Page 95 of An Affair with a Notorious Heiress
Just as she was now worried because Gina was not bubbling over with excitement at the prospect of attending tonight’s ball. She sat still as a statue at her dressing table while Annie pinned her hair up into an elaborate style that somehow managed to make her look older, wiser.
“I do wish you would reconsider attending the Greystone ball,” Gina said, capturing Tillie’s gaze in her mirror’s reflection, even though Tillie sat in the far corner of the room. She didn’t usually watch her sister’s rituals as she prepared for an evening out, but knowing their time together was dwindling seemed to make every minute more precious.
“No good would come of it.” It would simply rekindle hope that she would have to dash with the truth: she was more scandalous than Rex’s mother and, therefore, their children might be made to suffer more than he had. She’d thought long and hard on his revelations. Children were indeed cruel, and their own might find themselves less accepted than she was.
“I disagree, Tillie.” Gina swung around on the bench and faced her, while her maid scurried behind her to finish the preparing of her hair. “During the past five days you’ve been absolutely downtrodden. Defeated, so remarkably sad that’s it very difficult to be happy around you.”
Joy sparked for the first time since Rex had walked out of her parlor. “Are you happy?”
“No, of course not. You’re leaving.”
“You always knew I would.”
“I was hoping if I married a man who embraced you that you would stay.”
“Do you think you might marry Somerdale?”
Gina shrugged, sighed. “I don’t know. I like him well enough but courting is rather like sampling chocolates, isn’t it? You don’t know if you ate the best one first until you’ve sampled the entire box.”
Tillie leaped to her feet. “It’s nothing at all like eating chocolates. A lady doesn’t sample the entire box of... of men.”
“Then how does one know?”
Unsure as to how to best explain, Tillie began pacing between the wardrobe and the bed. “You know because of the way he makes you feel when he is with you and when he is not. When he is with you...” Stopping near the bed, she ran her hand along the intricately carved post. “Your entire body seems to be smiling. You long for his touch, his nearness. You welcome the accidental brushing of hands. And you’re desperate for him to get you alone so he can kiss you.” Her bed had never felt so large, so cold, so unwelcoming as it had once she was no longer spending her nights with Rex. Each night, she dreaded crawling beneath the covers, lying there alone, staring at the window, the canopy, the shadows, missing him until it was a physical ache in her chest.
“And when he isn’t with you?” Gina prodded.
“You wish like the devil he was.” She dropped onto the edge of the bed, not at all surprised when Gina joined her there.
“You miss Rexton, don’t you?”
So terribly much, but she didn’t want to think about that. “Will you dance with him tonight?”
“I suspect so. As it’s his mother’s ball, he’s bound to be there.”
Looking incredibly handsome in his evening clothes, speaking with other ladies, smiling, flirting. He was done with her. He’d move on easily enough. Perhaps someday, she would move on as well, although she couldn’t envision herself with anyone else.
Gina took her hand, squeezed, as though she knew the melancholy path her traitorous thoughts traveled. “I was only thirteen when you married Downie,” her sister said musingly. “Even in the very beginning, when I would see you with him, I would think, ‘Love isn’t such a grand thing after all.’ I thought love was supposed to transform and fill one with gladness. I began to think perhaps I didn’t want it, would be happier without it.”
“Gina—”
“Let me finish,” she said sharply, more tartly than she’d ever spoken to anyone. “I have a point to make. I know you think me naïve and innocent in the way of things, and perhaps a bit flighty on occasion because I refuse to take the world seriously, but I watched you, Tillie, watched as you became this sad creature who was so foreign to me. Your smiles became rare, your laughter nonexistent. I was glad when you divorced him, when he was no longer in your daily life; it was as though I could feel a great weight being lifted from you. And I thought, ‘She merely chose poorly. And I shan’t. I shall choose a love that will elevate me.’”
“Is that Somerdale?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Because I have now seen you in love—and more importantly, I have seen a man in love with you. I know how love makes a lady’s eyes sparkle and a man’s smolder. I know how it makes one’s footsteps light as air when she’s rushing out to a carriage at midnight for a bit of naughtiness—”
“Oh, Gina, you were never supposed to know about that.”
“I don’t know why you’re blushing so deeply. But don’t you see? You gave me glimpses into a world I want. I don’t want to simply be part of the aristocracy. I want to find someone who loves me as deeply as Rexton loves you—someone I can adore as much as you do him.”
“But I am so wrong for him. He needs a wife who is welcomed into a blasted tea room.”
“I thought you handled yourself with an amazing amount of grace.” She tilted her head to the side, skewed her mouth. “Although I do rather wish you’d removed your pistol from your reticule. I certainly would have liked to see Downie’s sister scurrying away. She wouldn’t have stood up to you.”
Tillie couldn’t help but give a half smile. “No, she wouldn’t have.”
“I think Rexton would have been proud of you, Tillie. What does it matter what others say or how they act when you have people who love you?”
