Before he could reply, Lucy turned away, unable to bear another moment of holding herself together.
She needed to be alone in her room, where she could fall apart…and pack her things for the trip to Little Kissington.
Lucy was finally going home.
ChapterTwenty-Four
Three months later
Holding a baby, breathing in his sweet, milky baby smell and feeling his chubby hand close around her finger was not a cure-all, Lucy had found.
But it did help.
Bess had sailed through the last third of her pregnancy with such ease that no one had been entirely prepared for how difficult the birth proved to be.In the end, while Nathaniel, Dr.Perry, Henrietta, and Gemma crowded around Bess…it had been Lucy who was the first to hold August Alexander Martin Lively in her arms.
The perfection of his tiny fingernails squeezed her heart.His round, bitable cheeks, his button of a nose, his squalling indignation at the cold new world in which he suddenly found himself.
Lucy could relate.
She missed Gabriel with every beat of her heart.
Well.He was Thorne, again now, she supposed.He was all over the papers these days, tearing up London, throwing parties and gambling all night and getting into fights at The Nemesis.
Lucy hated herself for it, but she devoured every salacious article, every breathless, scandalized piece of tittle-tattle she could find.
She dreaded the moment she read his name in print, linked with the name of some courtesan or society widow or demirep.She didn’t know how she would bear it.
But she would bear it, Lucy told herself firmly while pulling faces at August to make him blow bubbles back at her.She would bear it, as she had borne the weeks of shocked surprise, recriminations, and tears at Five Mile House as her mother and Gemma expressed their various and voluble feelings about Lucy’s entanglement with the Duke of Thornecliff.
She had borne her sister’s comments about Lucy’s abysmal taste in men, and their mother’s tearful hand-wringing about Lucy’s wan complexion, during all the long journey from Little Kissington back to London, to be present for August’s birth.
She had borne the long, dull days and endless, empty nights without Gabriel, and she knew she would have to bear many, many more.But bear it, she would.
Lucy would have a future.She would survive this, though in the dead of night, alone in her bed, it didn’t seem possible.But it was, and August was the proof.
Life went on.Broken heart or no.And there was still sweetness in it, even if any sweetness Lucy found these days was tinged bitter with heartbreak.
Even these moments, playing with August while Bess looked on with a serenely joyful smile, were bittersweet.
Gabriel had been so careful with her, so careful not to spend inside her and risk giving her a babe.Until that last night.
“Did I tell you that I cried,” Lucy said softly.“When my courses came.”
She could only say these things to Bess, and by extension to Nathaniel.He had learned to see Lucy as her own person—something Gemma still struggled with.And as much as Lucy loved and depended on her mother, she found it easier to speak to Bess about the most deeply held secrets of her heart.
Perhaps because Bess, too, had seen through the Thorne mask to the man he was beneath.Or perhaps it was because Bess, unlike Gemma and Henrietta, could be counted on to respond calmly and thoughtfully, no matter the topic.
For instance, she now said, “Ah, did you, then?”
The empathy in Bess’s warm gaze brought a lump to Lucy’s throat, like an echo of the storm of sobs that had racked her for hours when she realized there was no chance at all that she was carrying Gabriel’s child.
Hugging August close, Lucy said, “Silly of me, obviously.What a disaster that would have been.I’d have had to raise a child on my own, probably in exile to avoid letting the scandal touch the rest of you.”
“You don’t think Thorne would have done the right thing?”
Lucy’s heart clenched hard.“I don’t know.I don’t know how I would have told him.It would have killed me if he only married me to give our child a name.”
“That wouldn’t be why.”Bess gave Lucy a sympathetic look.“Not the only reason, anyhow.”
