The Unthinkable (19 page)

“Biscuit?” the Countess of Hawkesbury offered, breaking the uncomfortable silence. She held the silver platter piled high with the mouthwatering morsels directly under Genie’s nose. So tantalizingly close, Genie could almost taste the rich creaminess of the butter and the deep caramel of the warm sugar.

There was a time when Genie would have been unable to refuse. A time when she had delighted in food, especially in sugary cakes and pastries. No longer. Genie’s body was a finely honed weapon of war with no room for indulgences.

“No, thank you,” she answered, though her stomach rumbled with hunger. Hunger she’d learned to control ever since she’d known what it meant to truly be hungry. So hungry that you’d be willing to do
anything
for something to eat…

Still feverish, it had taken Genie some time to fully comprehend their meaning.

“Poor dear, you mean she has nothing?” A feeble high-pitched voice stirred her from a deep slumber.

“Nothing. The villainous maid took every last halfpenny, fleeing the ship as soon as we docked.”

A man’s voice, Genie realized. A voice of authority. The captain. That’s right, they’d landed in Boston Harbor a few days ago. Why was she still on the ship? What had he said? Then she remembered. Her fortune. Her future. Gone.

Cold fear gripped her heart. She wanted to go home. She wanted her mother. What would she do? How would she survive when she couldn’t even lift her head from the lumpy pillow?

“And to lose her child when she has just lost a husband, what a tragedy! Of course we must help her. She’ll come home with us.” Another high-pitched voice. Similar, but distinct from the first.

Two ladies. Sisters. Sisters who occasionally helped the ship’s doctor with nursing his patients while in port. The kind, elderly spinsters had taken pity on a poor soldier’s widow and brought Genie into their humble one-room home in a boarding house to recuperate. They’d tended her, cared for her, fed her, brought her back from death’s door with their gentle ministrations. Without them Genie would have surely died.

Just as day by day she had been surely killing them.

Genie had to save them from their own kindness. Kindness that would have left them all starving. For each morsel of food that they put in her stomach was taken directly from their own mouths. The nursing, supplemented by the extra sewing and embroidery work that the sisters took on, was barely enough to support two. Three mouths stretched the meager income to a mere pittance.

Pride again had been Genie’s downfall. She should have accepted their assistance while she got back on her feet. But she hated feeling helpless. Hated the knowledge that she was repaying their kindness with suffering. Surely, an educated woman of good breeding would have no problem finding employment as a governess?

And she hadn’t. Especially, as her face and emaciated form, ravaged by sickness, did not provoke undue attention. So she moved from the boarding house to a comfortable private home in Harvard Square.

In the beginning, Genie had truly loved her work, welcomed the anonymity of her position and the obscurity of her destroyed beauty. Adored instructing her young charges. Lavishing the love and devotion on the two girls that she would have on her own child. Burying her memories in hard, honest work. Thoughts of home grew more distant. More filled with fear and shame. Should she write them? Would her family even want her? Questions that were irrelevant as she was still far too sick to travel on such a long, arduous journey.

As the months passed, her health returned. As did her voluptuous, flaxen beauty. The beauty that had at one time seemed such a blessing now became the source of her downfall. No longer could she take refuge in obscurity. Along with the bloom in her cheeks and extra flesh on her limbs, returned unwelcome attention from men. Attention that forced her to seek new employment again and again. Attention that quickly depleted her small savings.

Fending off unwelcome advances from her employers began a vicious cycle of hiring and discharge, with each new post a substantial step down the social ladder of respectability. Taking her farther and farther from her dreams of returning home.

Thinking to appear sickly, Genie starved herself. But it didn’t work. Nothing worked. They kept coming after her…

She’d been utterly powerless. Genie had never understood precisely what it meant to be a woman in a man’s world until she found herself alone in a strange country, without funds, and with no family or connections to protect her from the lasciviousness of men. Vile, base creatures who saw an unprotected woman alone in the world as nothing more than easy prey.

