But no. She did not think he would blame her. And that was worse, somehow. That she would be the means of ruining his happiness, and that he would try to forgive her for it.
It would be unbearable, to disappoint him that way.
She thought about Ivy Price, and the house Will had bought for Ivy and her son in Gloucestershire.
They could do it again. If the scandal broke before the guardianship hearing, she could leave Peter and the children, buy a house as far away as she could manage—in Cornwall, perhaps, or Wales. They could have the marriage annulled. Peter could denounce her publicly and perhaps manage to avoid the worst of the damage.
Things could never be the same between them. No more openhearted declarations, no more easy Kent grins. Even if he did not intend to resent her after the scandal broke, he would not be able to help it.
It would be better to make a clean break. He might not like it—he might not agree at first. But the children were more important. The children were the most important thing, and hewould have to accept her plan, because his guardianship meant more to him than anything else in the world.
Her fingers were blurry, and she stared hard down at her hands until her sight cleared. And when it had—when her breath in her ears sounded normal—she got to her feet.
She needed to write to Will. She needed to look at her accounts and her membership rolls and perhaps write to her man of business about Cornish cottages for ruined ladies. She meant to try everything she possibly could to prevent the truth from getting out before the guardianship hearing. But if she failed and the scandal broke anyway, she needed to be prepared.
And if the thought of leaving Peter—of leaving him alone in this big empty house—splintered something inside her, she would do it anyway if she had to. There was no other choice.
Chapter 19
… I was drove to it by a passion too impetuous for me to resist, and I did what I did because I could not help it.
—fromFANNY HILL
She had to tell Peter.
Not everything. She did not want to tell him that she meant to leave, if she had to. She did not even want to speak the words.
But she had to tell him about the rumors, and her plan to find out who was behind them. She needed to tell him that their respectability—such as it was—was threatened. And she did not want to.
That was the bare, humiliating truth. She didn’t want to tell him. It had been difficult to tell him about Belvoir’s before they married—hard to share what had been hers and Will’s alone for so long.
But now they were married, and it was a thousand times worse.Married.Every rash, impetuous thing she’d done in herlife was now part of Peter’s future, not just her own. Her good intentions seemed a poor comfort for the reality of her secrets crashing headlong into his life.
She spent the afternoon buying furniture for the lower floors. It felt a hollow sort of satisfaction—to try to turn this peculiar house into a home for them. She was excellent with planning, with direction, and yet an utter disaster at making choices to protect the people she cared about.
The house would be full of staff in a few days, the bedchambers stocked with beds and linens. She had imagined which rooms might suit the children.
And now, because of her secrets, perhaps the children would never reside there at all.
It was painful: to make lists of furnishings and imagine a future that she did not know if she could bring into being.
She tried all day to bury herself in trifles, and when Peter came into their bedchamber that evening, she thought about running away. She wished powerfully that she hadn’t kissed him at Rowland House—that she’d convinced him to marry someone else instead of her.
And even as she thought it, something greedy and possessive in her rejected the very idea. He washers.
She felt the same reckless part of herself flare to life as it always did around him. She was never satisfied with half measures, was she?
She could not just assist Ivy Price. She had to upend the entire state of female education among the literate London public.
She could not simply help Peter marry. No. She had kissed him and pressed herself to him, and when he’d given her his body, she had wanted more and more and never enough.
“Peter,” she said. “I have to tell you something.” She touched her thumb to the brass circlet twisted around the fourth finger of her left hand.
He settled himself on their bed, crossing his feet at the ankles. “How concerned should I be? On a scale of, ‘We’ve run out of eggs in the larder’ to ‘Lucinda has acquired a small army and means to invade France’?”
“Oh God,” she said, “closer to the latter.”
He sat up, alarmed, and she hated herself for the fear in his expression.
