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Chapter

THIRTY-TWO

Lady Frinton’s carriage had dropped her back at Miss Prentice’s School for Young Ladies just before supper and Lottie had collapsed into the older woman’s arms the second the front door had closed.

After the longest and most painful journey of her life, she had been too devastated and too humiliated to hold back the tears or to make up a more palatable story as to why she had been sent back in disgrace.

Absolutely everything had spilled out in Miss P’s little parlor.

With Miss P on one side of her and Kitty and Portia on the other, none of them quite knowing what to say to make the awful situation better.

She had been exhausted by the time the tears finally stopped. Wrung out like an old dishcloth and in total despair, so they tucked her into bed with a hot toddy and a batch of fresh handkerchiefs and told her that things would all look better in the morning.

Except they hadn’t and Lottie only felt worse.

For all her inherent sunny outlook, she had maintained realistic expectations of what she actually had with Guy.

She had expected the imminent end of their romantic liaison.

Had braced herself for the inevitable but natural conclusion to their relationship to come in just one more day after she left with her employer, because he was him and she was her and in the normal course of things, like oil and water, a viscount and a servant never mixed.

He had said as much yesterday when he had awkwardly, almost apologetically, informed her that they urgently needed to talk.

Never mind that not once during the many times they had made love had any actual words of love been uttered.

But the abrupt, unexpected termination of everything without the closure of a goodbye had hit her like a speeding post coach.

Leaving her battered, bruised, and grieving.

“I cannot bear to think what he has been told.” That one thing had haunted her the most all night.

That he had been lied to about her sudden exit as a way to turn him against her.

“I cannot bear to think that he might have been convinced into believing that I actually always had a plan to seduce him into wedlock and now hates me for using him.” Especially after a woman had used him with such cruel, selfish calculation before.

“Why don’t you write him a letter and tell him, then?

And tell him how you feel. He’s bound to come here to fetch you if you confess that you love him.

” Kitty, bless her, had always worn rose-tinted spectacles when it came to the subject of love.

She firmly believed that love conquered all, but while Lottie was an eternal, sunny optimist and hoped with all her heart that Guy would surprise her, she was also a realist. A noble one, apparently, with too much stubborn pride of her own.

“If he comes to get me, it has to be because he wants to. I will not do anything to try to force his hand.”

“He’s a viscount at the end of the day.” Portia had always been more a pragmatist than a romantic.

“An aristocrat. I hate to be the voice of doom but we all know that aristocrats only marry other aristocrats so that they can beget more. And thus keep their tight hold on the reins of oppression and power.”

“But you love him,” said Kitty with pleading eyes. “Love is always worth fighting for. No matter what the obstacles. You have to fight for him, Lottie. You have to.”

“No, she doesn’t,” said Portia firmly. “She needs to protect herself and her reputation and both will be ruined if she tries to force a blue blood’s hand.”

“If you love something, let it go.” Miss P sighed as she recited the same bittersweet old adage that Lottie had recited to herself over and over again as she had stared at her old bedchamber ceiling last night.

“ If it comes back, it is yours; if it doesn’t, it never was.

I’m afraid I agree with Lottie and Portia, Kitty.

Sending him any sort of letter would be a mistake.

Aside from the fact that it would leave her with her dignity in shreds as well as her heart, this is, ultimately, a test of the strength of his feelings for her.

If the viscount chooses the side of his peers or decides to believe them that Lottie was capable of that sort of duplicity, frankly, he doesn’t love her enough at all. ”

“And I do have form when it comes to duping him.” Guy had barely just forgiven her for helping to plan his surprise behind her back and he did have a tendency to batten down the hatches when his feelings were hurt.

She could picture him now. Ruthlessly focusing on estate work like a lion with a thorn in his paw, seething on the outside and within at being made a fool of again.

“He’s been hurt by a scheming woman before too, so I don’t hold out much hope of him coming around.

” She had to force herself to face that truth in order to accept it.

No matter how much she wanted to put off thinking about it until tomorrow.

