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Mrs. Houston fixed her with a look. “Lottie, I’ve listened to you bang on about women’s suffrage for the last year. Are you really going to turn your nose up on me now?”
“No!” Lottie was mortified to realize that Mrs. Houston was right.
“We’ve an arrangement that suits the both of us. Your uncle has his work, and I have mine,” she said with characteristic firmness. “Besides, if we married it would only cause talk.”
Lottie balked. “What does that matter if you love each other?”
Mrs. Houston gave her a kind smile. “Oh Lottie. You’ve no idea what it would be like for me. People would say I tricked him into marriage. That I was putting on airs. He would lose the respect of his peers and I of the staff. I would never be accepted as the mistress of a house I once worked in. And I don’t want that. For either of us.”
“But isn’t it hard being here while he’s in London?”
Mrs. Houston’s smile slipped a little. “More than I could ever say. He doesn’t want me to see him as anything less than the man he was.”
Lottie grasped her hand. “I understand, but in this case I think you shouldn’t heed his wishes.”
“Thank God you came here. We’ll need to contact your uncle’s solicitor immediately.”
Lottie nodded in agreement. Mr. Jenkins was her solicitor as well.
Mrs. Houston then leveled her eyes. “I’m also going to contact Alec.”
“Why?” Lottie tore her hand away. “This isn’t any of his concern.”
“But if your uncle has been in decline for this long, and if Mr. Wetherby did know and said nothing, then his work may have been compromised,” she pointed out.
Lottie’s breath caught. She hadn’t thought of that.
“And besides, even if you did quarrel, Alec would want to know if you were in danger. No matter what happened in Venice, he still cares for you.”
Lottie stared at the unlit hearth. “Perhaps he did once, but he feels nothing more than a sense of obligation toward me now.”
Mrs. Houston clucked her tongue. “I don’t believe that for a minute—”
“He said those verywords, Mrs. Houston. After I told him I loved him.” Fresh anger and hurt flooded her veins with such force she vaulted from the chair. “That I had always loved him. That I didn’t care about his parents or his past. But he wouldn’t hearanyof it!”
Mrs. Houston motioned for her to sit back down. “It’s true I don’t know the circumstances, but I think you need to understand how his past has shaped him.Youmay truly not care about the differences in your station, but I imagine Alec would find that difficult to accept.”
“What differences?” Lottie spat. “We are both the children of gentlemen.”
Mrs. Houston gave her an exasperated look. “Tell me you aren’t that naive. He isillegitimate. His own family does not recognize him. That has always haunted him.”
Lottie crossed her arms. “He hardly seemed ‘haunted’ while he was explaining that our friendship was based on nothing more thanconvenience,” she muttered. She had gone over their exchange so many times that his look of mild irritation was burned into her brain. It was free of turmoil. Of devastation. She might as well have been a persistent fly, or an overzealous saleswoman.
“Is that what he told you? And I suppose the whippings he received were for fun as well?” She let out a laugh of disbelief. “No, Lottie. Nothing about your friendship waseverconvenient. But he has always sought to protect you, above all else. Since you were both children. Your bond was extraordinary even then. We all saw it.”
Lottie angrily shook her head. “It was nothing of the kind. Alec made that very clear.”
“He’s used to thinking of himself as a burden, especially to you.” Then Mrs. Houston dipped her chin. “And believe me, I can understand why.”
A fresh wave of misery broke over Lottie. She could not accept that Alec had turned her away out of selflessness. That so many of his choices had been made to preserve her standing in a world she had never cared for. Or that their parting had been one last attempt to save her reputation. Couldn’t he see that in doing so he robbed thembothof love? No. Even Alec would not be bullheaded enough to do such a thing.
“Inform him of Mr. Wetherby’s actions, if you must,” Lottie said as she turned toward the exit. “But please, I beg you, tell him nothing of me.”
Mrs. Houston called after her as she hurried out of the sitting room. But Lottie could take no more revelations today. She bolted up the stairs, barely registering the grand portraits of so many dour-faced ancestors as she raced toward her room. Until she turned a corner and her mother’s familiar green-eyed gaze brought her to a halt. The formal portrait had been commissioned shortly after her mother’s eighteenth birthday, in accordance with Lewis family custom.
Lottie stepped closer and closer until she could reach out and brush the heavy gilded frame with her finger. Ada Lewis would meet John Carlisle less than a year after this was painted. It seemed unthinkable that Lottie was nearly the age her mother was when she died. She had possessed a tranquil wisdom that made her seem ageless. But Ada had been a young wife and mother, with a life very different from her daughter’s.
And what would she say now?
