“Did you lose?”
“Much more than I’d wagered. It’s only during the past couple of days that I’ve come to realize exactly how much.” She was left with the impression that whatever he’d lost had something to do with her. Although perhaps that was just wishful thinking on her part. “I know a thing or two about painful memories. You don’t have to tell me how you came to be with Hollingsworth if it’s too agonizing.”
But she wanted him to know. It seemed important that he know. It also seemed important she learn the specifics regarding his painful memories,only she wasn’t going to beg for them. Although she suspected the railway accident was at the heart of it all. She felt like she was wandering through a forest of brambles, not quite sure of her footing, hitting snags along the way. Every time she was convinced she had him figured out, she discovered she didn’t.
“We returned home, unexpectedly welcomed with cheers and excitement. Mum dashed a few hopes when she explained that we’d been unable to locate his family but were continuing the search. The falsehood didn’t sit well with me. We were simply continuing the farce. I tried to persuade her to tell them the truth, but she just became more withdrawn, melancholy. I worried so. And then one day... she confessed everything to her dearest friend. As it turned out, she wasn’t a friend at all. She announced it to the entire village. Just as my mother feared, the shopkeepers, tradesmen, and pub owners wanted what was owed. And we had no way to pay them. I tried to find employment in the village, but no one would hire me. They no longer trusted me. And that hurt, Langdon, so badly. I didn’t know it was possible to be in so much pain without a visible wound.”
“Hold there,” he said before getting up, walking to the table that housed his spirits, and pouring scotch into a glass. When he returned, he handed it to her.
Grateful, she took a large, unladylike swallow before offering it to him and watching as he took a small sip.
“I’m sorry you experienced all that,” he said.
“I didn’t blame the villagers. All those years of debt.” Just as she had then, she felt an urge to punch something. “My father made some payments over the years but when they each presented the balance of what was owed... it would take a lifetime to pay it back. Some were muttering about debtor’s prison. I determined I would need to return to London. To be honest, I saw that as no hardship as I’d fallen in love with the city while we were there. It was so alive. An abundance of people moving about so quickly, chasing after life rather than just waiting for it to pass by. I was convinced I could find employment and a better wage. My mother was a true villager. She wasn’t comfortable with leaving, so she stayed.”
It was a relief in a way because not having her mother there gave her more freedom and allowed her to be not quite so honest regarding what she was actually doing to secure money. She appreciated that Langdon was patiently waiting for her to continue.
“I had very few coins when I arrived in London. I took lodgings in a less affluent area of town.” A nice way of saying she’d moved to the rookeries. She hadn’t even known people lived in such squalor. Her small village was lovely cottages with thatched roofs and colorful gardens. Oh, certainly, a house or two was in need of repair but neighbors helped neighbors. No one dressed in rags, went hungry, or slept in a bed with strangers. Fortunately, the boardinghouse in which she’d resided was clean and she had a tiny room with a small bed she shared with one girl. A girl who snored. “I found a position as a seamstress with a modiste.”
She couldn’t help herself. She held up the section she’d been sewing. “As you can see, I’m quite skilled with a needle. I was paid per piece, as long as the stitching was perfect. In theory, the faster I was, the more I would earn. The hours were long, but it was the only skill in which I had any confidence. I was there for two years. Then one afternoon, after I’d just finished a lovely sea-green ball gown, the shop owner was looking it over and decided the stitching wasn’t up to snuff. Mind you, she didn’t think it was untidy to the point it needed to be ripped out and redone. She simply wasn’t going to pay me for it. Which as you can well imagine didn’t sit well with me. We were in a back room arguing and I was threatening to quit if she didn’t give me the money I was owed for my labor. Suddenly a gentleman walked in. I’d seen him on a few occasions, sitting in a chair in the front of the shop while a young lady was being fitted in the back. I assumed she was his wife. Turns out she was his sister. He asked if it was his sister’s gown causing all the fuss. Madame said that it was, and he ordered her to pay me or he’d take his business elsewhere.”
“Hollingsworth, I presume.”
