‘And what happens when another chemist proposes?’ Miss Fairchild fired back. ‘And she disappears again, hmm? What then?’
Ava felt her words land – felt the slow burn of hot, prickling shame deep in the pit of her stomach – but Miss Fairchild didn’t stop, didn’t even pause for breath as she continued:
‘All she has done, all Ava Adams has ever done – is shown that she cannot handle it. That she would rather run away from things, rather than doing what’s right for you – for us – for this place. Why are you giving her a second chance?’
Ava felt as though the room had suddenly become warmer, the walls closer, and she turned to Lillian – her voice a tremulous thread in her throat. ‘Youtoldthem about Jem?’
‘It was an accident,’ Lillian huffed. ‘It slipped out. And then I thought it would make them kinder towards you.’
One look at the stony faces turning towards her told Ava thatthatplan had backfired spectacularly.
‘Youpromised,’ Ava said, hating how her voice had started to wobble and crack. ‘Youpromised meyou would not tell anyone.’
‘Then consider us even,’ Lillian said, lifting her chin defiantly, her black eyes dark and fixed unflinchingly upon Ava. ‘For you broke a promise, too. The moment you walked out on us all.’
Ava blinked, wishing that her throat would stop aching. ‘I told you in confidence, Miss Lillian. It was private, and it isshamefulto have such a thing bandied about—’
‘Do you know what else was shameful?’ Tommy asked, his face reddening now. ‘Standing on stage the night you left, and having to do my act, and then sit and listen to the dumbstruck silence of the audience as they waited, alongside us, for an act that never arrived.’
‘Indeed, do grow up, Miss Adams,’ snapped Miss Fairchild. ‘My sister was forsaken by a man andshedidn’t go swanning off to bloody Scotland.’
‘Your sister has had four children out of wedlock,’ tutted Mrs Green. ‘I think any sensible suitor would run for the hills.’
‘You think this plan is wise, do you, Miss Lillian?’ Tommy spun back around. ‘What if the butcher insults her, and she has to flee to Crosby on opening weekend to recover?’
When they put it like that it sounded pathetic. More than pathetic, it sounded … feeble, and childish, and …contemptible.
Lillian’s dark eyes flicked to Ava. ‘Miss Adams will not make the same mistake twice. Will you, Miss Adams?’
Ava blinked, feeling a tear skitter down her cheek. She reached to rub it away hurriedly before anyone else could see. ‘No,’ she said.
‘I think it is an important lesson for anyone to learn,’ Lillian continued, lifting her voice to address the whole company. ‘The greatest love you can ever know is the love an audience has for a performer. The love you feel when the curtains close, and the roar of the applause rings loud in your ears. That is the only love worth chasing. For not all of us can have the storybook kind. Not all of us are worth that.’ Her gaze settled once more upon Ava. ‘Are we, Miss Adams?’
Ava shook her head, willing her eyes to remain dry. ‘No, Miss Lillian.’
‘No,’ agreed Lillian, turning a wide smile to the rest of the room. ‘Now – get ready for rehearsal. Ava will watch, and make notes, and then she will coach you, Miss Fairchild. Whether you like it or not.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ava tried very hard not to cry on the walk home, but the problem with tryingnotto cry was that it made one feel all the more deserving of it, and so she’d only half succeeded as she stepped from the bustling clatter of Williamson Square down the quieter streets – tears dripping intermittently from her jaw to her coat collar as she threaded her way back home through the city.
Miss Lillian was right. Not everyonegotthe sort of ending one read in stories – the sort of love that made people launch a thousand ships, or strike a knife through their heart.
She’d believed that readily enough before Jem had proposed, for she’d reached the age of twenty-two without anything remarkable happening. Without streams of letters being delivered in the dead of night, or dashing young gentlemen knocking upon the door and asking her father, very politely, if they might take her for tea. It had been easier to pour her focus into her art, into her act, to subsist on the kind of love the audience could give her, the watchful eyes, the shock, the wonder.
And it had been tolerable. It had all been utterly tolerable until Jem had leaned over that table, and opened a door she had tried very hard to keep shut. And then suddenlyshe had begun to wonder whether she was one of the special few whogotthe story. Who found the sort of love her mother and father had had. Whether she was one of the lucky ones.
And that was where she had gone wrong.
And now? Now Miss Fairchild was right. Ava was pathetic – and worse, she was foolish to think she could mend what she’d shattered.
As she waited for a gap in the carriage traffic to cross the road, she saw the doors of the inn opposite burst open. Four men tumbled from it – and it wasn’t until a dark-haired man scrambled to his feet that she realized she recognized him.
And that coat.
And those boots.
It was Damien.
