She staggered. That was almost as much as she had saved and would soon invest with Danvers. An astronomical sum. “You cannot mean that.”
He got up. “I don’t say what I don’t mean. I’m offering you a boon rather than a lash. Don’t think I cannot go back to the first. You could take your money and disappear into the countryside where you’d be free to do whatever you’d like. Raise goats, write a novel foolish women like you will coo over, fuck every farmer in a five-mile radius, I don’t care what it is. But never return to London, never take another titled protector. You disappear from Society and I never have to see your face or hear your name again.”
Her sisters’ lives were in London and if Julia agreed to this, it would strike her from their day-to-day joys and heartbreaks. She would see them, of course. She had no doubt that if she had a sunny little cottage by the sea somewhere that they would call and bring their children. It wasn’t the end of the world if she accepted this.
“You must, of course, never see Alexander again, as well,” Heathfield continued.
She pursed her lips. Certainly she’d known that and somehow that was the most painful idea of all. But there was no future there. She knew that, even if she forgot it the moment he touched her.
“I am not agreeing,” she began. “I must think about the offer.”
“But?” he asked.
“The one thousand pounds would be split. I would take two hundred and fifty. And the rest would go to…to Alexander and his mother.”
For a moment the earl’s expression faltered, as if he was realizing something important and terrible. “I see he has been talking.”
“Would you agree?”
“If you disappeared, I’d agree to give the sum to the dirty beggars down by the docks.” He came a step toward her. She girded herself for whatever would happen next. “I think you might be in love with him.”
She refused to let that statement create a reaction that could be seen on her face. But she felt it. Oh, how she felt it in that moment even as she desperately tried to push it away.
“Is that all, Lord Heathfield?” she asked.
“I’ll give you two days,” he said. “Forty-eight hours and I’ll expect your answer. And realize that if it’s no, I can not only get rid of you in far more permanent ways—” Ah. There was the threat. He had been saving it. She felt icy cold and yet she had to keep herself calm as he continued. “—I can also makehislife infinitely worse. So choose wisely.”
He motioned for her to go and she nearly tripped as she did so, rushing back to the foyer and out where her carriage had notbeen removed to the stable. She flung herself inside, gasping for air as she was driven back home.
She had no sense of time during the journey as she tried to wade through the jumble of her thoughts. Lord Heathfield had been every bit as cruel as she had expected him to be after his initial threats. Why he was offering her any other way out, she had no idea, but his offer to pay her off to disappear had its advantages. She could help herself, and she could help Alexander in the process. If she cared for him, which she realized she did, wasn’t that the best ending?
There could certainly be no other. Fairytales were over in her mind. There would be no golden prince to sweep in on a valiant steed and sweep her away to some castle in the sky. There wouldn’t even be a brooding gothic lord to save her from hidden dangers. To believe otherwise was folly. She couldn’t afford that.
The carriage arrived at her doorstep in the midst of her tangled thoughts and she staggered down without help and into the house. Parsons looked at her with concern as he took her wrap and said something, but her mind wouldn’t let her hear it. When he followed her into the parlor and watched as she poured a drink, she blinked at him. “What is it?”
“My apologies, miss. I asked if you’d like the letter from Mr. Castleton or would you care to look at it later?”
She jolted. “Letter?”
“Yes. It was delivered just after you departed.”
She stared at the outstretched folded sheets. With shaking hands she took it, thanked the butler and turned toward the light of the window to read what Alexander had sent.
I want to see you tonight at seven if you’d like to join me for supper. My mother will be there.Please don’t say no, Julia. She truly wishes to meet you.
She stared, the shock over this invitation merging with the shock about his grandfather’s offer. Under every other circumstance she would have roundly refused Alexander. Courtesans didn’t share supper with the mothers of their lovers. It was not done to mix the worlds in that way.
She pursed her lips. “Of course, you were going to marry a lover, youstupid, silly girl.”
The harsh words didn’t help her decide. She stared at Alexander’s even, firm hand. The way he wrote Julia felt like a caress. How could she have gotten so deep with him so quickly? They hadn’t even liked each other a few weeks ago.
She sat down and read the message again. If she said yes to his grandfather, this might be the last chance she had to see him. The last chance to memorize every line of him and discover new things about him as he interacted with his mother. Those memories would go with her to the countryside.
It was a selfish desire, but it was the one that broke the stalemate about what to do. She rose and went to the escritoire across the room, withdrew one of Arabella’s lovely sheets of vellum and wrote a brief, shaky acceptance.
She would do this. And then she already knew what the best decision was when it came to him. When it came to her future. So she had better enjoy whatever time she had left before she was torn apart.
At six-fifty-five that night Alexander was pacing the parlor, staring at the clock every few minutes as he waited forJulia’s arrival. He felt his mother watching every turn across the carpet, knew he was revealing too much and not only to her. This desperation to see Julia revealed a great deal to himself.
