If I see the worst in everyone, he’d told her, it is because they refuse to see it in themselves.
Well. Jenny was seeing the worst of herself now. It was reflected in the hopeful glint in Ned’s eyes. It was mirrored in his clear, unwrinkled forehead, as he awaited her response. Waited for her to solve a problem she’d created.
She’d hoped to help Ned by softening Lord Blakely. She’d wanted the marquess to see the good in his cousin. She’d believed he’d eventually see the good in others beside himself. But even Ned could tell the tasks weren’t working.
Lord Blakely hadn’t softened one bit. And no matter how harsh or unwelcome his delivery had been, he’d had the right of Jenny’s interactions with Ned.
Through his eyes, Jenny could now see her own selfishness. She recognized a deep hunger inside her, a wistful desire to be treated as someone worthy of respect. But what sort of honor did she deserve? She’d never been esteemed when she was Jenny Keeble, so she’d created Madame Esmerelda. Madame Esmerelda hadn’t cared, and she’d found clientele who hung on her every word as the truth. That superficial honor, however, hid nothing but a swindler beneath a thin veneer of mumbo jumbo. The light in Ned’s eyes was directed at a woman who didn’t exist.
She hadn’t earned Ned’s praise. Even seeing Ned’s obvious distress, she could not bring herself to tell him the tasks were her own invention, that there were no spirits and she was a fraud. She couldn’t bear to see that light grow dim.
Now that Jenny was seeing the worst in people, she could see the worst of what she’d done to Ned. He was dependent on her to advise him in the smallest ways. And still she was too selfish to say the words that would make him turn away in disgust.
“Ned.” There was a quaver in her voice. There shouldn’t have been. Madame Esmerelda didn’t quaver. But it wasn’t Madame Esmerelda who spoke now. It was Jenny.
Ned frowned at her distressed tone.
Maybe she could make things…well, not right. Two years of lies made it too late for right. But less wrong.
“Remember what I told you, years ago? That one day you would become a man?”
He nodded.
“It’s time. Not time to start becoming a man. It’s time to finish.”
He stared blankly at her. “I don’t understand. What are you saying I should do?”
“Ned, in this matter, you want to trust me. You want me to tell you what to do.”
He nodded vigorously.
“That’s a laudable sentiment, but it’s not right. Don’t wait for my advice. Don’t—” she choked on the words “—don’t trust me.”
He shook his head, baffled. As if his world were turning upside down. “How can it be wrong to trust you?”
Oh, God. Seeing herself through Lord Blakely’s rational eyes was torture. It was maddening. The guilelessness of Ned’s query, the foolishness of his response stung her heart. How Lord Blakely would scorn the two of them if he could hear this conversation. And he would be right, damn the man.
“Ned,” Jenny said, “you have to learn to trust yourself. You have to learn to make your own decisions. You cannot rely on me for every last answer.”
He shrunk from her.
“You want to be a man, Ned?”
He nodded, his arms folding around his torso protectively.
“It’s a terrible burden, being a man. It entails responsibility, choices. It requires hard work and intelligence. And this time—right now—it requires that you stand on your own two feet without anyone to help you.”
“Alone?” His voice was soft and scared. His lips trembled.
Lord Blakely’s jaded world disappeared from Jenny’s mind in a puff of smoke, and she saw Ned with her heart again. A strong young man, hoping to be the best he could.
She reached out and took his hand. And then she opened his fingers and smiled. Slowly, she put the coins back into his hands, one by one. Each one felt like a heavy weight coming off her heart. With the last shilling, she felt almost buoyant. She didn’t let go of his hand. Instead she gripped it tight. And deep inside her, she said farewell.
“No, Ned,” she whispered. “You don’t have to be alone. Just—just be wiser in your choice of companions.”
Her eyes threatened to water. Her voice was hoarse.
Ned looked up into her face and he swallowed. Then he pulled his hand from hers and looked away into the corner of the room. “I think I understand,” he said. He, too, was hoarse.
