Page 94 of Discovering Her Earl

“I couldn’t sleep.”

In truth, she hadn’t tried. She’d lay beside Julian, listening to his heartbeat wishing she could hear it every night as she fell asleep. She didn’t know how she would give him up. But she had to.

“You don’t want tomorrow to come.” It wasn’t a question. He spoke as if he’d heard her very thoughts.

The tears she’d kept tightly reined in when she’d been with Julian leaked from her eyes and ran down her cheek now.

Bentley offered a crisp handkerchief and she took it with a whisper of thanks.

“I don’t want to burden Lord Melville with my feelings, but it is becoming ever more difficult to keep them restrained. If he saw me now, blubbering mess that I am, he’d surely be relieved to part ways.”

She tried to laugh at her poor attempt at a joke, but it sounded painful.

“I’ve known him all his life and I can assure you, relief is the last thing he would feel in this situation.”

Lainey nodded.

“Perhaps you wish to spare him seeing your pain?”

She swiped at the tears on her cheeks and nodded.

“What we wish doesn’t matter. I am not proper and therefore we cannot be together.”

“I believe there are many different versions of proper. I am not of noble birth, yet I touched a king’s tomb. And I set out a finely dressed lord, if I do say so myself.”

She laughed, grateful for his attempt to cheer her. Even if it wasn’t working.

“I’ve thought myself dry of ideas,” she admitted. “I considered asking my uncle to send me to finishing school.” She laughed sadly. “At my age, could you imagine? But I would learn everything there was to know about how to run a proper household and be a countess if it would change anything.”

“You speak of the scandal regarding your mother’s legitimacy?”

She nodded. “My aunt thinks it a bunch of poppycock. They looked so much alike many people thought them to be twins. But then they also looked like my grandmother so that doesn’t clear up anything now does it?”

“I think there are many people who would be surprised to find out their blood is not as pure as they think it is.” He winked. “Servants talk.”

She smiled briefly.

“Unfortunately, my legitimacy has been called to question publicly. And by my own grandfather.” Though Elaina still wondered if the duke hadn’t spoken out in anger at his daughter marrying a third son of a third son rather than the truth.

It didn’t matter now. The damage was done.

“Even if I managed to learn the ways to act like a proper countess, there is no way to purge the suspicion of my birth. There is too much at stake. The person the late earl selected to make the determination would surely find me unsuitable and Julian would lose everything.”

Mr. Bentley patted her hand.

“Your sacrifice speaks of your suitability, Miss Bantham. Whomever is called on to make this fateful decision would be a fool to see anything unacceptable about you.”

She offered a watery smile.

“Thank you. It means so much that you think so. Julian loves you as he would a true father. And I understand why. You want him to be happy, just as I do. It is my only wish that he be happy and loved. Doesn’t he deserve that after everything he’s endured?”

“Indeed, he does, miss.”

Elaina nodded with a thread of thought that quickly wove into a plan.

She couldn’t be with Julian, but she could help him find someone proper that would also make him happy and truly care for him.

He thought he would have a cold marriage, of duty only. But it didn’t have to be that way. He could have happiness.