“Well, it’s all supposed to be breezy,” she said carefully. “It’s just meant to be a bit of fun.”
Simone sipped her tea. “But?”
Arabella shifted in her seat and stared at her hands. The words she was about to say came very hard suddenly. Like they were stuck in her throat. She cleared it and forced them loose. “Have you ever…cared about a man?”
“No,” Simone said, but her gaze went faraway. “I’ve cared about a lover, though. You are saying you care about him.”
Tears stung Arabella’s eyes and she blinked them away. “I do. I think I’m falling in love with him.”
There. It was out. The fact that terrified her more than anything was free into the world where it could fly and sting and maybe poison her in the end. And yet saying it didn’t feel painful, it felt glorious, at least for a moment before it became utterly terrifying.
Simone set her cup down and leaned forward in her chair. “Arabella, you’ve been falling in love with him since you first saw him at Vauxhall Gardens. This is not news.”
Arabella let out a shaky sigh and scrubbed a hand over her eyes. “Possibly that’s true.Probablythat’s true. He’s just…he’s special. He’s so intense and passionate.”
“You’ve been with passionate men before,” Simone said gently.
“But he’s also bright and he’s…he’s caring.”
“And he’s leaving.”
That was said firmly and Arabella shut her eyes against the weight of it. “I know. Iknow. And even if he wasn’t, what do I know about sharing myself? About loving someone?”
“You think he wants your love?”
“I know he wants more of me, even if it’s not the love he craves. He presses me, tries to crack me open. I’ve always run from anyone who did that and I feel that same desire to run with him. But I also feel this need, this want to—to tell him everything. To give him everything he ever wanted. Even though I know if he sees me, truly sees me…how will I ever protect myself?”
She waited for Simone to lecture. She deserved a scolding, after all, didn’t she? This idea that she could care for Silas, even love Silas, went against every creed she had agreed to when she became a courtesan. She broke every rule by even thinking about it.
Instead, Simone let out a shaky breath. “Oh, Arabella, I wish I knew the answer to that question. I never taught lessons on love aside from avoiding it because I didn’t know it then. And right now, looking at you, my gut tells me not to support this. To tell you to hide yourself away, to break with him as cruelly as possible so that he won’t pursue what could hurt you.”
“But?”
Arabella was breathless as she awaited the answer. Simone was just as breathless as she gave it. “But I know him and I know you. You two together, truly together…it makes some kind of sense.”
Two sensations rushed through Arabella at that answer. First was joy, pure and unadulterated joy. But the second was a terror unlike anything she’d ever felt before. A full knowledge that she could be torn to shreds by this if she allowed it. That she could surrender all she’d built around herself and never fully recover. That she could force Silas to lose his family and the future he pretended he didn’t want. But she wouldn’t share that fact with Simone. It was too private and intimate to whisper his secrets and pains to anyone else.
“I came here so you could talk me out of this,” she gasped as she leapt to her feet and paced to the same window where her aunt had stood a few moments before. “Christ, Simone, don’t tell me it makes sense, none of this makes sense!”
Simone was quiet for a moment, long enough that Arabella faced her at last. She found her friend watching her, expression unreadable. “But what do you want to do?”
“Want to do? When didwantever come into it? Need was first, wasn’t it? That was what you taught me. Access what I need, determine how to get it. Want would only get me in trouble.”
“You quote me back to myself so easily,” Simone said, and now she got to her feet, too.
“Because I memorized every line. You are successful because you don’t fall, you don’t even waver. You give exactly the amount that is needed but never an ounce more. You mentored me to make the same choices and I have. I have and I’ve been…happy.”
She faltered in that last word because it felt heavy on her tongue. Like it was a lie.
“Happy,” Simone repeated. “I’m not sure I ever taught you to be that. Just to survive. Happy might take a little more risk than I’ve ever been willing to take.”
“If you haven’t been willing, then how can I?”
“Because you are young, Arabella. And Silas isn’t like anyone else. He isn’t some duke who pretends to care while he is just getting what he wants.” Arabella winced because she feared Simone was using Evelina as the example of what not to do. Worse, she feared Simone was right. “Silas is…singular. So what do youwantto do with this emotion in your chest?”
She kept coming back to want and Arabella pushed at it with all her might. She had to focus on need, no matter what Simone said. And need was very clear.
“Perhaps what I must do is…end it.”
