Blackmoore(31)

I covered my eyes with my hand, dreading her next words. I shook my head. “Don’t say it.”

“You looked very much like Eleanor in there. First, with Mr.

Pritchard. And then with Mr. Brandon.”

I closed my eyes tight and fought back tears.

“I need to know why you acted that way, Kitty. If you want to stay here, I need to understand.”

Her words sounded like a threat. If I wanted to stay here? I dropped my hand and looked at her with disbelief. Would she really make me leave Blackmoore simply because I had flirted with two gentlemen? She met my gaze directly and did not look as if she was teasing.

“Very well. I will tell you why I flirted this evening, even though flirt-ing is no great crime.” I drew in a deep breath. “I made a bargain with 89



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Mama. She will give me my freedom—my independence—to go to India if I receive and reject three marriage proposals.”

Sylvia stared at me, then laughed, one short, mirthless laugh. “So you thought you could flirt with some gentlemen and then they would propose to you?”

My face burned again. “It has happened to other young ladies.”

She was shaking her head, and her disbelief turned to something I hated even more: pity.

“I have to tell you something, Kit—Kate. And I am not telling you this because I’m upset with you. I am telling you this because I am your friend and you deserve to hear the truth.”

Dread pooled within me. My heart picked up speed with nervousness.

I was quite certain I did not want to hear whatever she had to say.

Leaning toward me, she looked into my eyes and said, “No man here will propose to you.”

I flinched. My pride reared up. “You sound so sure of yourself, Sylvia.” My voice sounded bitter. “How can you say that?”

“Because all of the people here are friends of my mother. And all of them know about Eleanor.”

I blanched. “But that is old news. She is married now. She cannot hurt me anymore.”

Sylvia shook her head, and her cool blue eyes were full of pity. “There are new rumors in London. I didn’t want to tell you, but everyone in our set, the entire Ton, is whispering about her.”

“But she is married,” I said again, unable to think past that idea.

“Married women can cause as much scandal as unmarried ones,”

Sylvia said with a jaded look.

I dropped my head into my hands, feeling all hope leaving me.

“In fact, when Mama heard the rumors, she wrote to Henry and told him you could no longer come to Blackmoore. But Henry fought her, and I stood up for you, too, Kitty. I told her that you had never behaved like Eleanor, and you never would. I told her that our guests would have 90



nothing to fear from your company . . . that they would not be tainted by any scandal while you were with us.”

I breathed in and out, trying not to cry. “I only want to go to India.

It’s the only reason I did what I did.”

She was silent for so long that I raised my head and looked at her.

Condemnation was written all over her face—judgment and reproach and dismissal. “Even if there was a chance that you might succeed, I cannot believe you would use some unsuspecting man to get what you want. Did you not think of the moral implications of your plan? To use these men— to toy with their hearts—to lead them to fall in love with you, all the while knowing you would reject them! It’s heartless. Absolutely heartless.

And selfish and . . . and . . .” She sucked in a breath. “It sounds like your mother, to be honest. It sounds exactly like something she would do.”

I flinched at the words she threw at me. “It does not,” I said, my voice sounding savage. I pushed back my chair and stood, hands clenched into fists. “I am not my mother. I am never going to be like her. I can’t believe you would say that. After all these years of knowing how I feel about her and knowing how loath I am to become like her! How could you say such a thing?”

She stared at me, her eyes filled with pain but her lips pressed tight. An apology would not escape, she seemed to say. She was separate from me.

She looked at me as someone she pitied but not someone she cared for.

The truth of her words pounded at my soul, but I would not let them in, just as she would not let an apology out. We were beyond each other’s reach, and after a long stretch of tension and silence and stubbornness from both of us, she looked over her shoulder at the door. At the way back to the world she belonged in.

“I should return to the guests. Mama will be wondering where I am.”

She waited, shifting from one foot to another, and I felt a crack in my defenses—a weak place where truth knifed and twisted and pried for an opening. I could not bear to have her witness my vulnerability. I brushed past her and opened the door myself. I left her with a strong stride and 91



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a lifted chin and the injured pride of someone who would not admit her own mistakes.

But as soon as I opened the door to the second music room—the room I had claimed as my own, and the room with the stirring, silent bird in it—I lost everything that had been protecting me. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes as the truth found my weakness and expanded it and then poured in, blinding me with the pain of illumination. I had spent the last few years running away from becoming like my mother. But in my effort to escape my fate, I had become her. I had been willing to use others for my own gain. I had been willing to target the weakness of others— their hopes and dreams and the most tender feelings of their hearts—and manipulate them and trap them and then gut them. All for my own dream of India. And in that moment of illumination, I hated myself.