honored as I am by the bestowal of your affections, I cannot forget that every moment of our stolen joy comes at terrifying peril to you.
It is my fault, of course. I should never have allowed myself to be swayed by the idea of my own happiness. It was the utmost selfishness on my part to not understand sooner that I am keeping you from pursuing your own life, a life that can be lived in the open, that need never cower for fear of discovery.
It had taken her ages to gradually convince Andrew that her desires were worth something. That if she wished to lie with him in a state of near intimacy, she was old enough to make that choice with full understanding of the possible consequences.
But with one quick reminder from Fitz, Andrew’s thinking had tipped back the other way. He’d dutifully stopped seeing her, even in her capacity as his publisher. And his letters, too, had ceased altogether. Except for one chance encounter at a rail station some time ago, she had not seen him since before she left for America in January.
Such useless conventions society clung to, valuing a marriage that was essentially a transaction of property above the truths of the heart, and judging her on her possession of a hymen rather than her actions and character. Even her own family—her brother and sister, who’d let her make her own choices most of her life—had proved unyielding on this particular point.
But it is still not too late for you. You are kind, charming, and beautiful. I wish you all the blessings my heart can carry, and I shall remain
Your faithful and devoted friend
It was too late for her; couldn’t he see? It had been too late since the very first. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t taken a good, hard look at the gentlemen available to her. But she’d yet to meet one with whom the thought of spending the rest of her life was remotely tolerable.
She would not accept that this was the end. Taking advantage of a moment of privacy—even if they were standing on a rail platform full of travelers—she’d made an im-passioned plea that reputation was not the only thing that mattered. That her happiness, too, counted for something. And that he, of all people, ought to have a care for her happiness.
His resolution had seemed to waver at the end of her entreaty. It was possible that ever since then he’d been reconsidering his decision. If only she could know the thoughts that coursed through his mind this very moment.
A stiff breeze blew and nearly made off with Andrew’s letter. She caught it, stowed it in the locked drawer where she kept all his letters, tossed out the pot of tea Miss Boyle insisted on making for her every day, and went to the window. The crowd below still hadn’t eased, hundreds of carriages crawling along like a parade of snails. The sky had become even darker. The coachmen were shrugging into their mackintoshes; the pedestrians, heads bowed, picked up their pace.
One particular pedestrian caught her eye. The angle of his hat, the width of his shoulders, the cadence of his gait…She must be imagining things. Hastings would not walk about Fleet Street at this hour of the day; he was far more likely to be mid-tryst with his lady du jour.
An all too vivid image came to mind: Hastings pressing an anonymous woman against a wall, one hand on her hip, the other at her nape, kissing her—no, devouring her with his lips and tongue. The woman was no less indecent in her lust, her fingers clutching his hair, her body writhing, whimpers and moans of all descriptions escaping her throat.
Helena slammed the window shut, jarring her arms.
Though he was her brother’s best friend, Helena had paid him little mind: Hastings was the wasp at a picnic, or the occasional fly that fell into one’s soup—irksome when he was around, but hardly a preoccupation when he wasn’t.
Until, that was, six months ago, when he’d demanded the kiss in exchange for his fraudulent silence. She still managed to mostly not think of him, but when she did, her thoughts flew in unruly directions.
She returned to her desk and opened the bottom drawer again, intending to read a few more of Andrew’s old letters to drown out the part of her mind that persisted in imagining Hastings at his illicit rendezvous. Instead, from the same drawer she pulled out