Accepting it until tomorrow. “If he does…”

Stop hoping!

All the odds were stacked against them. Had always been stacked against them.

Doubly so now that his mother was against them.

Lottie sighed and blinked away the gathering tears.

“Lady Wennington has already made it plain that she will not approve of any match, making it next to impossible that the pair of us can have any sort of future together. Not—to be fair to him—that he has ever given me any reason to believe that we did have a future together.”

We need to talk about this, Lottie.

This.

Not us.

Not them.

Not the future. But the situation that had, by the morning after, made him so physically awkward he could barely look at her as he had flapped a stilted hand between them.

Unconsciously, she rubbed her poor, aching heart at both the memory and the conclusiveness of that moment. “He is also a viscount, as Portia has so rightly just pointed out, so therein lies another obstacle.”

“Class shouldn’t even be an obstacle!” Kitty was incensed at what she saw as Lottie giving up.

“But it is, dear.” Miss P understood the utter hopelessness of the situation.

“This is why this country needs reform!” Portia wagged an enraged fist toward the heavens. “Why we’ll probably have to resort to a revolution just like they did in France! Our archaic and unfair system of master versus servant has to be replaced!”

“Oh, do shut up, Portia,” said Miss P with a roll of her eyes. “Do not use poor Lottie’s heartbreak to fuel your desire to revolt!”

Portia winced and squeezed Lottie’s hand. “I’m sorry… I just hate to see you hurt and wish I could do something to help it all go away.”

“I know.” Lottie squeezed her friend’s hand back. “Your presence right now is more of a comfort to me than storming the houses of Parliament would be.”

Miss P sighed. “That said, class is the single biggest reason why I have always cautioned my protégées not to dally with their masters.” She brushed a hand over Lottie’s hair. “Even if that is always easier said than done. It rarely ever ends well, as I know to my cost.”

As this was the first anyone had ever heard about Miss P’s romantic life, the three friends blinked at her, but it was Kitty who asked, “Did you fall in love with a viscount too?”

“Worse,” said their mentor with a wistful smile.

“The oldest son of a marquess. Saying goodbye to him was the hardest decision I had to make, no matter how inevitable I knew it always would be. He had to marry someone of his own ilk, and I had to let him. Neither of us would have ever been happy otherwise. His family thoroughly disapproved of me and made no secret that they would never accept me. Nor would the rest of the aristocracy either, as I was not from his world.” A sad tale that so perfectly mirrored Lottie’s, all of Miss P’s repeated and vehement cautions now made sense.

“And he let you go?” Poor, romantic Kitty, who had always believed that life really could be a fairy tale if you willed it hard enough, shook her head in disbelief.

Miss P gazed off into nothing as the clearly painful memories assaulted her, making Lottie fearful that her current feelings of wretchedness might never ease, no matter how much time passed.

“Edward said he was happy to leave that world behind for me, but I knew that once the first flush of passion faded, and the enormity of all that he had sacrificed to be with me sunk in, he would start to resent me for being the reason he had to make that choice.” The older woman swallowed.

Hard. As if her pain at losing the mysterious Edward was still visceral.

Then she offered them a wistful smile that barely held.

“The sad fact is, Kitty, love alone, sometimes, just isn’t enough to beat all the obstacles in its way.

” She wrapped a comforting arm around Lottie’s shoulders.

“But the pain does ease eventually, dear. For at least most of the time. I found that keeping busy helps. That and ice cream.” She rose to teach her next lesson.

“The worst thing to do is to mope around waiting for someone to come who very likely isn’t.

” And with that depressing but sobering thought, she left them.

“It is almost lunchtime and you didn’t touch your breakfast. Do you want to go and get some ice cream?” Portia rubbed Lottie’s slumped shoulders. “It might cheer you briefly.”

“Or would you rather mope around here in case your viscount turns into a knight in shining armor?” That came from Kitty.

Lottie would rather mope. Curl herself into a ball and cry some more, but her friends were trying to help so she smiled. “Let’s try the ice cream.”