“You know the longer that you let him control you, the more power you give him, right?” he asked.
Letitia had been midway through drawing up the sleeves of her gown, even if she would not be able to fasten it properly. At his words, she froze instead.
“That’s not fair,” she said, not even looking at him as she spoke.
It wasn’t, and he knew it.
“You can’t tell me that he isn’t the reason you are running scared now,” he accused, stumbling into his trousers as he went. He felt rather as though someone else was controlling his words. He wished he could stop himself from saying them. He wished he could shout them.
He tried to reach out and grab her arm, not to hurt her, just to stop her for a moment, just to make herlistenfor a little?—
She shook him off, and when she whirled on him, he could see that he’d made a mistake. She was brimming with anger.
“Oh, that isbold, coming from you,” she returned, anger burning in her gaze. “Do you think I don’t see it? The way you look half-hopeful, half-terrified every time Iris mentions anything about the past? Every time your family is mentioned? You tell yourself you are hunting for answers, but you are hiding from the very people who might give them to you, Ezra. You run, too. You chase ghosts, too.”
He bristled, but it was more temper than real objection to what she was saying. Maybe he bristledbecausehe didn’t fully object to what she was saying. Evidently, he still had his pride, after all.
“Better chasing ghosts than refusing to stay in one place because you are too frightened.”
She opened her mouth to retort, to say something that was no doubt barbed in acid. He braced himself for it—then watched as she closed her mouth again without uttering a word. He watched as she smoothed away her temper behind the façade of a dutiful servant, and, God—God. That was so much worse.
“It’s time for me to go,” she said in a polite, distant voice that he could have sworn he had never heard from her, not even in the beginning. “I thank you for a wonderful evening.”
He felt the fight go out of him, too, leaving only emptiness in its wake.
“At least let me see you back home,” he said woodenly. He didn’t think he could bear to stay in this empty room as she left him behind. “So that I know you are safe.”
He knew she would shake her head even before she did.
“You are what I need to protect myself from,” she said, not unkindly. “I am a servant. You are a duke. It’s time we start acting like it.”
Ezra wondered if some part of him was bleeding. Surely there had to besomephysical mark of what he was feeling right now. A bruise. A broken bone.Something.
It is just wounded pride, he told himself.Just infatuation.
“Very well,” he heard himself say. “Goodnight then, Miss Knightley.”
For an instant, she appeared as if he had slapped her, but immediately after—that is, before he could even think about apologizing or approaching her—she looked thankful.
Now Ezra felt like the one who had been slapped.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
And then she slipped away into the night, leaving Ezra behind, feeling completely uncertain about how it had ever come to this.
* * *
To hell with pride and to hell with frugality.
Letty hired a hack home, and she sobbed the entire ride back to her rented rooms.
She knew that she had to look a fright and she felt even worse. Her gown was only half-fastened. Her eyes were burning withtears, and they looked swollen and red. Her hair was entirely unbound.
None of it compared to the shrieking, cavernous hole in her chest.
Part of her wanted to tell the driver to turn around. She could go back. She could tell Ezra that she would be his mistress. Surely he would not ever make her feel cheap, would he? He wouldn’t ever make her feel as though she didn’t matter because of her class. If anything, he was almost intolerably ignorant of the machinations of class, his privilege making him blind to the differences between them.
But every time she was almost convinced that this was the path forward, something held her back.