She nodded and took another swallow of the scotch. “Resentfully she did pay me. As soon as I had the coins in hand, I gave my notice. He invited me to join him for a cup of tea in a shop down the street. He filled me up on tea, cakes, and the promise of a life far better than the one I presently had. He’d caught glimpses of me at the dress shop on other occasions and was quite taken with me. I didn’t accept his offer right away. I did try to findother employment. But nothing paid well when it came to earnings. At a couple of places where I interviewed—one was a mercantile shop and the other a grocer’s—it was made clear that I would be expected to... lift my skirt on occasion. If I was going to do that, I might as well accept Hollie’s offer. Leave the squalor behind. Receive an allowance that would allow me to pay off my father’s debt more quickly. Bring my mother some peace of mind. And he gave me time for us to become friends first.” She said the last because she didn’t want him to think she’d felt that she’d been coerced or forced into the arrangement. “Who did I know in London who was going to care what I did? To be honest, I found it exciting, adventurous. He introduced me to a world that was very different from the one in which I’d grown up. My father had always told me someday I would have a lord. And now I did.”
“Still, it couldn’t have been easy, not at first. People being as judgmental as they are.” True compassion floated through his deep voice. She was beginning to like him a little too much.
“It was easier than living in Vexham and seeing the condemnation in the eyes of those I’d known all my life. Because of my father’s actions, not my own. In London, I’d met so few people, what did I care about the opinion of those I barely knew or didn’t know at all? Nor did I understand why the manner in which I lived my life was truly any of their concern. I was doing nothing to harm them. Although I decided I would find a way to win them all over. I haven’t achieved that end, but the gossip isn’t quiteas unkind as it was. So there’s the answer to your question and now you know everything about me.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“Well, more than most.” Even Hollie didn’t know about her father’s deceit or the massive debt she was striving to pay off. He’d never asked about her past and she’d never felt compelled to reveal the mortifying truth of it. She wasn’t quite certain why she’d told Langdon so much.
“If your father were alive, I’d beat him to a bloody pulp.”
“He couldn’t foresee what our future would hold.”
“He deceived your mother. He deceived you. He had to know no good would eventually come of it.”
She sighed, felt the tears sting her eyes, and blinked them to purgatory as she always did when faced with the truth of the man who had sired her. “I know you speak true. I can’t reconcile the man I knew with the man he actually was.”
“And your mother left you to clean up his mess.”
She heard the disgust in his voice and was disappointed in herself for taking comfort in it. She always felt guilty for wishing her mother had been stronger. But she also recognized that life’s disappointments had battered her. While they’d done the same to Marlowe, she didn’t feel they’d been quite as brutal. She hadn’tfallen in lovewith a man who was more fiction than fact. Although it had made her wary of giving away her heart. How could she ever be sure she knew the absolute truth of someone? Perhaps that was part of the reason she felt so comfortable in her relationship with Hollie. He didn’t ask for love. “It wasn’t by choice, Langdon. Not everyone has thefortitude to withstand the onslaught of one more challenge. Instead of bending, some people break.”
He studied her for the longest time, and she had the sense he was considering all she’d told him and was striving to arrange it into the nooks and crannies of what he knew about her. A softness finally touched his eyes. “I can’t imagine you breaking.”
“You don’t view my accepting Hollie’s offer as a possible crack? My becoming a kept woman?”
He wanted to believe she’d had alternatives. There were always options. But he recognized that others had placed her on this path. She could have made far worse choices. One man paying for the privilege of being with her was better than many doing the same. And she’d taken the opportunity to put herself in a position where no one could ever take advantage of her again.
She’d recognized her value and capitalized on it. Business decisions. Yes, she was infamous. Yes, she would never be welcomed into an aristocrat’s parlor. But she’d made a place for herself where she held power. Not an easy thing to do when the law still failed to recognize a woman as a man’s equal.
His sister lived a life of privilege and yet lamented all she would lose if she married.
“I think you made the best of a horrendous situation.” A situation Marlowe’s father had led her into, despite her love for the blackguard. How any man could expect lies not to cause harm was beyond his reckoning.
Her head dipped slightly and her eyelashescame to rest on her cheeks as she closed her eyes, perhaps not wanting him to see her relief that he hadn’t chastised her for taking the route she had.
