A Study In Seduction(102)
“You’ve told no one?”
“My grandmother said that if anyone knew the truth, it would cause irreparable damage to our family’s reputation, and I would have to leave,” Lydia said. “So I was allowed to serve as Jane’s tutor, to continue my work in mathematics, though somewhat anonymously to lessen the chances of encountering Dr. Cole again. Of course, my grandmother has insisted on absolute propriety, irreproachable conduct. Considering the circumstances, I can’t say I blame her. And so it’s been for almost twelve years.”
Until now. Until you.
He paced to the windows and back again. “Jane didn’t know the truth?”
A wave of pain pounded against the numbness around Lydia’s heart. “She… the locket, Alexander. There was another compartment behind the first. My father had it specially made.”
Tears pushed against her eyes. “He’d placed a coin of good fortune inside the locket before he gave it to my mother. The coin was lost long ago, but the locket has held a key ever since Jane was born.
“I kept her birth certificate in a locked copper box, and I put the key inside the locket, in the hidden compartment. No one knew it was there except me.” She glanced at him. “You had the locket for almost three months. You never noticed there was another compartment?”
“No. I didn’t spend untold hours examining the thing. I’ve never even heard of a locket having two compartments.” He frowned. “You didn’t answer my question. Does Jane know the truth?”
Lydia’s tears spilled over. “After you gave her the locket, she found the key. And she figured out that it belonged to the copper box, which has always been in my father’s study.”
Alexander was silent for a moment; then he cursed. “Christ. Is that why she went to meet Cole? Bloody hell, if I hadn’t—”
“No. Don’t do that. Not now.”
The sound of his boots shuffling against the carpet drew her head up. He stopped closer to her. His hands flexed at his sides, tension lining his body like steel.
Oh, so many mistakes. So much pain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “So sorry.”
“I… I was relentless, wasn’t I?” Self-disgust laced his words. “Wouldn’t leave you alone. Couldn’t.”
“In a secret part of my heart, Alexander,” Lydia said, “I didn’t want you to.”
She stood, aching to touch him and knowing she could not. “But now you understand why a marriage between us can never be possible. I admit that for a brief moment, I believed it might work, but… well, that’s a fool’s errand, isn’t it? And never let anyone accuse either one of us of being a fool.”
Unable to help herself, she stepped to him and reached up to press her lips against his unshaven cheek. He turned his head, his mouth meeting hers in a kiss so light it almost didn’t exist. And yet a thousand regrets passed between them with that single touch.
Lydia turned away, her heart cracking.
“I love you,” Alexander said.
She made it through the door before the tears fell again.
Chapter Thirty
Doesn’t matter if the charges are proved or even legitimate, Northwood.” Rushton stared at the fire. “It’s an excuse to remove you from the Society council, from your position as director of the exhibition.”
“It’s an excuse to get rid of him,” Sebastian said bluntly.
Alexander’s stomach tightened at the shadowed gravity in his father’s expression. Anger boiled in him at the realization that all his work for the past two years was coming to naught. That despite all he’d tried to do to restore his family’s reputation, they would now be blamed for the destruction and injuries caused by the riot.
His father was correct. The truth didn’t matter.
Did he care? Ever since Lydia had walked away from him, a hard, painful knot had formed in Alexander’s chest. He thought about her every passing minute, dreamed about her at night and woke sweaty and aching. He’d analyzed the Jane situation from every angle, tried to find some way to place the full blame on Lydia, to vilify her… and only ended up ashamed of himself.
What could one say about a sixteen-year-old girl who’d lived a life of isolation and darkness, whose brilliant mind made her both a prodigy and an anomaly? A girl who’d lacked friends and a mother and a normal childhood? A girl who had succumbed to the grotesque manipulations of a man twice her age?