had heard it often enough in his own office and on the floor of his club when he’d lose another fortune.
Mary turned to him slowly, her face gaunt. “I will go with you,” she said.
He nodded. “I’ll have an address and a coach for you tomorrow morning.”
“What should I tell my mother?” she asked, her voice strained.
How he hated to hear that pain. Even though he knew life was suffering, he hated to hear it in her brave tones.
“Tell her you’ve been invited to stay with a friend,” he instructed calmly. “Tell her you’ve been invited to stay in the country.”
She nodded. “Easy enough. I-I don’t know what I should do for her.”
“First, you must take care of yourself,” Heath replied gently. “And then you can help your mother.”
She swallowed then nodded even as her eyes shone in the moonlight with unshed tears. She blinked quickly, banishing them.
He wished he could give her more comfort, but this world seldom had the comfort that people desired. It was tempting to take her into his arms, to assure her that all would be well, but he could not do either of those things, so instead, he stood.
Dawn was beginning to slip through the window. The faint blue light of early morning, that strange transitory time between night and day. So it did not surprise him that this was the moment when Lady Mary said she would go.
“I will be ready for you,” he said.
From her bed, in her night rail, small but fierce, she declared, “I will be ready too.”
And he believed her. And with every growing moment, he admired her more.
So without another word, they waited. Once the shouting had died down and a silence stretched through the room, there was a loud bang downstairs. . . The sound of, almost certainly, her brother exiting the house. . .
Heath wondered what horrors the heir had gone through.
No doubt, many.
He strode to the window, but before he leapt through the open frame, he said, “You can do this.”
“I agree with you,” she ventured. “Because you believe.”
He shook his head. “You must do this because you believe too.”
“I will believe bit by bit,” Mary replied, her hands curling into fists.
“That is a beginning.” And with that, he climbed onto the windowsill and slipped out the way he had come by, sliding to the branches of an ancient oak. Easily, he scuttled down the tree.
His booted feet touched the earth, and he began to stride towards the pavement.
This was an adventure he had not planned on, but now that he was on it, he thought of the people he’d tried to help. Perhaps, this time, he’d succeed. He was determined.
And once he determined something, it was very seldom that he did not meet his goal. He only prayed he could resist her because there was something about Lady Mary that he could not deny.
She spoke to him in a way no one had ever spoken to him before, and that was frightening, but fear had never stopped him.
No, fear had always driven him forward.
When he was afraid of something, he launched himself at it. It was the only way to survive this life. If one cowered at fear, one would begin to disappear, to collapse, and he would never fade away again. He would never live in the shadows, and he prayed he could help Lady Mary find the same thing.
Chapter 7
Lady Mary raced down the steps, the coach outside waiting for her. Her trunk was easily deposited onto the top.
The driver looked down at her. “Are you ready, then, my lady?”
She gave a curt nod and looked back up to the house that had been a source of nightmares for her for the last few years. Her mother was staring out the window, gazing at her with a pale face. Resigned.
No, not resigned. There was a happiness, even to her stance, that perhaps her daughter was escaping. Her own mother would never be able to escape, she knew that. Not until her father was dead. And so, she allowed the beautifully liveried footman to guide her up into the coach.
The door shut, and she turned and spotted Richard Heath sitting in the shadows.
She started, that humming in her body coming to life again at his presence. “I did not think you would go with me.”
“Why not?” he asked with surprising good cheer. “It is the beginning of our adventure, our relationship.”
She glanced at the window. “But surely, everyone will know.”
“No one will know,”