What choice did Genie have when there was none? Find work or starve. It was as simple as that. Strength of character did not put food in your belly. Moral righteousness did not prevent men from taking what they wanted. A slimy kiss here, a lewd grope there. They cornered her, used their physical strength to overpower her objections. She hated them. But most of all she hated
him
for putting her in this position.

Hatred had enabled her survival. Dreams of revenge had fueled her will to live.

Genie had learned by living the alternative that money and position were the only power that mattered. Everything else was illusory. As fleeting as innocence.

She’d vowed never to be without choices again. She controlled her own destiny. Money, land, position—those were the only things that mattered. Those that called such goals mercenary had never experienced the desperation of hunger and poverty.

“You know, dearest,” the countess broke into the memory. “I’ve never asked you about your past.”

There it was, Genie thought. Her worst fears voiced. Buying time to think of an appropriate response, Genie lifted the teacup to her lips and sipped. The hot liquid scorched a long path down her chest, plummeting like a burning river into the snake pit of nerves twisting in her stomach. But rather than calm her down, the bitter drink only fired her edginess.

The delicate porcelain cup rattled as Genie carefully placed it back in the saucer. Because she could do nothing else, Genie glanced up to face the countess who was staring at her patiently across a mahogany tea cart.

“Yes, my lady.”

What else could Genie say? I appreciate your forbearance, because I do not want to lie to you?

Nothing good would come of this conversation.

A conversation that, after the revelations last evening, Genie had known was all but inevitable. The countess must know or at least suspect her true identity. And sure enough, before Genie had even broken her fast this morning, Lady Hawkesbury had wasted no time sending for Genie to join her in the conservatory.

Genie’s fists nervously clenched and unclenched in the deep folds of her skirts. Her grand plans were about to be tested. This conversation with the countess was only the first.

Huntingdon would also prove a challenge.

If only he hadn’t witnessed that kiss. A simple kiss that may have complicated everything.

The look on Huntingdon’s face had terrified her. He looked like a half-crazed berserker poised to attack. And she was the spoils. Could she control him? Would he stand by his promise? She no longer felt entirely confident that he would.

But it was also the feelings that Edmund’s kiss aroused in her that terrified her. Or rather, feelings that the kiss
did not
arouse. While not unpleasant, she could not stop comparing it to another. Could not help but feel that what she was doing was wrong. Her overactive conscience would not quiet. She didn’t love Edmund the way he deserved to be loved. She knew that. But Fanny did. Fanny who had once been like a sister to her.

And when they’d been caught in an embrace, like two naughty children, she’d suffered a sharp twinge of guilt. Guilt that said kissing a man she did not love with all of her heart was wrong. Edmund was also affected. She’d read the shame of disloyalty on his expression. Disloyalty, for an honorable man like Edmund, would eventually eat away at his soul.

Stop
. She had to stop this constant second-guessing.

She would not risk her future again.

Not on memories. Not on guilt. Not on a kiss. Not on anything.

The countess ignored Genie’s obvious distraction. “But my dear, please do not confuse forbearance with ignorance. I’ve known for some time that your past was, how shall I say, complicated.” When Genie opened her mouth to protest, Lady Hawkesbury held up her hand. “Please. I make no judgment. We all have our secrets, some more scandalous than others…” The countess paused, looking down at her skirt to smooth a nonexistent wrinkle from the yellow muslin of her morning gown as if she was remembering something acutely painful. Clearing the memories, she blinked her eyes and glanced back up at Genie. “Though you play the coquette admirably, you do not have your heart in it. Often, when you think no one is looking, a strange, haunted look comes over your face. A deep sadness that cuts to the bone.” Perhaps sensing Genie’s growing horror, Lady Hawkesbury smiled. “But, I digress. I’ve said too much. I don’t mean to cause you more pain or embarrassment. What I want you to understand is that your past has never really mattered to me. I love my son and I want him to be happy.”

Relieved, Genie exhaled loudly. “As do I, my lady.”

“I do not doubt that. And until recently, you have done so. But circumstances have changed, have they not?”

“I’m not sure I understand…”

“Mrs. Preston,” the countess interrupted kindly. “May I be frank?”

