“Please,” she said softly.
Arabella let out a great sigh and she and Evie exchanged a quick look. “Of course. But tomorrow let us come to you for tea and we’ll meet the cat and take care of you.”
“I’d love it. Aunt Caroline, may we go?”
Her aunt nodded, tears misting her eyes and they left the house for the still-waiting carriage. She took the kitten from Elsie and bundled her against her chest. Then she waved at her sisters as they stood on the drive watching them go, their husbands supporting them.
Caroline, Elsie and Violet were kindly quiet on the short ride to Arabella’s old home. Caroline simply held her hand as they stared out the window together. When the carriage stopped, Julia’s tears filled her eyes again because there was the place given to Arabella by an incredibly generous protector years ago, the place Julia had always felt safe, and it was lit up for her. Welcoming her back.
She only wished she could feel happy at that and not defeated and angry and terrified.
“Let me take Beatrice and get her settled inside, miss,” Elsie said, and took the cat before she slipped from the carriage and entered the house to give Julia and her aunt a moment of private farewell.
“Dearest,” her aunt said. “Should I come in? Should I stay tonight?”
“No,” Julia said, and squeezed her hand. “I know I’ll lean on you a great deal in the next few weeks. But tonight, as I said, it’s better if I’m alone with this.”
Her aunt didn’t look certain, but leaned forward to buss her cheek before Julia got out and waved the carriage away. She trudged up the stairs and into the foyer. Parsons, the butler, greeted her with a kind smile. Such a nice change from the glares she’d been receiving at Castleton Grange.
“Good evening, Miss Comerford. We’re so pleased to have you home.” If he noted her light flinch at the wordhome, he made no indication. “All your favorites are ready if you’re hungry, or there’s tea and cake. Anything you need.”
So she would be glass, it seemed. Treated kindly, but as if she were breakable. Perhaps she was, at that. She smiled at him.
“Dearest Parsons, you are so kind. Perhaps just the tea and cake, but I’ll have it in my chamber.”
He nodded and she left him to go upstairs to the room that had been hers off and on since she was fifteen. That had been the year her sisters saved her from a fate far worse than the life she’d led as a courtesan. They’d tried to shelter her from what they were both already doing. They’d become her mothers as much as her sisters.
But when she’d turned eighteen, she had gone down the same path. As successful? No. Of course not. She hadn’t Arabella’s sparkle or Evie’s gentle confidence.
She entered the chamber and smiled. While some parts of this house were still styled for a sophisticated courtesan, her room was not. It was painted in muted blues, walls hung with sketches her sisters had done rather than finer art pieces. She still had her childhood doll, one of the few things she’d been able to take from her father’s home one awful night she tried not to think of too much. The toy sat cockeyed on the chair, her rag dress faded from the years.
She stepped into the dressing room and her smile fell. Elsie was inside and so were piles upon piles of boxes and trunks.
“This must be what Laurence…Lord Castleton…sent back,” she said softly.
Elsie glanced at her. “Yes, miss. And Beatrice is loving the acrobatics the boxes provide.”
Just as she’d said, the kitten was bounding from one box to another, shaking her little backside like she was doing far more intense tricks than a mere leap.
Julia wanted to laugh, but the piles of her life, returned to her so coldly, only made her think of Laurence and his cruel final words to her just earlier in the day. How he had dismissed her. How Alexander Castleton had just stood by as he did so, daring to look sick. Daring to tell his cousin to be less cruel when what was happening was exactly what he’d wanted all along.
The sadness and the guilt waned a little then. The anger rose up. Oh yes, she felt it toward Laurence. But also toward Alexander. He had been nothing but confusing the entire time they’d been in the countryside. One moment he’d be directly telling her he didn’t approve, the next he’d take her arm on a terrace and confuse every part of her. He would be kind, but then he’d orchestrated this morning. He’d orchestrated her demise.
“Hateful man,” she muttered, and wished she didn’t think about the way his dark eyes had occasionally held hers.
Elsie tilted her head. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing.” She shook off the troubled thoughts. “You get settled, Elsie. I’ve no doubt the last day has been trying for you. Rest and we’ll deal with all this later. I won’t need you again tonight.”
“But—”
She shook her head. “Thank you.”
Then she pivoted on her heel and hurried out of the chamber and downstairs. Parsons was just coming down the hall andstopped as he saw her. “Oh, miss, they’ll bring up the tray shortly.”
“You should bring it up for Elsie—she’s had a trying day, as well,” she said. “But I won’t need it. What I do need, if it’s possible, is the carriage.”
She said the words and knew they were not correct. She was still reeling and one shouldn’t make decisions in those circumstances. She’d been told that over and over by Arabella, by Evie, by Simone. And yet she didn’t turn her course.
