Temperance stared down at their joined hands.
“I do not know if I am brave enough.”
“Oh, come on. You are the bravest person I know,” Alethea squeezed her fingers. “You survived far worse things than confessing your heart.”
Temperance’s eyes stung unexpectedly.
“I hate this,” she admitted. “I hate that after everything, after fighting for every scrap of freedom, I have given someone the power to hurt me.”
“That is what love is,” Charity smiled sadly.
Temperance let out a long breath.
“And what if he does not feel the same?”
“Then,” Charity said firmly, “you survive it. And then you choose a life that is truly yours. But at least you will know.”
Alethea nodded. “Not knowing is its own kind of prison.”
“There is a ball next week,” she said. “Elias intends to speak to me there.”
“And Harper?” Charity asked.
“I don’t know,” Temperance replied. “You know, I am quite tired of this conversation already. We should walk back, please.”
The path widened again as it curved toward the eastern section of the park. Nothing in the environment that something was amiss, so when the man appeared, Temperance was caught entirely off guard.
She did not see him coming.
He was perhaps forty, standing to the side of the path with two companions, looking at her.
He stepped forward as they passed.
“Miss Hosmer,” he said.
She stopped.
“I don’t believe we have been introduced,” she said, in her neutral voice.
“Whitfield,” he said. “Sir Robert Whitfield. I have been meaning to make your acquaintance for some time as I hear you are actively seeking a match this season.”
“I am enjoying the season,” she said. “As most people are.”
She exchanged a confused look with her friends, but they did not seem to know what was going on either.
“Of course,” he said, with a smile that had nothing warm behind it. “Though I think we can dispense with the social pleasantries, Miss Hosmer, and speak plainly to each other. I have been observing your progress and I think you have rather more optimism about it than the situation warrants.”
Something cold moved through her, and she realized that whoever this was might not have the best of intentions for her.
“Have you?” she said.
“The men who have shown interest in you,” he said, pleasantly as though they had known each other for a long time, “will become less interested as they come to know you better. That is simply how it is. Your mother’s reputation alone is a significant liability. Add to that your background…”
He looked at Charity and Alethea as though he expected them to nod in agreement, but they only glared in his direction in response.
“A poor child raised in a nunnery because her own father did not want her. These are not small things to overlook and the men who are currently willing to overlook them are, I think, doing so under a misapprehension about what they will actually be getting.”
Charity had gone very still beside her. Alethea’s hand had moved to her arm, briefly, the lightest touch, there and gone.