Genie smiled at that. The countess was nothing, if not frank. “Of course.”

“I can see the way the duke looks at you, I saw the recognition in Fanny’s face when she saw you, I heard what she said—or rather what was left unsaid. I suspect you are the girl from Thornbury who Huntingdon has searched for over the past few years. The very girl my son was sent to find.”

Genie couldn’t help it—to hear her secret said out loud—she blanched, but said nothing.

Unperturbed, Lady Hawkesbury continued. “I have no intention of asking you about your past relationship with the duke. Nor would I ever voice my suspicions to anyone else. Ever. So, do not fear disclosure from me.” Genie’s relief was short-lived. “However, with the ball where you will announce your engagement fast approaching, I will ask you to think long and hard about your feelings for my son and for the duke—”

“I have no feelings for the duke,” Genie quickly retorted. “If anything, I despise him.”

The countess lifted a questioning brow. “Hmm. For my son’s sake, I hope that is the truth. I learned long ago the pain of being trapped in a loveless marriage.”

Shocked, Genie took a moment to respond. “But I thought… Edmund has always said that yours was a great love match.”

“You could call it that, I suppose,” Lady Hawkesbury said, a wry smile turning her mouth. “But I fear the love was rather one-sided. On my part.”

“I’m sorry.” And she was. Genie knew all about the agony of one-sided love.

The countess’s smile turned bleak. “Not half as sorry as I. Unrequited love is not quite as romantic in real life as it is in novels. You’ll understand, then, why I won’t condemn my son to the same damnation. To the agonizing purgatory of loving without being loved in return.”

As if a mask had been lifted, the countess’s face, usually so sweet and cheerful, transformed. Her lively eyes were dull with heartache. Heartache that had taken years of suffering to perfect.

A haunting image of a morose and disheartened Edmund flashed before Genie’s eyes before she forced it aside.
It won’t get to that point
. She wouldn’t allow Edmund to suffer.

But how could she prevent it?

“I love Edmund,” Genie said firmly.

The countess leaned over and patted her hand. “Of course you do. He is a good man and has been a good friend to you. But friendship isn’t enough. Do you
love
him with a gut-wrenching passion that permeates every fiber of your being?” Her voice turned thick, as if she was fighting off tears. “Is he the only man in the world for you? When he walks in the room, does your soul cry out for its other half?”

Lady Hawkesbury’s voice laid bare sounded like a soul torn apart, ripped to shreds. In the face of such honesty, Genie couldn’t speak. Because, of course, the answer was no. She would never love like that again. Never again allow a man that power over her. There was more than one man in a lifetime for her, there had to be. God would not be so cruel.

“Does Edmund love you like that, my dear? At first I thought he did, now I’m not so sure. He wants to protect you, but that isn’t the same thing, is it?”

They both knew it wasn’t. But instead of answering her question, Genie hedged. “I promise to consider what you have said.”

“Very well, I have said my piece. Now I must attend the preparations for the ball. You will let me know whether there will be an engagement to announce?”

Genie nodded and quickly fled the room before her conscience overrode common sense.

So what if Edmund’s kiss did not make her heart tumble, did not make her yearn to bare her soul to completion? She’d had that before and look what it brought her. Genie would not fall victim to love’s painful grasp again. She would do her best to love Edmund as he deserved to be loved. And in marrying Edmund, perhaps she would protect herself from the countess’s cruel fate.

The Duke of Huntingdon be damned.

The ducal carriage rolled to a clattering halt before Hawkesbury House. Eyes fixed straight ahead, focused on the task at hand, the Duke of Huntingdon barely noticed the festive grandeur of the house set ablaze with hundreds of torches, candles, and gaslights. Music, laughter, and the dull roar of a large crowd reverberated through the crisp autumn air. The Countess of Hawkesbury’s much anticipated ball was in full swing.

Threading his fingers through the soft kid of his gloves, one by one the duke yanked the hem at his wrist and forced the snug leather down hard over his knuckles. His movements were impatient and rough. Tonight was not a night for finesse.