This was the world she had chosen. This was the world she had chosen over Daniel.
No. It wasn’t a statement. It was a question. An incredulous, defeated question.Thiswas the world she’d chosen?Thiswas the world she had chosen over Daniel?
She’d never hated herself so much in her entire life.
“I have to go.”
She was out of her chair and out of the pub before Captain could even scream after her.
“Piggy!” His heavy footfall followed her, as did the stampede of men who surrounded him. “You come back here!”
“I have to go!”
“Don’t you dare—”
But Sam didn’t hear him. She was already too far away.
The countryside flew past Samantha in a rageful fit of greens and yellows. A storm brewed, sending shards of silver down over the valleys and meadows, coating everything with the sickening colors of death. The picture framed by her windshield would have been fitting, poetic even, if she believed in fate. Or if this weren’t England, where it was overcast every damn day.
She didn’t notice any of this, not consciously. The road was barely visible through the prison of tears walling her in. Her face still bled. She made no move to stop it.
This was it. This was the crossroads she never thought she’d reach. Daniel Best had her heart and the Animos Society had her future.
She had to pick. She couldn’t have both.
She didn’twantboth anymore.
She could live without a future if it meant never seeing Captain again, if it meant not having to call herself Sam or wear her hair up or pretend to be something she wasn’t so she could fit into a box she hated in the first place.
As a child, she dreamed of having a real family. Her father could offer her one. But Daniel loved her. And Lord Dubarry never showed any capacity for love. It was an impossibility a month ago, but now it was there, and it wasreal,and it was good. Better than good. It was life changing.
By the time she bolted through Ashbrooke’s front door, ripping off the scarf she’d barely taken off since receiving it yesterday, Samantha was making decisions instead of plans. She’d call Captain tonight and tell him she was through with the Society. She’d have to apologize to Thomas, of course, and make amends for what happened between them. A bag would have to be packed because she was going over to Daniel’s house and she was going to give herself to him completely. She was going to tell him she felt the same way. She’d fallen in love with him, and then she’d call him in sick because they were not going to leave his bed until the tenth of forever.
“Sam.”
Halfway up the stairs, her father’s voice halted her.
“Yes.” She leaned over the bannister to see him in the foyer, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and theFinancial Timesin another. He looked more like a father then than she’d ever seen him before; he was the British Mr. Rogers incarnate. A loose-fitting sweater replaced his usual suit, and there was an unusual spring in his step, totally unbecoming a member of the peerage. Sam stammered in surprise. “Y-yes, Father?”
“Thomas told me about your final initiation on Saturday. The Ball.” He raised his cup in a fauxcheers,toasting her as if he were toasting someone’s good health. “Exciting times.”
“Mm-hmm,” was all Sam could reply.
In her frantic planning, she’d forgotten about Father. He’d have to know about her failure. She’d have to tell him sometime. She had no plan for how to break the news to him and lose him forever. In her rush to be a woman in love, she’d breezed past the most important detail.
“I told him to clear my schedule. We’ll have dinner, the two of us, to celebrate. I’m very proud of you, duckling. You’ve made us all very proud.”
In a blink, Samantha was a lonely six-year-old girl standing on a street corner in New York City, watching a man in a suit carry his sleeping little girl in his arms, wishing it was her. Loneliness echoed and reverberated, shaking her to her very core as it sunk in what a terrible fool she was. She didn’t know herself at all if she thought she’d trade anything for her father’s approving smile.
“Here.” The old man climbed the stairs, pulled a shining object out of his sweater pocket, and handed it to her. “My Society pin. It’s customary to pass them down, father to child. This one is almost as old as the club itself.”
“Thank you.”
He smiled. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”
He was gone as fast as he came, climbing the stairs and closing his office door behind him. Samantha observed the pin. Rusting with age, it was an heirloom, a tangible recognitionshe was a Dubarry, dammit. She was her father’s daughter, her brother’s sister, and this house was her home. Her hand closed around it, feeling the sharp sting of the pin press into the skin of her palm. Her blood spilled for the second time today. She’d been right about one thing. There was no choice between love and her future.
She was just wrong about which side that meant.
