Page 42 of Lady Like

“So if I understand, you won’t marry me…” Alex’s face contorts, like he’s doing a complicated sum in his head. “Because you don’t want to sleep with other people? Or because you don’t love me? I’m afraid I’ve lost the plot.”

“I won’t marry you,” Harry says for the third time, though Alexander still seems unable to understand that she has rejected his acceptance of her proposal.

And while, yes, even she can admit that is a bit confusing, she feels that if he were really trying, he would have grasped it by now.

“ And I don’t love you. They are unrelated, but both true. ”

Alexander stands, looping his hands behind his head, which, Harry thinks, is a bit of a cruel reminder of her own limited mobility. “Well.” Alexander laughs, humorless. “I’m afraid that might not be the only consideration—”

But before he can explain, they’re interrupted by Collin’s voice at the flap of the tent.

“Harry, you’ve a visitor.” He steps aside, and there is Emily, in that goddamn yellow gown like a ray of sunlight. A rebellious dandelion with a fuzz of blond hair curled around her face. She looks marvelous. She looks like herself. She looks…

She looks more heartbroken than Alexander, but just as vexed.

Beside her, Violet is glaring at Harry like she wants to make her into boots.

“As promised, Miss Sergeant,” Collin says, then extends a hand to the duke, and says, “Alexander, shall we give the ladies a moment? Then perhaps you and I can have a private word.”

Emily stands still as Alexander and Collin leave the tent. She looks small and withdrawn in a way Harry has never seen her, like a piece of paper curled by a flame. “What’s the matter?” Harry asks.

Violet lets out a bark of empty laughter. “How dare you.”

“Perhaps,” Emily says, turning to her cousin, “you might give us a moment alone as well.”

“Are you certain?”

“Please, Cousin.”

With one last glare over her shoulder at Harry, Violet departs, leaving the two of them alone. The space between them—four steps from the entrance of the tent to the table where Harry is sitting—feels vast as the distance to the moon.

Emily rubs a hand over her eyes, and for a moment, Harry dares hope all she will say is that she was worried for Harry after the fall. But instead, she squares her shoulders and demands, “Have you enjoyed making me look the fool?”

Harry swallows. The muscles in her back tighten. She can feel the pull in her injured shoulder. “What you heard—” she begins, but Emily cuts her off.

“You planned to marry him all this time.” Emily fists her hands by her side.

“I should have known you would always be the woman who filled up my dance card at that first ball. I was so stupid to believe otherwise. You hadn’t suddenly found the milk of human kindness in you.

You haven’t even the watery broth of basic decency!

You know my situation—you know I am desperate—you know everything, you let me tell you everything ! I thought you were my friend.”

“I was,” Harry says, her voice hoarse. “I am.”

Even if Emily lets her explain, she knows it’s too late.

She should have told Emily the truth from the first day in Collin’s parlor.

How did she ever think keeping this a secret would save her the pain and shame and having to admit she was goddamn stupid for not recognizing from the moment they met that Emily Sergeant would be a wind of hurricane strength in Harry’s life?

She could tell her now, about the prince and his stipulations, and Harry’s bone-deep fear of being asked to compromise herself to survive.

But she doubts Emily will hear her. And it’s all meaningless.

No matter the justification, Harry knows she has erred.

Still, she at least owes Emily the truth.

“Before we met,” Harry says, “I asked Alexander to marry me. I needed someone who wouldn’t try to stifle me or make me into someone I wasn’t, and I thought Alexander could be that.”

Emily stares at her, mouth quivering. Then she says, “I don’t want to see you again.”

Harry wants to argue, to beg, to go back to the day they met and do everything differently.

To rearrange her whole life to make certain that when Emily Sergeant arrives, there is room enough for them to dance.

Life is too short and choices too finite for how long and fragile love is.

But more than that, she wants Emily to stand up for herself—to ask for what she wants—and have someone respect it.

“All right,” Harry says, and each word feels like a splinter of glass pried from her heart.

“Don’t try to see me.”

“I won’t.”

“Fine,” Emily says.

“Fine,” says Harry.

And then Emily turns and storms from the tent, leaving Harry alone.