Page 34 of Lady Like
Harry returns to Collin’s the next morning after luncheon with Emily and Violet—Martin, thankfully, having already gone to his firm.
She assumes Collin will similarly be at his office, staring at documents with a furrowed brow or whatever he does every day to afford this house and his expensive suits.
But just as she reaches the door to her bedroom, Havoc nudging his enormous head against the back of her knees, the door at the opposite end of the hallway opens and Collin emerges, looking like a man exhumed.
He freezes when he sees Harry, one hand still on the knob.
“Good morning,” Harry says, and Collin winces as if she’d shouted.
“Is it morning?” he croaks. The hair on one side of his head stands up straight, and he appears to be wearing the same shirt he had on the night before.
“Why aren’t you at the office?” Harry asks.
Then, because she is still smarting from his betrayal and can’t resist the urge to twist the inebriated knife, “Where is your office, by the by? I should know, in case I need to inform them of your untimely death after a night of wild debauchery. And what do you do exactly? And would you explain it to me right now in excruciating detail? Shall I speak louder?”
Collin winces, massaging his temples, and Harry smirks. She has never seen Collin so flattened by a night of drinking.
“I must have…” Collin runs his fingers through his flat hair, frowns, then draws his hand away and gives it a confused look, as though he found something unexpectedly sticky there. “Overslept.”
Harry pulls a face of exaggerated sympathy. Collin looks as though he’d like to push her down the stairs, were his balance not so impaired he’d likely tumble straight after her. “How was your night?”
“I…can’t recall.”
“Did Rochester find you?”
“I think I might have told him…” He trails off, realizing suddenly that he’s shown his hand.
Harry folds her arms. “I asked you not to seek him out.”
“I know you did, but—”
“I asked you to trust my judgment.”
Collin slumps sideways with his face against the wall. “Can we please not fight about this right now?”
“I don’t need your approval to marry Rochester.”
“I wasn’t seeking him out to give you my approval.”
“Then I don’t need your opinion of his character.”
“That’s not…I simply wanted to know who you’re courting. I’m interested in your life; why is that so hard to believe? I care for your happiness.” A pause. Collin rubs his nose, then casts Harry a quick glance out of the corner of his eye. “But Harry, I must say…”
“Good lord.” Harry drops her head back and laughs. “You are a parody of yourself.”
Collin pushes himself off the wall and manages to stand straight for a moment before he slumps the other way, clutching the banister for support. “I don’t think he’s good for you.”
“Why, because he’s too much fun? Because he got you foxed and you had a good night for the first time in your goddamn life?”
“Please trust me. I don’t think he’s the right man for you.”
“Your opinion on this matter is irrelevant.” Harry holds up her hands. “You don’t have to worry about marriage. You don’t have to consider shackling your life to someone who won’t try to take it from you.”
“I will not apologize for having your best interests in mind.”
“Oh believe you me, I never expected you to.” And she storms into her bedroom, nearly tripping over Havoc sprawled on the rug, and slams the door behind her as hard as she can. She hopes it will rattle Collin’s brain out of his skull.
Havoc jumps onto the bed, and when Harry flops down beside him, bats at her until she begins to knead his neck like bread.
Any residual warmth from the night she and Emily had spent together has slid away like a wet hillside.
She had only asked one thing of Collin—well, two things, though he had offered her the room in his house most of his own free will.
But she had asked he not meddle with Alexander.
Trust that she knew what was best and she had found the man who would both meet the prince’s requirements and let her protect herself.
Does he think so little of her judgment?
Or does he simply not understand what kind of cage marriage might be for a woman like her?
She’s meant to go to Alexander’s this afternoon.
She had only come home to change into her riding things.
They’ll pretend they’re going to run the horses but then he’ll kiss her against a stable wall and she’ll take his cock between her hands and he’ll come far too quickly and it will all be so predictable and easy and fine.
And what a relief fine would be! It would be so easy to marry Alexander, to use him as a shield for her own peculiarities.
To let people respect her for her house and husband and connections to the king.
Why is she working so hard to make things even more difficult for herself by letting herself grow sweet on Emily Sergeant and contemplate what might happen if she doesn’t take the offer from the prince?
Her protestations before she met Emily felt halfhearted, now that she really has something to lose, rather than just the hope of it.
Predictable and easy and fine, she thinks. And not enough.
The prince shot a cannonball through life as she knew it, yet here she is, trying to rebuild the same house she lived in before.
Why is she working so tirelessly to make everything the same as it has always been when that was never anything better than fine?
When was the last time something had made her truly happy?
The night previous, she realizes, when she had done something entirely out of character and gone home with a woman she had no intention of sleeping with.
The night she spent with Emily, the quiet, the comfort, waking in the night and seeing Emily’s shape breathing in the dark.
Even Martin crashing in and acting a prick hadn’t dampened things—though it was a sobering reminder to Harry that she would never be wanted in homes like his.
And then Emily’s confession—the intimacy of it all!
They had hardly touched, no more than a comforting hand to the back of the neck, but Harry cannot remember the last time she felt so close to someone.
So trusted. Harry had always thought that opening up to someone was like holding a finger closer and closer to a flame—eventually one would get burned.
But fire too could warm. Fire was good for making tea and baking bread.
The timing could not be worse. There has never been a less convenient time for Harry to realize she is falling in love with an impossible woman. Less well timed for her to realize that she wants something new for her life. Something different.
She cannot think this way. It’s insane, the idea that she might sacrifice a lifetime of security for one woman.
She must do something to force herself to stay the course.
She’ll go see Alexander today. She’ll write to the Palace and tender her resignation.
She’ll give up her work and with it her room, and she’ll have no safety lines to catch her.
She’ll leave herself with no choice but to take the prince’s offer.
And she will tell Emily the truth about her pursuit of Alexander. See if the question of love is even still on the table once Emily knows the truth.
—
Harry leaves tickets for Emily and Violet at the theater box office, along with an envelope for the company manager containing her official resignation.
And though she does the latter in secret, hoping the letter won’t be read for another few days in the flurry of closing night and the excessive celebratory drinking, by the end of act two, somehow everyone seems to know that Harry has quit the Palace.
The news has likely reached Mariah, but Harry doesn’t make herself available for an earful.
She fears Mariah might be angry enough to make a spectacle on stage—Harry checks all the prop daggers at the interval to be sure none of them are sharp enough to pierce flesh—but Mariah seems to be on her best behavior.
She says all her lines correctly. Doesn’t wear the nightgown with the back cut out of it.
Even cries real tears in the arms of the doctor.
It’s far more unsettling than a spectacle. She must have something planned, and Harry decides the wisest strategy will be to head it off. When they leave the stage after the final curtain, Harry catches Mariah’s hand, stopping her progress to the dressing room. “Could I have a quick word?”
Calmly—has the word ever before been used in the same sentence as her name?—Mariah pries Harry’s fingers from hers. “About what?”
Oh yes, Harry thinks, she’s absolutely fuming. “I thought maybe you’d heard I’m leaving.”
“I heard.”
“And you’re not…”
“Not what?”
“I don’t know—adding arsenic to my wine?” When Mariah doesn’t react, Harry asks quickly, “Or have you? Though I suppose I’d already be dead.”
But Mariah simply says, “You’ll be missed.”
Harry narrows her eyes. Either Mariah has been swapped with a changeling version of herself, or she’s plotting. And before Harry can figure out which it is, Mariah is sauntering off to the dressing room, waving backward to Harry as she goes.
But Harry hasn’t time to dwell upon it, for one of the stagehands is at her shoulder, informing her she has a guest at the door, and Harry feels her heart pick up.