And set everything to rights.
Chapter 59
Annabelle
Iwalk without direction.
I weave my way through St. James’s and up towards Piccadilly.
I have no goal in going there. I only want to get away from Alfred and the horrible feeling rioting inside of me.
In the end, is he just another man who has used and discarded me?
I haven’t let any man get truly close to me since my first terrible lovers back in Trescott. Was I right to be so guarded? Was I a fool now for letting him in?
When we first met I thought I was usinghim, that I was turning him to my purposes.
Perhaps he was just turning me to his.
The worst part is that I love him. I know that now. After I have made myself despicable to him. He cannot love me now, if he ever did. Not after I revealed what I initially planned for him. That the life that stirs within me was conceived through deception.
The street blurs before me at the thought.
I thought I was the seducer.
But it seems I was wrong.
He seducedme.
He made me love him.
Despite all of the time that has passed, and everything that I have achieved, I am still the same heedless, reckless, foolish, openhearted girl that I was at sixteen.
I shake my head, trying to put my regular armor back in place.
Annabelle de Lacey does not love people. And she is certainly not loved. The child in my belly will surely rue being born to me.
My eyes fill with tears at that thought. At the stupidity of my hope for a new future with Alfred.
I am on Piccadilly now. And I am weeping. I hate the idea of anyone seeing me in this state. I can imagine the broadsheet that they would create over such a scene. I must take cover in a shop.
I cast around me and see a bookshop.
Willoughby’s.
It is the one to which I sent Alfred for his erotic books.
I have always liked the place, and it warms me to know that he has been there.
Hating my weakness, I lurch into the shop.
The sheer number of books on the wall are a calming sight.
I duck into an aisle at random, bringing my handkerchief to my face to wipe away my tears.
I need to compose myself. I do not want the disillusion of my marriage, my humiliation, to feed the broadsheets.
As I put my handkerchief back into my reticule, a name flashes from a shelf. A familiar name.
