaw clenched as tightly as she had ever seen. “Is this what an alienist does, then? Put words in another person’s mouth and then analyze them? With that model, who even needs the patient?”
“You wouldn’t know, would you?” Augusta bit out. “You are content to sit around your bachelor pad with your money, which you have earned by doing nothing but stealing away other people’s futures.”
