Page 83 of Enticing Odds
Tears threatened, but she held firm, willing them not to spill.
“Matthew… you wee lamb.” She crossed the physical distance between them even as a wide, gaping chasm of experience and social class tore them apart.
“You foolish, foolish man.” Her voice sounded thin and raspy. “You understand… you do understand what this means? That we must be parted?”
He looked up to her, his handsome eyes filled with sadness. He nodded.
She felt a sudden, indignant flash of anger. Why would he not refuse? Why did he not bellow and seize her by her shoulders? Her heart sank, deeper than she’d thought possible. She knew that if he had done that, if he’d tried to protest her decision by giving himself over to fury and violence, that she wouldn’t have it. Then he wouldn’t be different from any of the other men who’d held tight to her reins, dictating the course of her life.
She was overwhelmed with emotion. A hideous, spiteful insult came to mind, but Cressida balked. Foolish as he’d been, Matthew was not deserving of her vitriol. Despite everything else, she knew that.
She offered him her hand. He took it, and placed a long, lingering kiss into her palm.
Cressida looked away, lest he see her watery eyes.
“Goodbye, Doctor.”
And then she quit the room. Soon she would quit London, retreating with Henry to Cumbria and the hateful Birchover Abbey, someplace she was certain this malefactor Sharples would not follow.
Later, upstairs in her chambers, she wondered where Matthew had gone. If he’d returned to his little house with the bronze placard outside the door that readMatthew Collier, Physician. She wondered what his face might look like. She wondered if hesat in the dark. If his heart, too, was breaking. Matthew. A man who would marry her to protect her. And… to love her, no doubt.
That night in bed, Cressida allowed herself to cry for the first time in nearly fifteen years.
What was there left to do?
Once more, his life was in shambles. He’d allowed himself to hope, to think he could outsmart Sharples, to think a viscount’s widow would wanthim.
Leaning against a lamppost in St. James’s Square, Matthew stared at the Athenaeum before him, feeling nothing but his own inadequacies.
He’d once believed this club to be everything. Its members? Topping. The Greek frieze, the chaste architecture? Dignified. And the library—oh, the library…
His chest tightened, and he had to look away.
It was a pathetic dream, he realized now. The dream of an awkward, friendless lad, one who’d grown too tall in far too short a time to feel at ease in his own body. A lad who had found comfort in puzzles and games, in books filled with plates of scientific illustrations, in the fact that rules and logic were immutable, and could always be counted on.
There was nothing immutable about matters of the heart.
He knew that now, knew that was why he’d been content to admire Harriet from a careful distance while he indulged in his private fantasies with pornographic cabinet cards and erotic novels. It was so much easier and safer to lock your desires in a drawer at the end of each day. Easier to never allow yourself the warmth of real human touch, or the glowing, overwhelming joy of a dimpled smile and sparkling brown eyes. Of rich chestnut hair that smelled so delicately of flowers. Not just any flowers,but pretty, temperamental ones like orchids, African violets, and gardenias.
Yes, that was Cressida. Temperamental, demanding, challenging. And he wouldn’t have her any other way. Matthew swallowed against the lump in his throat.
He’d never see her again.
This, at least, he knew to be true, for he’d put her reputation, her entire life in peril. The guilt he felt would become insurmountable if he let it, but Matthew was done wallowing. He stood up and squared his shoulders. He was a man determined.
She would not bear the weight of his sins. He would not go down without a fight, not this time.
He might never see her again, but he could see to it that Charles Sharples never would, either. That no one would ever breathe a word of their indiscretion. Only a few days prior he’d vowed never to gamble again, but her safety took precedence over his promise to himself. Even if she would not have him anymore.
Matthew never expected her to accept his suit. In fact, he had surprised even himself, asking her to marry him in such a sudden, unromantic way, presenting it as a practical solution to a problem.
But he could still help her, if just one more time.
So here he stood amidst the clublands of St. James’s, weighing his options. With one last look, he eulogized his dream of membership in the Athenaeum. He shut away his fantasies of the finest club library in England, full of rare texts and ancient volumes. Silently said goodbye to the steps where Dickens and Thackery shook hands, ending their legendary row.
With a sigh, Matthew set to his new task. He needed a club full of desperate young peers courting financial ruin. A club with a gambling room and lax rules regarding admission of non-members.
Strolling the Pall Mall, the hallowed Athenaeum now behind him, he felt hollow, but still determined.
