His smile vanished. “No, actually. I’m thinking of a different sort of house.” His gaze was unwavering as it met hers. “A pretty little place in Kent called Arcady.”
She felt as if there were a fist around her heart, squeezing tight. “We’ve been through this before.”
“You mean, you have. I was never given the chance to air my views on the matter.”
“Talking about this won’t change it. I’m not the woman for you, and we both know it. Didn’t what happened this afternoon prove that?”
His palm tenderly cupped her cheek. “I think what happened this evening proved the opposite.”
Inside, she began to shake. She could feel hope rising, cracking her resolve, but she thought of what had happened earlier that day, of how it had felt to be in the glare of society’s hostile scrutiny, and she reminded herself that hopes about a future with Denys were futile. In the eyes of his people and the society he moved in, she was, and would always be, a slut. If she married him, the only revision of their opinion would be that she was a jumped-up slut. But she wasn’t the only one who would pay the price. “We lost our heads tonight and had a tumble. It’s hardly reason enough to join for life.”
“Is that all this was to you? A tumble?”
Another crack fissured her resolve, and she knew she had to get away from him before she broke completely apart, and her heart and her resolve were in pieces. Desperate, she reached up, tapping her knuckles hard against the roof of the carriage. “I won’t do this,” she said as the vehicle began to slow. “I won’t ruin your life again.”
“Lola,” he began, but she cut him off.
“You’ve repaired your relations with your family, earned their trust, and made good. I won’t destroy all that a second time.” She took a deep breath. “I’m no good for you, Denys. You need to stay away from me, and I need to stay away from you.”
“That’s going to be difficult, I’m afraid.”
It would be impossible, and she knew it. Looking at him, she knew that he knew it, too.
“You managed everything on your own before, and you can do so again. Make whatever decisions about the Imperial you like. I won’t fight you.”
“So that’s your answer? Running away again?”
That hurt, like the flick of a whip, but she couldn’t deny the pattern of her life. “I don’t want to run out on the play. If you and I can stay away from each other, I’ll be able to see it through to the end of its run.”
“And then?”
“And then...” Her voice wobbled, and she paused, swallowing hard, willing herself to remember the goal she’d set for herself long before she’d ever met him. “If I do well, I’ll be able to gain another dramatic role. Perhaps I’ll join a repertory company in the North—Manchester or Leeds. Or I may go to Dublin, or back to New York.”
“Still sounds like running away to me,” he murmured. “I see why you’ve had so many fresh starts. And what about what happened here tonight?” he added before she could respond. “You’re thinking we’ll just forget about it, I suppose?”
“Yes.” She managed to hold his gaze across the carriage. “We will.”
“I won’t forget, Lola,” he said. “I’ll never forget.”
The tenderness in his voice was almost her undoing, but she knew she could not destroy his life again. For the second time, she was in love with him, and for the second time, it was going to break her heart. She could already feel it happening. Not in a Paris dressing room this time but in a dingy growler on a London street.
The driver opened the door, but when he pulled down the step, Denys didn’t move to exit the vehicle.
“Go, Denys,” she said, striving to keep any hint of the pain out of her voice. “Please, just go.”
“I’ll go if that’s what you wish, but this conversation isn’t over.” He reached for his hat. “Not by a long chalk.”
He stepped out of the carriage, donned his hat, and pulled his notecase out of the breast pocket of his jacket. “Take her to the Savoy,” he ordered the driver as he pulled a note from the case in payment of the fare and put it in the man’s hand. Then he bowed to her, turned away, and began walking across Trafalgar Square.
The driver folded up the step and closed the door. But Lola leaned forward, her nose pressed to the rain-streaked window glass, her eyes on Denys as he started across the square. Then the carriage jerked into motion and pulled forward, and he was gone from her view.
Desperate, she shoved down the window and stuck her head out, craning her neck, wanting to watch him as long as possible. “I love you,” she whispered, but he had already vanished behind Nelson’s Column, and her soft confession was lost in the mist.
Chapter19
Denys had no intention of being deterred by one refusal. Not now, not when he had her in his sights again, not when they had another chance. The moment he’d seen her face through the window of that taxi, it had reaffirmed what he’d felt from the first moment he’d ever seen her. She was his woman. He belonged to her, and she to him. The question was how to make her see it that way.
Denys walked to the taxi stand on the west side of Nelson’s statue, and as he waited for a hansom, he considered what to do next.
