And now she had one for life.
He’d had a choice.
He could’ve kept quiet and allowed her this moment.
Instead, he’d swept in and ruined everything—and for no better reason than to amuse a crowd or…
Himself.
In truth, his motivation didn’t matter. He’d tried to humiliate her and destroy her dream. While he’d succeeded in the latter, he wouldn’t in the former. It was up to her to scramble out from under this mess.
“Blow, winds, crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!” her voice rang out, quieting the increasingly restive crowd with her favorite speech fromKing Lear. As Shakespeare’s words flowed from her mouth, the entrancement specific to live performance took over the theater. For these precious few seconds, the audience saw not Lady Delilah Windermere, but a half-mad, wandering king. Yet her gaze remained steadily fixed on one man as she spoke the words, “You owe me no subscription. Then let fall your horrible pleasure.”
Ravensworth didn’t shrink from her scorn. Instead, his usual sardonic smile curled about his mouth.
“O! O! ’tis foul!” she finished on a howl and collapsed onto the stage.
Dead silence filled the theater, the audience transfixed…
Byher.
She pushed herself to a stand and curtseyed for the second time tonight.
Off stage left, the headmaster recovered his surely overwhelmed nerves—a lady at Eton College!—and made straight for her, sputtering with great indignation. “You…you…you!” was all he could get out.
Delilah decided it best she hitch her robes to her knees, exit stage right, and leg it—all the way back to London.
Her time at Eton College was quite finished.
As she streaked across the campus dusky with encroaching night, taking the snickets and alleyways used mostly by servants and delinquent students—the latter of which described her, at the moment—unreleased emotion formed a tight knot in the center of her chest. So, this was what heartbreak felt like. The feeling that she’d had all she ever wanted sitting in the palm of her hand, only to have it snatched away.
Once she reached her rooms, she didn’t bother changing out of her costume as she collected the coin pouch she’d stuffed into her mattress for this exact emergency. She left her other belongings behind—after all, they belonged to a boy who didn’t actually exist—and again raced through the snickets and alleyways that would avoid the night watch as she made her way off the grounds and down the road.
She passed one, then another, coaching inn. They were simply too close, and Ravensworth might be in pursuit.
So he could gloat.
Which simply could not be borne.
The muted, relentlessthud-thud-thudof approaching horse hooves sounded behind her, growing louder. Instinctively, she sidestepped off the road and sank down into a boggy ditch that had her feet soaked in cold mud up to her ankles. She folded herself into a tight crouch and soaked her bottom, too.
What a night.
She counted rapid heart and hoof beats until horse and rider galloped past.
Ravensworth.
She knew it with a certainty absolute and sickening. He wasn’t the sort of man to let pass an opportunity to bask in his superiority.
Well, that bloody superior man wouldn’t be finding her tonight.
Pent-up tears sprang forward, blurring her vision. All sorts of tears—tears of sadness…tears of frustration…tears of anger.
It was that last emotion she would hang onto once the others had worn themselves out.
But she wouldn’t shed those tears—not yet.
Not until she reached the safety of her bedroom at Casa Windermere and turned the lock behind her.
