“No, no.”Gemma straightened, feeling wrung out like one of Bess’s dish cloths.“I never cry.I will be well.I will marry the earl, and we will be happy, and we will put all of this behind us.”
Just then, Gemma’s gaze fell upon the scattered papers littering the floor.A letter from Lucy’s friend, curiously inquiring about the most interesting bit of tittle tattle she’d heard in years, and it happened to concern Lucy’s own sister and the Duke of Havilocke.
More recent broadsheets, their tiny type too small for Gemma to make out.And there, one corner sticking out from under the letter…she knew that watermark.Gemma’s stomach heaved.
It was a caricature, the kind that hung in booksellers’ windows in the Strand.The kind that had nearly ruined her life when she was eighteen.The kind that Gemma never looked at, if she could avoid it.
Slipping off the bed, she plucked the drawing from the floor and looked at it.
The familiar, blowsy curves the satirists always used to depict her figure glared up at her from the page.It was a cunningly wicked likeness; she recognized herself at once, even if the drawn figure was wearing a gown cut so low in the decolletage that it would be more likely found strolling the docks than being worn by even the merriest widow of Gemma’s racy set.
The satirical print showed Gemma with a tray of drinks, tripping over the stuck out leg of a man with Thorne’s golden hair and wicked grin.In the drawing, Thorne’s arm was slung companionably over the wide shoulders of another man whose head was thrown back in open-mouthed merriment.Hal, she presumed, though the satirists hadn’t seen him recently enough to depict him faithfully.The background of the drawing showed a faceless throng of people pointing and laughing.At Gemma.
But it was the expression on her own caricature’s face that seized Gemma by the throat and would not let go.
Surprised.Bewildered.Dumbfounded to find herself crashing towards the floor with her comically large breasts about to spill out of her bodice.At the mercy of the jeering men and their laughter at her expense.
“They drew me as a fool,” she murmured.
In all the many cruel caricatures and sly satirical drawings she’d seen of herself, she’d always been depicted as a strumpet.A loose woman.No better than she should be.And as devastating as that had been to innocent, eighteen-year-old Gemma…this was worse.
After all, there was a certain shabby power in being the object of men’s lustful fantasies.She knew they didn’t respect her, but at least they wanted her.But this?Being the butt of their jokes?Being their fool?
Gemma had never been so humiliated in her life.
From the ashes of her heart, a tiny flame of anger flickered to life.With every breath, it grew and grew until it was big enough to consume everything else inside her.
She welcomed it, letting it burn away the weakness of hurt and betrayal, leaving only a good, strong, cleansing rage.
“Help me get changed,” she requested of Lucy, who looked as though she might burst into tears at any moment.Gemma’s steady tone appeared to steady her, though, and she scurried into motion about the room, gathering up clean garments and bringing them over to lay out on the bed.
“What are you going to do?”Henrietta asked anxiously.
“What I should have done long ago,” Gemma said, shucking out of her stiff, wrinkled gown and going to the washstand to freshen up.“I’m going to tell the Duke of Havilocke to go to the devil.”
* * *
Hal braced himself against the current and got his fingertips under the stone, the cold waters of Westcote Brook swirling and eddying past him, turning the rocks he was harvesting into slippery, treacherous weights.
This was one of those jobs Hal tended to put off indefinitely.Harvesting rocks to repair the crumbling structure holding up Westcote Bridge was grueling, strenuous work under the best of conditions.
The morning after the most transcendent night of Hal’s life, followed by the most heartbreaking decision he’d ever make, hardly counted as the best of conditions.It didn’t help that the grim gray sky billowed with heavy-looking clouds, threatening another torrential rain.
At least the weather matched his mood.
Bess had taken one look at his wrecked, guilty face that morning and poured him a cup of coffee.She had too many preparations to make for the May Day Festival to get embroiled in his nonsense, she’d told him as she tied on her apron.But without knowing the particulars, her best advice was to go and apologize for whatever he’d done.Grovel, if need be.
“I can’t do that,” Hal had said.“I don’t trust myself.”
Bess had sighed.“You’ve made a right mess of things, haven’t you?”
“It got…complicated,” Hal tried, aware of how weak that defense was.“But I still believe I did the right thing in the end.”
“You told her the truth?”
“No.I let her go.”
Bess had become very grave, her honey-brown eyes filled with nothing but affection for Hal.Yet their clear gaze made Hal hunch his shoulders and stare down at his own hands where they were fisted on his thighs.
