“And then what?”
“Let me help you,” commanded her old friend who had become so proper and decorous, every inch the future pillar of Society. “You always said you wished to be the headmistress at a girls’ school. You can still achieve that.”
“How?”
He joined her at the side of the desk. “Move to America. You can invent a new identity and start a new life there, with nothing to prevent you from going to school, receiving training, and ultimately finding a good position.”
“With you bearing all the expenditures in the meanwhile?”
“Pay me back once you are self-supporting. With interest, if you’d prefer.”
“But there will be no consequences whatsoever if I do not or cannot pay you back. Am I correct?”
He did not answer.
The direction of his gaze: somewhere over her right shoulder. The placement of his hand: braced at the edge of the desk. The rise and fall of his chest with every breath—beneath his dark grey coat, his waistcoat was silk jacquard, silver tracery upon the blue of deepest twilight.
“I assume you’ve heard from Mr. Shrewsbury?”
His jaw tightened. “I have.”
“Did he offer me the position of his mistress?”
“He did.”
“I hope you didn’t decline on my behalf.”
At last he looked directly into her eyes. “I would not presume to speak for you.”
His dark eyes were solemn, almost antagonistic. Yet heat prickled her skin and charred her nerves. She set the last bite of madeleine on her tongue. “Aren’t you going to ask whether I will consider it?”
His gaze dipped to her mouth before meeting hers again. “I won’t presume otherwise. You have demonstrated that you will consider—and do—just about anything.”
She tilted her chin up. “Are you angry with me?”
He again did not answer, but looked at her as if taken aback at how close she was to him, even though they were separated by a chair.
“I’m sure you would prefer for me to remain with Mrs. Watson,” she murmured, “rather than take up Mr. Shrewsbury’s offer?”
The direction of his gaze: the pulse at the base of her throat. The placement of his hand: a hard grip on the back of the chair. The fine white linen of his shirt rose and fell with every quickened breath.
The next moment he was ten feet away by the grandfather clock, standing with his back to her. “And when have you ever taken my wishes into consideration when it comes to making your choices?”
She exhaled slowly, unsteadily. “I won’t apologize, you know. Going to Mr. Shrewsbury was the only choice I could live with, the only way to break through this wall that my family would keep around me all my life.”
“Have I asked you to apologize?”
“No, but you are angry with me. Furious.”
He turned around halfway. If glances could take physical form, his would have speared her to the wall. “There isn’t a single person with the slightest interest in your well-being who isn’t furious with you, Charlotte.”
“But I’m fine now.”
“You are not starving in the streets, but you are not fine. You are a lady’s companion, for God’s sake—there is no one worse suited to being a lady’s companion. Today you may rejoice in escaping worse misfortunes. Tomorrow, too, perhaps. But in a week you will be bored out of your mind.
“When you were living under your parents’ roof, at least you had the possibility of an independent future to look forward to. What do you have to look forward to now? Let me be generous and attribute only the best of motives to this Mrs. Watson. Still it remains that now you are an employee at a position that provides nothing of what you seek—no independence, no intellectual stimulation, and certainly not anywhere near five hundred pounds a year.
“How long can you last? How long before it sinks in that you have exchanged one cage for another? How long before your mind rebels against listening to the same anecdotes for the fifty-eighth time?”
She leaned against the desk, needing its support. “You make it sound so bleak.”
“What did you think it would be? A rich and fulfilling life?”
This time it was she who did not answer.
He exhaled. “I will see myself out.”
He was retrieving his walking stick from the stand when she said, “I will let you sponsor the cost of my emigration and education if you will agree to one condition.”
“No.”
“But you haven’t—”
He set a hand on the door. “I may not be able to tell what your mother had for lunch yesterday by the color of your hat ribbons, but that doesn’t mean I can’t extrapolate what you are about to demand. It will be the same . . . service you tried to extort from me by threatening to go to Roger Shrewsbury if I failed to provide it.”
She slanted her lips. “You should have heeded that threat. We’d all be much better off if you’d come off your high horse and done some yeoman’s work.”