Beauty Tempts the Beast (Sins for All Seasons #6) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,121
you have the means to run it.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Jewel, you’re carrying on what I started. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“What if we call it the Sally Greene Refuge for Tarnished Ladies? Within these walls we’ll polish them up.”
He gave her a tender smile. “I like that.”
After he and Jewel completed their business, he went to his room and stuffed what little clothing he had into a cloth traveling bag he’d purchased before returning here. He tossed in his shaving items and his brush. Glancing around, he saw nothing else he needed. His most precious items, the timepiece, the miniature of Thea nestled in its cover, and the match safe, he always carried with him. All else could stay. He was going to miss the place, miss the people. But an earl could hardly reside in a former brothel.
He couldn’t imagine living with his parents, although their residence was large enough that he could go days without seeing them. Perhaps he’d purchase or lease his own. He hadn’t yet decided. He knew only that he could no longer reside within these walls.
He’d asked Jewel where he’d find Thea, so it was with certainty that he knocked on her bedchamber door.
When she opened it, he was surprised to see the blue shadows beneath her eyes as though she’d gone without sleep, the slight swelling of her lids as though she’d wept. He didn’t want what he had to say to her to echo down the hallway. “May I come in?”
She moved back. He set his bag down in the corridor before striding in and closing the door behind him. She stood only three feet away, but she might as well have been in France for the distance that stretched between them. He held a package toward her. “The remainder of your salary and the extra for reaching the three-month deadline.”
When she opened it, she’d find the additional thousand for his not teaching her to be a temptress. If he told her now, she’d object, and he didn’t want to argue about it.
“Why give it to me now?”
“I wanted things settled between us before I leave for Scotland tomorrow. We’ll return in early March, just before Parliament begins its session.”
“I’ll move out.”
“No need. I’ll no longer be residing here.”
“Where will you live?”
He shrugged. “I don’t yet know. I just know it can’t be here.”
He hated this stiffness between them, as though they’d never been intimate, as though he didn’t know how wonderful it felt to have her muscles throbbing around his cock.
“If you’re ever in want of a mistress . . .”
The words started out light in tone, growing quieter until they trailed off, no doubt because of the anger coursing through him that he couldn’t hold in check. It had to be visible in his eyes. “Is that what the other night was? An audition?”
She blanched. He grimaced.
“You know it wasn’t.”
“I know. You didn’t deserve that. But I don’t want you to be my bloody mistress. I want you as my wife.”
“I told you why I can’t marry you.”
“Do you think I give a bloody damn if someone turns his back on me? Do you think we can’t teach our children how to handle the arses of the world? I began my life being bullied, Thea. It’s not pleasant, can be incredibly hurtful. I don’t know how many times I went off alone to a corner and wept. Then felt shame that I was crying. But I survived it, and I learned that I never wanted to do anything to make another person feel the despair I felt at that moment. It is survivable, and because of it, perhaps I’m a better person than I might have been otherwise.”
“Proper Society is nothing like the streets of Whitechapel or the rookeries. You’ve not been a lord long enough to understand how very different it is. I think you’ll find your opinion on the matter will change in time.”
What he felt for her, what he wanted with her, was not going to change, but he didn’t know how to convince her of that.
He also understood it was very different to be betrayed and bullied by those you once loved and thought loved you. Those who had treated him poorly had never meant anything to him, so he’d been able to brush off the taunts like so much lint. She couldn’t claim the same. People who had mattered to her had been unkind.