“Then…why are you here?” He looked desperate. “I don’t understand.”
She pitied them both in that moment. “You’ve been very low, I believe, and some friends of yours who had only your best interests at heart were worried about you.” Nervously she plucked at her glove, glancing away and finding her eyes trained on the large bed upon which they’d enjoyed such sport so recently. Was she imagining it, or did he in fact blush as he followed her gaze? Was the truth finally hitting home?
“They sent me to visit you a couple of days ago, and…they’ve funded this visit to you now.” She swallowed before meeting his eyes, adding with difficulty, “Because they saw how improved you were after the last time.”
“The last time?” He looked as if he’d received a blow to the solar plexus. “Dear God, it truly wasn’t a dream? It was you?”
Hope nodded, unsure whether to take a step towards him or to begin her retreat now. Mr Durham was not the kind of man to indulge in prostitutes, and this encounter was clearly as distressing to him as it was to her.
“I’m sorry if I disappoint you, Mr Durham.” She truly was sorry, but warring in her breast was how to expedite matters so she could protect her sister and the man before her. Both were innocents—unlike her. But both stood to be destroyed by what she did or didn’t do in the next few minutes. Her burden was a great one. “I think I should leave now.”
There, she’d voiced it—the turning point that meant she had to find some other means of safeguarding Charlotte’s future. She could disappear into the sewers so no one could find her and hold her up as a shameful contamination of the hopeful bride-to-be.
“Wait!”
Oh, there was so much hope in that word that was followed by so much disappointment when common sense filled the vacuum left by extinguished optimism.
“I don’t understand any of this! I thought you’d gone to the Continent to work for a family in Leipzig.” His anguish at discovering how deeply wrong was his belief was hard to witness. He ran his hands through his hair. “I gave a letter to your mother to forward to you—two, in fact. But you never replied.” His eyes widened at the broader ramifications. “Your family know…what you do?”
Hope shook her head. Woodenly, she said, “I’m dead to them, and that’s the only way it can be. Dead to my whole family.” She drew in a breath. “You know my sister is to marry?”
“Everyone knows it. The match of the decade. You’ll not be there, of course.” There was a harsh edge to his voice that shouldn’t have distressed her so much. Of course, he was putting up the barriers around his heart to protect it from an unwelcome and undesirable reality.
She shook her head. “But you will, naturally. And I’m sure I needn’t ask you to withhold my personal congratulations. Charlotte doesn’t need to know I’m not where she believes me to be.” Hope sighed. “I have no idea what story they’ve concocted, but she needs to be protected. Do I have your assurance you’ll keep my…secret?”
“Secret? And how did this become your…secret, Miss Merriweather?” His nostrils flared as he took a step towards her. “What changed that you did not make our assignation two years ago?” He ran the back of his hand across his face. “Do you know how often I’ve thought of you? Dreamed of you?”
“You have?”
Ridiculous that the sentiment in his tone should touch a weakness she didn’t know existed within her. The fact she had ever meant more to him than a brief encounter was both joyous and tragic.
“Of course I have!” He seemed to have trouble controlling his breathing. “You must have known that for years I watched you in church, on horseback, hoping for the opportunity to speak to you. And then suddenly you were riding with us during the Hunt. I don’t need to tell you what nearly happened after you fell. When I rushed to your side…before we were interrupted.”
Hope brushed away a tear she did not let him see. She was glad of her choice of the midnight-blue velvet rather than the dark brown satin which would have revealed the droplet like a badge of shame. Fallen women were not allowed to cry for the sins of their own making.
She let him go on. He seemed to want to tell her everything as, agitated, he began to pace. “And that night, at the Hunt Ball, we danced. I thought there was…something…” he choked on the word “…something special between us. I spoke of us meeting at the church the next day, and although you didn’t agree, I believ
ed you wanted to make that assignation as much as I did. Now I see there was obviously someone else. Someone who led you down the path of ruin. Was it a man? Money? A lust for something beyond what your virtuous existence could offer you? Why did you run away, Miss Merriweather?”
Hope should have been more immune to the accusations into which he channeled his disappointment. She’d clearly been his angel on a pedestal, and now that he’d discovered her so weakly human, susceptible to human vices, his lovely dream had been obliterated.
“It was a man.” She drew in a shaking breath. Would she tell him what Wilfred had done? Or did that no longer matter? All that was important to Felix Durham was that she was no longer the paragon of virtue he needed her to be. She’d disappointed him. Let him down. Whatever she said in her defence would sound like a weak excuse for her own susceptibility.
Hope touched his arm, not expecting him to flinch as he did.
“You wish for a return of my former regard?” He shook his head. “What do you want from me?”
“I enjoyed what we shared three nights ago.” She was back in character, her voice husky and suggestive as she slowly stroked his cheek. It was her best defence. Let him sate his disappointment through the pleasures of the flesh. She’d loved him but he was just a man, after all. Like all the others, he saw her only as a conduit for his dreams of what a good woman should be.
His sharp intake of breath was proof that he was not immune. He might like to pretend his disgust of a woman like her, but the kind of woman she’d become offered him delights more compelling than his reluctance to engage.
Facing him squarely, she ran her fingertips lightly up his flanks to cup his cheek.
He remained rigid. “Is this what you do to all the men who…pay you?” He shuddered slightly. “Who is paying you now? Millament? It doesn’t sound like him.”
Hope pretended she neither knew nor cared. “Those friends who are concerned about your state of mind. They paid Madame Chambon in the hope of restoring to you your former spirits, and now here I am again.” She pushed back her right shoulder just a fraction. “I’m the remedy for a great many sorrows and disappointments.” She licked her lips. It was part of the act. Not that it was usual that she had to resort to any measures to entice a man before. “So you may as well enjoy me while I’m here.”
Strangely, she’d never found herself so desirous of wanting to make a man bend to her. Of his own free will. She’d excited his desires when he was responding only to bodily cravings. But his moral objections were a barrier she needed to breach. Not just because she wanted to, but because of what she needed to do for Wilfred. For Charlotte.