“Rather than face my aunt and uncle? Yes, I will. Besides, I have my own duties to carry out.”
She nodded again, frozen in place by the memories of those harsh, hot kisses the night before, the frantic lovemaking. She desperately wanted him to kiss her, but it would make what she had to say worse. It certainly would for her.
Finally, hands clasped as if that would hold her together, she faced him with the inevitable truth. “I have been thinking,” she said. “You might have been right after all. I am making you miserable here. And I am afraid I will keep doing it, because I cannot help but follow my own counsel, no matter how you feel.” She took in a breath, feeling as if she were smothering. This was so difficult. “I shall go to the asylum today. But when I finish there, I think it would be best if I return to my parents. It will give you the peace you need in which to decide what you wish to do, especially when Theo comes back.”
“What do you mean?” He truly looked flummoxed.
“I mean I think it is best that I am the one to leave. I can, now that my parents are home. When you’re ready, let me know what your decision is to be.”
“You won’t wait until Theo comes home?”
She shook her head. “You two need time to be brothers again.”
He swallowed. “Theo loves you, Pip.”
Her smile was sad. “Of course, he does, Beau. Just as I love him. But I do not love him as I love you. I never have. But there are only so many times I can tell you that only to watch you try to escape from me before I get the message.”
“Escape?”
She took one look around the room and then faced him until he couldn’t look at her anymore. So, she finally told him the truth.
“I have been following you about my entire life. Time and again I have tried to make you see me. To see how much I love you. I cannot do it anymore. I can only have my hope destroyed so many times. I will not say you win, because I suspect that you haven’t. But I will say that it is finally time for me to leave you alone. It’s up to you, now. If you want me, it is your turn to come to me. If you do not, feel free to file the papers. You know where I shall be.”
And without another word, she walked out.And as she had hoped, only Joyful saw her tears.
* * *
He was a coward.
Beau stood there behind his desk like a headmaster who had just sent a student out to holiday. Except his heart was thundering and his chest was on fire with fear. She couldn’t simply walk out as if she was going to the shops. She had no idea what danger she faced.
He couldn’t let her go.
He couldn’t prevent her.
He could see her off, though.
He was out the door before he knew it, scaring one of the maids into dropping a pile of linen on his way down the stairs.
“Pip!”
But she wasn’t there. “Where did my wife go?” he demanded of his butler.
The man just shook his head and pointed to the green baize door. Beau slammed through it and terrorized every maid in the kitchen. He paid no attention. He had to get to the back door. He had to get to the mews.
He got to the mews. He got there just in time to see a rather shabby hackney turn onto Queen Street on its way to Piccadilly.
If only he could have told her that he wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t move until she was safely returned. But he hadn’t. So, he simply waited until the hackney disappeared into morning traffic and turned away, left with nothing but an empty house and reports to read.
Suddenly, after an adulthood steeped in silence and nothing more than the echoes of his own thoughts, he wasn’t sure he could bear it. Because he hadn’t had the courage to tell her that the reason he was afraid was because he loved her so much.
19
As she always did when she felt lost, Pip focused on a task to keep her busy. This time it was her role for the Rakes. It didn’t ease the pain, but it allowed her to live with it, at least for a while. That way she could keep from thinking of the future until her job was ended and she returned to the wrong house.
It helped that what she was to do was more than simple housekeeping or socializing. She would be doing vital work, work that might not only impact the safety of her country, but her old headmistress. Not to mention Theo.
It was almost a relief, then, to enter an unpretentious rowhouse in Marleybone to be greeted by Diccan Hilliard. She knew him, of course, as a friend of her brother Alex, and had always suspected the elegant man about town to be a Rake. It was nice to have the validation. His instructions were simple, his precautions well-considered. Once he learned that among Pip’s wide range of skills were the skills employed by the house staff she had haunted as a child, he made her feel as if she were the only person who could do the job. That confidence served her well when she entered the Richmond Hills Asylum as their new maid.
