She wrinkled her brow. “Good. Good, I’m glad to hear it.” She hesitated and waited for him to turn the question to her. But he didn’t. He just kept moving them through the hedges.She cleared her throat. “It is a bit different experience for me, of course.”
“Is it?”
She nodded. “It feels like everyone is judging me. Watching me. Waiting for me to fail. Some of them wanting me to.”
She searched his expression for empathy at her pain, but instead there was a flash of annoyance. “Ah. Well, you couldn’t have expected much different, could you? Your past is publicly known. You met some of these friends when you were on my arm as a lover. They won’t just forget that and let you in.”
He wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t the truth, not a thing she hadn’t whispered to herself at night. Those words weren’t comforting, though, and they made the always-present anxiety in her chest bloom a little, like tendrils spreading through her veins.
She took a breath to calm herself. “I-I had hoped you might help me a little. Give me some tips on how to navigate all this and take over the duties a viscountess is expected to perform. If I do them well, perhaps that will ease the judgment a fraction.”
He let out a huffy breath. “Oh, come, Julia. It can’t be that difficult. You might have been a courtesan, but you know how to do some of these things from when you were still a lady. You weren’t born a whore.”
She turned her face at the use of that word, said so casually. “I-I suppose I wasn’t. But I was very young and with little role model to?—”
“Ask your aunt,” he said. “Or the housekeeper.”
Mrs. Paddington was the housekeeper and was one of the servants who gave her dirty looks, but in that moment Julia felt no ability to say that. Laurence already seemed irritated with her for needing this from him. Asking for more or complaining would certainly not get her what she wanted.
She swallowed. He had so casually mentioned her childhood, but she realized he had never asked her the details of her life. Never wanted to know about her abusive father or her long-dead mother. Heneverinquired about her sisters.
His cousin had done that and he didn’t even like her.
“Do you not wish to know about my past?” she asked softly.
He stared at her like she’d asked him if he’d like to swim to France. “It’s best left here, don’t you think? Your horrible past and equally terrible decisions are something to be forgotten if you’re going to be my wife. Something that should not be discussed with me or with those in my orbit. Your life will begin when you say I do and become Lady Castleton. Nothing else from before will matter.”
There was suddenly a great pressure on her chest, like someone standing on it, pushing her down into the ground to be buried alive. And that wasn’t so far from the truth. Laurence was talking about everything she had ever been being erased.
“Of course,” she said, because he seemed to be waiting for an answer. “I-I understand.”
“And yes, you’ll need to learn your new place. Take over the servants.Earntheir respect by proving you’re better than you were. It’s the only way and I can’t create it. You’re clever.” He bent to kiss her cheek briefly and then released her arm. “Right now I must leave you. I promised to go riding with some of the boys. We’ll see each other at supper, though.”
She blinked at him, as every word he’d said sank through her and pulled some of her foolish hopes with it as it faded. “I’ll—I’ll see you tonight, then,” she managed to choke out.
He left her and headed back toward the house to change for his ride. She stared after him a moment and then went back to her walk through the garden.
She was alone. Oh, Caroline was there, and back in London she would have her sisters, though perhaps not as much as she’dlike considering how Laurence had already insisted they move forward with their plans without Arabella and Evie. He judged their pasts as harshly as he judged hers.
But in her heart, in the dark quiet, she would be alone. There would be no attentive husband to turn to with her pains or pleasures. There would be no rescuer to sweep in and save her from heartbreak or uncertainty.
She had known that when she said yes to this man. Now she felt the true power of that loss.
She continued down the pathway, twisting and turning with it. It led in a circuitous way until the pathway forked. One side went toward the stables and beyond that to the orchards. The other side went toward the road and the rolling hills of the rest of the shire outside the gate down the long drive.
There was a strong, powerful instinct in her to take the path toward the road. To walk and never look back. To run until she could take not one more step and flee the decision that had felt livable in the moment and now was so heavy with doubt.
She turned instead toward the stable as she tried to force air into her lungs. She moved without seeing or thinking for countless staggering steps until she reached the stable. She began to pass around the building when she saw movement in a tangle of bushes. Her mind cleared momentarily and she leaned in to see what matter of animal was creating the fluttering in the leaves.
She was delighted when a fluffy black-and-white kitten toddled its way from the brush toward her. Instantly, her mind cleared and she gasped in delight at the tiny creature.
“Good morning, little friend,” she said softly, crouching down to greet the cat as it moved toward her. The kitten didn’t hesitate but moved right to her and began to rub against her legs through her skirt.
“Oh, sweetest baby,” she gasped, and reached down to pet the kitten’s soft fur. “There you are.”
The kitten’s purr was immediate and it rubbed its mouth and cheeks against her fingers for more petting. Julia sank down into the grass beside the stable and petted the cat in earnest, reveling in its softness and sweetness. The affection was such a balm that she nearly began to cry when the kitten climbed into her lap, kneaded against her skirt and then curled up.
Julia continued the pet the cat, drawing in calming breaths. This, at least, was a reminder that there was still sweetness in the world. That she could find it under any circumstance. She would have to cling to that in the coming weeks and months and perhaps even years as she made her way through the maze that would be her life.
