“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.
But once she had done what she needed to do, she could look to her future. Rafe could only hope that he lived in her memory. That she could gaze into her memories of him and they would guide her back to him.
Oh, by all that was sacred, let her come back to him.
Wherever you are now, Thea, know that I love you, he said to her in his mind. Come back to me, or I shall not know how to live.
And the house—the house had to be ready. No more stale biscuits. He’d clean the whole blasted place himself. Make it ready for the day she came home.
“I understand now,” Rafe said to Nicholas. “If I had married her, if she returned as the Countess of Luxborough, she would never have known what they truly thought. And Thea—she needs to know.”
“And once she knows?”
“Perhaps, then, she will come back.”
Nicholas absently shoved up the drooping shoulder of his toga. “You know, Rafe, my boy. If you came with me to London, she wouldn’t have as far to come back.”
“I’m not going to any blasted costume party.”
“Of course you’re not,” the bishop said.
Back at her lodgings, Thea and Gilbert found her trunk sitting on the front step and the landlady blocking her entrance, arms folded, jaw set.
“This is a respectable house,” the landlady said. “I don’t take women like you.”
Thea looked down at her trunk, back at the woman’s beady eyes. “What kind of woman do you imagine I am?”
“Exactly the kind your two gentleman callers told me you were.”
“You’re mistaken,” Thea protested. “And I paid for the rest of the month.”
“Least you should do. Now be gone.”
And yet another door slammed in her face.
The crowd streamed past them. Across the street, an anomaly caught Thea’s eye. Two finely dressed gentlemen stood as confidently as if that spot of London belonged to them. Some passersby took care not to jostle them, but several hopeful vendors swarmed around them, like flies on horse dung.
Yes, indeed. These two gentlemen were horse dung in human form.
Percy Russell and Francis Upton.
Her gentlemen callers, she presumed, whose lies had once more lost her a home.
They saw that she had noticed them. In unison, they doffed their hats and offered deep, mocking bows, their faces tilted up so she would not miss their malicious grins. They had everything, yet everything wasn’t enough, not until they were sure others had nothing.
Gilbert was hovering. “It’s getting late, miss. We must find you rooms.”
“It was hard enough the first time, for a woman on her own,” she said. “Maybe I can find an inn outside London.”
“I know somewhere. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Miss Larke would have my head if I didn’t make sure you were all right. Not to mention his lordship.”
His lordship, who had let her go. If only she had stayed with him. But that had not been real either.
Gilbert lifted one handle of the large trunk. “My cousin owns a coffeehouse near here. You can wait there while I confirm this place for you. I’ll bring a hack.”
Numbly, because she had no better ideas, Thea lifted the other handle and together they walked to Pimm’s Fine Coffee House. The place hummed with energy, from the men perched on wooden benches, each with a cup or pipe in one hand, and a page in the other. Some read quietly, others muttered in urgent conversations, and a few were in loud argument, ignored by the rest.
When Thea and Gilbert arrived, everyone paused mid-sentence and looked at them, but all decided at a glance they had no information to offer and went back to what they were doing. As Gilbert located Mrs. Pimm, Thea studied the room.
It was in coffeehouses such as this one where young Thea had loitered, dressed as a boy, running errands for a coin. She had practiced her reading on newspapers and memorized the conversations she overheard, to repeat for Pa. How she had basked when Pa’s eyes lit up and he said, “Excellent. I can use that information, oh yes, indeed I can.” What a team the Knight family had been.
As Thea inhaled the aroma of coffee to chase away the stink of smoke, a peculiar lightness came over her. Again, she recalled that time when her family had watched the hot air balloon, and her childish fear at knowing the balloon would no longer be anchored to the earth. All her life she had done whatever she could to stay anchored, but now her parents had definitively cut the ropes.