Page 86 of A Lady’s Guide to Subterfuge and Science

He shrugged again. “No. If you’d wanted to discuss it with me, you would have. Besides, I have to assume it ended badly, given that you’re sitting in front of me wearing shirtsleeves.”

“He wanted me to choose,” she muttered, more than overcome at Dameer’s decision to grant her privacy. It would have been easy for him to confront her. Instead, he’d waited, with no guarantee that she’d ever allow him in.

“Ah.” Dameer nodded once, understanding her in an instant. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think Booth would ever ask that of you.”

Of course he wouldn’t. Oliver hadn’t asked anything of her since they’d gone to bed together. He’d continued to treat her as an individual, never once making her fear that he’d dump conditions and expectations on her already tired shoulders. Never once making her feel alien for being so passionate about her work.

“No,” she agreed, beginning to pick at the coverlet. “But he’d grow tired of me, I’m sure. Tired of my scribbling and research and inability to be—normal.”

“You don’t know that.”

No, she didn’t. But what was she meant to do? Tell herself she wanted both Oliver Booth and for her work to be published under her name? How could she even begin to admit to wanting two things when even one seemed so completely and utterly unattainable?

And what if she ended up not only wanting those things, but needing them? Then what?

“I cannot believe that Jennings is to receive accolades that are meant to be mine,” she said, recognizing that derailment was her only way out of this conversation.

Dameer allowed her the change in subject. “Are you going to the seminar?”

Before Kalila could respond, a knock echoed through the room. Exchanging a glance with Dameer, she left the bed and pulled the door open, expecting to see either Caroline or Amelia behind it.

Who she wasn’t expecting was Oliver.

But that, however, was exactly who she saw.

*

When all was said and done, Kalila was right.

It was unnerving.

Oliver sat in his laboratory at Rosewood, tapping pen against paper and staring at nothing in particular. Kalila had disappeared from 107 which, in all honesty, was likely for the best. He needed to be alone, needed to parse through this in his own space.

Comerford had often given him what his father could not. That much Oliver could admit. Where his father was disappointed, Comerford was impressed. While his father was away, Comerford could be relied upon to be sitting behind a pile of books at the Polytechnic University. And although Comerford could be dismissive, he did listen sometimes.

A fine set of standards you have there.

He turned his attention to the sheet of paper before him, rereading the two words he’d managed to put down—Dear Mother.

What was one meant to write after twenty-three years, anyway?

Do you hate me?

Was I part of the reason you left?

Why haven’t you written me?

He sighed. She could very well ask that last question of him, too. Trying his best to steel himself, he wrote a brief, polite letter to the one parent he felt most tempted to reveal his heart to. Not that she had given him any reason to feel that way. All it really came down to was that Rosemary Booth was not his father.

And neither was Comerford.

Finishing the letter off with a wax seal, Oliver made his way downstairs. He came across Hughes pressing cravats at the laundry closet. Without uttering a word, Oliver dropped the folded note on the ironing board.

“Could you have this posted?” he asked, ignoring the sudden urge to toss the letter into the fire.

Hughes looked at Oliver with a glimmer of concern. “Is this—”

“It is. I said I’d get around to it.”