There were so many times when she’d thought it would all end for her. When she’d put in her notice. When Peter had approached her on that very last morning, even in those early days after she’d left his house, she’d been utterlyterrifiedthat he would come for her, that he would seek revenge, that she would turn a corner and find him waiting.
When he didn’t do any of the things that so filled her with worry, she had dared to hope she had gotten away clean. Until she received his letter.
Sarah’s eyes had gone soft. Letty knew that her friend loved her and meant well. But the expression smacked of pity.
“Don’t,” Letitia said, holding up a hand before Sarah could say anything.
Not that itworked, for pity’s sake. Sarah just waited with that same look on her face until Letitia gave up, rolled her eyes, and dropped her hand.
“I just think,” Sarah said as if there had been no interruption at all, “that maybe, just possibly, you are taking the events of the past and perhaps applying those expectations to the future a bit too much.”
“Yes,” Letty responded, “because that is how life works! The reason I expect the sun to rise tomorrow is that it rose today and yesterday and all the days before that.”
“I feel like those two things aren’t the same, actually,” Sarah countered. “Just like perhaps the Duke of Rutley, a man who has been nothing but kind and generous—both to youandIris, I might add, not to mentionme—is not actually the same as Viscount Dugley.”
“Don’t say hisname,” Letty hissed. Belatedly, she realized that did not do much for her defense against Sarah’s accusation that she was being unreasonable.
But there was just something about Peter’s letter showing up here just when she’d started to feel safe that made her feel like she might about invoking a devil—like speaking the name could summon the man.
Sarah went back to tapping her fingers. It took very little time before the sound began to drive Letitia to madness.
“What?” she asked wearily.
Sarah stopped tapping. “I just think…” She sighed. “What if Peterdoescome back?” Letty flinched. “Wouldn’t it be better to have a powerful duke to protect you? I don’t like the thought of you unprotected, Letty. You will not even have me with you.”
Sarah said this as if it were a bad thing, but the only thing that scared Letty more than having Peter come after her was having Peter come after both her and Sarah.
“What if he actually wants to protect you?” Sarah asked quietly.
Oh, it was so very tempting to believe it. But Letitia could not afford that way of thinking. If she started to believe that maybe Ezra would protect her, she would be that much more disappointed when she was inevitably reminded of the lesson that had been the story of her entire life.
She could rely on herself and herself alone. Certainly, she could not trust a nobleman to come and save her. After all, she wasn’t some high-born lady. She didn’t have a dowry or a good name or the kind of fragile constitution that made men want to fawn over her. She was a servant. She was nobody at all.
“It is best this way,” she told Sarah firmly. “At the end of the week, I will go. And everything will be fine.”
Now the only thing she had to do was learn to believe it.
* * *
“And what would you do with a child who is reluctant to speak, Miss Pamfrey?” Ezra asked.
The woman across from him resembled nothing so much as a stalk of asparagus. She was tall and thin, wearing a very sensible frock of sage green. She had a close cap of curls that came to a point at the top of her head. He’d almost called herMiss Asparagustwice.
Miss Pamfrey blinked owlishly at him.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but I do not understand the question. Children, I have always held, are best seen and not heard. It is an old adage for a reason, you see. Or do you mean a child that is not speaking out of some form of stubbornness?”
This was going so very, very poorly. She was the third candidate he had interviewed that day, and she wasn’t even the worst. The worst had been a stout, sour-faced woman who had insisted that all children needed the switch sometimes, and those soft-hearted reformers who said otherwise would send the country into ruin within a single generation, if they were not stopped.
“No, miss,” he corrected politely, stifling a sigh. “Iris is just somewhat reserved.”
Her face creased in sympathy, and Ezra felt a faint spark of hope.
“Oh, a simpleton,” she said sadly. “Well, children like that should likely be packed off to the countryside. Their weak nerves cannot handle London, Your Grace. They need to be taken for long walks daily.”
Taken for walks, Ezra thought despairingly, that hope dying as quickly as it had come.As if Iris were a dog.
“Right,” he said. There was no point extending this wretched display. “Well. Thank you very much, Miss Pamfrey. That will be all.”
