Page 95 of Dare to Love a Duke
He stalked toward the door of his bedchamber. Then stopped and strode to Maeve.
He kissed her cheek. “Thank you, little bird.”
She looked up at him, her eyes full of love. “I expect repayment in trips to Catton’s.”
“Every day,” he vowed. He glanced toward the door.
“Go,” she said gently.
He went.
Chapter 23
It was surprising how a life could condense into a few boxes.
Lucia had, by design, kept her possessions to a minimum. Always lurking in the back of her mind was the idea that everything was temporary, and soon, the world would fall apart and she’d have to pick up and start over. Again.
But she’d hoped, when she had moved into what had been Mrs. Chalke’s bedchamber above the Orchid Club, that she might be there for some time.
Instead, just a little over a year later, she’d had to pack up everything and decamp. Though Tom owned the building that housed the establishment, and wasn’t going to toss her and the staff on the street, if word was out that the Bloomsbury house was the club’s home, they would attract the wrong kind of attention. The authorities could no longer feign ignorance about the operation’s existence, and would move in to shut everything down—perhaps even arrest her and her workers. The safest thing to do was decamp speedily.
With the staff’s assistance, it had taken three days to clear out the furniture from the Orchid Club. Most of it had been sold, though a handful of pieces were put into storage. The house in Bloomsbury was now vacant for the first time for almost two decades. Then, in a remarkably brief span of time, Lucia had found rooms to share with Kitty, Liam, and Elspeth.
It wasn’t so bad.
She moved a stack of shifts from a box into the battered clothespress that came with the rented room, then stood back to survey her handiwork. That was the last of everything. This set of narrow little rooms in Spitalfields was now her home—for now, at least.
Her bedchamber faced a tiny courtyard, so she had a bit of light throughout the day, and she could watch a trio of children playing with a stubby-tailed puppy. The silk weavers at their looms made a pleasant clicking sound, almost soothing in its continuousness. And there was a shop just at the end of the block that sold decent steak-and-kidney pies.
Truly, she ought to be grateful that she’d found a decent, safe place to figure out the next step in her life. She sank into a chair and put her head in her hands.
“What can we do, my dove?” Kitty asked as she came into the room with Liam on her hip. Elspeth was close behind, and both women wore similar expressions of concern.
Pasting a smile into place, Lucia looked up at her friends. “I’m merely tired. We’ve done considerable work in a short amount of time. But it’s all come together nicely, I think.”
Elspeth put a hand upon her shoulder. “Lucia.”
Merely saying her name with such compassion shattered the brittle fortifications Lucia had erected around herself. Her shoulders slumped and she cupped her palm over her forehead.
“Before we left,” she said in a low voice, “I walked around the empty building. All those rooms where there had once been life and pleasure. Now... They are vacant. Like it is in here.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “The structure stands but there’s nothing inside.”
“It’s all right to feel hurt and sad,” Elspeth said.
“And angry,” Kitty added.
“I don’t want to feelanything,” Lucia said and growled in frustration.
“That’s not how life works.” Elspeth gave her shoulder a squeeze. “We feel things, good and bad, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Lucia rubbed her cheek against Elspeth’s hand. “Dreadfully inconvenient things, emotions.”
“They are.” Kitty jogged Liam up and down, who giggled. “But without them, we’d be men, and who wants that?”
Elspeth grinned. “I surely don’t.”
An ache pulsed through Lucia to see the adoration in her friends’ gazes. While the last few days had been a whirlwind of activity, she’d been able to keep thoughts of Tom at bay. Here, in the quiet and stillness, nothing distracted her. It was a brutal wound that cut her again and again.
Only when he was gone did she feel the cavernous space he left behind. She was half a person. By some marvel she kept standing and talking and breathing and doing all the things she was supposed to do to remain alive. Yet it wasn’t fully life, just the rote motions of it.
