They leaned together, Hal’s auburn head bending down to Gemma’s brunette, utterly and instantly absorbed in each other.
Bess turned away, an emotion she didn’t care to name beating at the inside of her chest like a trapped dove.
“Disgusting, aren’t they?” Lucy said, wrinkling her pert nose.
“They’re lovely,” Bess replied quietly. “I’m very happy for them.”
“Right, of course. As am I.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “But that doesn’t mean I wish to be treated to a front row seat to their ongoing operatic levels of amour. One would think saying vows and becoming man and wife would eventually dim the ardor and stem the tide of longing, but so far, I see no evidence of that.”
“You were the one who decided to stay in Little Kissington,” Bess reminded her. “Your brother would have welcomed you back to Ashbourn House to finish out the Season, but you refused.”
He’d written as much, directly to Lucy, along with a very handsome apology for denying her the rightful inheritance he now insisted he knew their father would have wanted for her.
Lucy was to have the generous dowry their father had intended to settle on her, but it was to be hers, free and clear, when she turned twenty-one. Even if she married, she would retain control of the money.
As a gesture, it had gone a long way toward softening Gemma toward Nathaniel. As had the letters he’d written offering the same to her, and to Henrietta.
No one knew exactly what Henrietta’s letter said, as she had surprisingly and uncharacteristically declined to discuss it, but whatever it was had made her smile through tears as she read it.
There had been no letter for Bess.
Not that she expected one.
But she longed for a word—just a word!—from Nathaniel, telling her how he was. What he was doing.
That he missed her as much as she missed him.
She was still certain she’d done the right thing, the only sensible thing. But she had not reckoned on what agony it would be to go about her daily life as though she was whole and fine when her entire heart had been carved from her chest.
And to know, all the time, that he was miles away in London and feeling the same.
It was a torment unlike any she’d ever imagined.
“I couldn’t go back,” Lucy said, drawing circles with her fingertip in the ring of condensation her mug of lemonade had left behind. “I tried, you know. That night.”
Bess focused on her young friend. This was the first that Lucy had brought up her wild flight from London that had culminated in a midnight ride with a highwayman.
The most Bess had gotten out of her before was that the Gentle Rogue had been a perfect gentleman, and he’d brought her home to Five Mile House when she asked.
“When did you try to go back to London?” Bess lowered her voice, though there was no one nearby paying any attention to two women finishing up their supper. “Is that why you went with the Gentle Rogue in the first place?”
“Not exactly.” Lucy looked a little shifty. There were still parts of the story of that night she intended to keep to herself, Bess saw. “He seemed to know who I was, and he took me up behind him and said he would deliver me back to London. But as we rode away from the mail coach back toward Town, we talked. A bit. And I confessed what I’d done, how I’d left Ashbourn House without even leaving a note, which I felt terrible about and I still do, Bess! It was very wrong of me.”
“We’ve been through all that,” Bess reminded her soothingly. “You’ve forgiven me for trying to mold you into someone you’re not, and I’ve forgiven you for making me as afraid as I’ve ever been in my life.”
“You didn’t try to mold me,” Lucy argued. “Polite Society did that. The whole world does that, to all women. You only tried to protect me, to guide me, as best you could when really, there is no protection or guidance for a woman who doesn’t want to follow society’s rules.”
Bess couldn’t find her breath; Lucy had knocked it clean out of her. She felt as if the world had tilted ever so slightly on its axis, showing her a new angle on everything she thought she knew.
Shrugging, Lucy went on, “I’ve decided the only way forward is to make up some new rules to live by. Ones I can feel good about. But I still don’t feel good about running away without a word. It was badly done of me, and the Gentle Rogue agreed. He was actually very—I don’t know how to describe it.”
Her voice went a little dreamy, and Bess knit her brows, waiting. “He spoke to me like…like a human being. Not like a man talking to a young girl, or to a lady, or even to a woman. Just…like two people. As though I had thoughts in my head and they were worth something to him. It’s odd, isn’t it, that out of all the fine, eligible, titled, respectable gentlemen I met in Town, it was a highwayman who finally looked at me and saw me, as I am. Or at least, that’s how he made me feel.”
“Lucy.” Bess searched for the right words. “What happened with that highwayman?”
The younger woman startled, blinking at Bess as though coming awake from a dream. “Are you asking if he compromised me? Bess! No! I told you, he was a perfect gentleman.”
Relief shuddered through Bess. They were all still holding their breath, waiting to see if word of Lucy’s adventure would leak out somehow and destroy any reputation she had left. Bess could only imagine how much more complicated it would be if it turned out that Lucy had been seduced by that highwayman.
