“Fine speech, Thea, but why should we believe your stories? You have confessed to your own scandalous behavior with Lord Luxborough.”
“Lord Luxborough believes my stories. If he were here now, as my betrothed? If he told you I spoke the truth, would you find you believed my stories then?”
They exchanged looks. “Well,” Pa said, “that would be a different matter.”
Thea nodded sadly. “Because his word is worth more than mine.”
“It isn’t like that,” Ma said. “But you always did make mischief and break rules, and, well, this is the way the world works.”
“Oh, I have had quite an education in the way the world works.” Thea studied her grubby pamphlet. How pathetic it was, this sorry tale, the last of its kind. She looked back up. “May I see the Little Ones?”
Pa crossed the foyer and opened the door, letting in the breeze and sounds of the street. He did not look her in the eye. “You had best go. It would not do for Lord Ventnor to learn that you were here. We cannot afford to displease him.”
“Ma?”
Her mother turned away. “It is best, Thea.”
Thea had nothing more to say, so she went out. The blue door closed behind her.
“Farewell,” Thea whispered to the brass mermaid and returned to the waiting hack.
Chapter 25
Voices from the drawing room had Rafe barging through the door to see who it was. Thea, he thought. Thea had come back.
It wasn’t Thea. It was a maid setting out tea and biscuits for Socrates.
The maid bobbed a curtsy and left, and Rafe sat and recalculated the hours. Thea would be in London by now. He should be with her, but she didn’t want him, and he’d vowed not to chase her again, so she was in her beloved London, and he was taking tea with a dead Greek philosopher.
“Socrates?” Rafe said.
“Why not? I’m wise,” Nicholas retorted. “And this toga is a sight more comfortable than that royal gown. Bit chilly though. Breeze gets right up into my—”
“Nicholas.”
“—Knees.”
Nicholas poured the tea. Rafe poked at a biscuit. Stale. The whole house was growing stale.
“You’re really going to that costume party,” Rafe said.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. I still retain hope our Thea will triumph. I would have thought you’d want to be there.”
“Thea doesn’t want me there. I offered to be by her side and she refused me, though she knew my presence would make all the difference.”
They would welcome home the Earl of Luxborough and his wife, she had said. He could still hear those words, as he could hear most of that blasted conversation, complete with the bitterness in her tone. A bitter edge did creep into her tone, sometimes. Unsurprising, considering what she had been through.
“I’m not sure if that poor child knows what she wants,” Nicholas said.
“She’s not a child.”
“Very well. She’s a woman. Who lost everything once, and likely fears losing it all again.”
Rafe shook his head. “I offered her everything, on a silver platter. Had she agreed to be my wife, she would have never lost it.”
They would welcome home the Earl of Luxborough and his wife.
The earl’s wife.
Oh. Oh hell.
That was why she had turned him down.
Rafe bounded out of his chair, mind racing, replaying their conversation. Of course. What had she said? I must put the world right, for how can I ever feel secure again, when I do not even have a safe place to stand?
Bloody hell, yet again, how wrong he had been! Of course marrying him was no solution for her, because she was not a social climber; her dream was not to marry a man with a title, but for her parents to accept her as she was. Until she had let go of her past, she would not be ready for her future.
His heart broke all over again as realization struck its blow. She needed to do this, and she needed to do it alone. And then…
Perhaps he should have told her, that he wanted her in his life every day, that she had only to say the word and he would put everything right for her. If only he had told her that he loved her and needed her, like sunshine and water and air.
Not fair. If he had tried to hold her here, when she had unfinished business, the unresolved questions would have haunted her. She would have been haunted not by the past, but by the futures that she might have had. If he had convinced her to stay, then when times were hard—and he suspected even a happy life had hard times—then she might have doubted. “What if I had gone then?” she might have thought. “What if I had tried? Everything might be different.”
If her happiness did lie in her home in London, then he had to let her find it, because her happiness had become the most important thing in his world.