“Do you?”
He nodded, refusing to meet her eyes. Maybe he did understand. Maybe he’d finally comprehended the words Jenny could not bring herself to say. I am a fraud. You have been duped.
And maybe this response—this not-looking, this not-speaking—was his way of saying he’d finally seen through her, and he would not rely on her any longer.
He left silently.
For long minutes after he’d gone, Jenny stared at the room around her. She had acquired a number of occult trappings over the years. The artful cobwebs she’d allowed to build up in the corner. The depressing black, eating up the light that shone through the window. The only illumination in her room was the fitful glow of coal behind the grate of her fireplace.
All the savor had gone from her work. Playing fortune-teller had once been exciting. It had been enthralling. She’d watched, oh-so-carefully, for those tiny hints of reaction in her clients’ faces. She’d told them what they wanted to hear. They’d listened.
Secretly, she’d laughed. It had been Jenny Keeble’s revenge on her childhood.
She’d been no better than Lord Blakely, thinking herself above her clients that way. But there was no way to laugh at the way she’d betrayed Ned’s sweet loyalty.
As she looked into the dim flames, Jenny acknowledged another truth. “I cannot go on like this.”
She spoke the words aloud—to whom, she could not say. Perhaps to the fire. Perhaps to the spirits she had for so long pretended to call upon. There was no answer except a small, burning center deep in her chest. A resonance, agreeing that this portion of her life had come to an end.
And yet what was she to do with herself now? As a woman, most professions were closed to her. She could sew piecework—and ruin her eyes while eking out a living. Perhaps, after all these years, she could attempt to find work teaching. Although with no character references to speak of—she could hardly ask Lord Blakely, after all—the opportunities that presented themselves were likely to be unsavory.
The employment offered to the girl of unknown family hadn’t been savory even before she’d run away to London.
She could retire to the country, where the coins she’d saved would stretch further. She could make a pension of the money, and hope that twelve pounds per annum would keep her for the remainder of her life. It would, so long as she was hale and hearty and capable of cooking and cleaning for herself. A gamble; and a life that sounded frighteningly blank and devoid of purpose.
None of that sounded right. All those possibilities echoed emptily in the hollow of her lungs. Jenny breathed out and thought of what she wanted.
What would she do if she were to start her life over again, from the very beginning? What would she change? That old, deep aching overtook her.
She wanted a mother.
God, she wanted a child.
She wanted to make someone of herself that even the fastidious Lord Blakely would have to respect.
Three impossibilities. She shook her head.
Jenny had no idea where she would end, but she did have some idea where to start. Slowly, ceremonially, she pulled the black fustian from her tables and chairs. She gathered the heaped cotton in her arms and hauled it to the fireplace.
It landed in the hearth in a swirl of ash and coal dust. Jenny coughed the particles from her lungs and waited. For a few seconds, the dark material cut off all light and heat. Then it glowed red, and finally caught in a crackling blaze. Jenny pulled off her multicolored skirts, one by one, and tossed them atop the fire. Her ker
chief flew next, and then her shawl. Finally, she stripped down to her shift. The conflagration lasted only minutes, but it scorched the front of her thighs with its heat.
When the flames died down, the last of Madame Esmerelda had burned away.
CHAPTER NINE
AS NOTES WENT, the one Gareth received from his cousin two days after his disastrous encounter with Madame Esmerelda struck him as particularly opaque.
Meet me, it said. Musicale at Arbuthnots’. Eight o’clock. In the blue dining room. Very important. Don’t bring Madame Esmerelda. You were right about her. Ned.
Gareth couldn’t bear to think of Madame Esmerelda. Every time he thought of that evening, a hot stab of shame lanced through him, like a burning poker stabbed in his side. Sitting in his study, pretending to industriously pore over a stack of bills and reports, it should have been easy to put the woman from his mind.
It wasn’t. After all, he was in his study with his man of business.