She looked away from him and continued, “Mother was always very particular that I do things properly. She said that one day I’d take my place in Society—and it was essential I talk like a lady and eat like a lady and move like a lady. That I speak French and Italian, that I sew beautifully, that I . . .” Arabella shrugged. “She was determined that I become a lady.”
So many lessons: how to sit, how to stand, how to walk gracefully, how to sip from a glass, how to eat politely.
“Mother had a set of cutlery that she laid out every night. She used to pretend we had lots of courses to choose from.” Arabella could see the room in her mind’s eye, the stained walls, the mattresses on the floor, the tiny fireplace with its broken grate—and the miscellany of knives and forks and spoons laid out on the lopsided table. “I had to use the right ones.” She glanced at St. Just. “It was a game, you see.”
His expression was faintly bemused. He nodded.
“One night, while I was eating, one of Mother’s clients came. He wanted— Well, you can guess what he wanted. But my mother was very particular about dinner, and she told him to go away.”
She fell silent. After a moment, St. Just said, “I take it he didn’t?”
Arabella shook her head. “He pushed his way in . . . the door was quite flimsy . . . and Mother lost her temper. She told him—” She bit her lip. The things her mother had said were unrepeatable. “And . . . and he said that if Mother wasn’t willing then he’d have me instead, and he grabbed me and . . . Mother hit him with the skillet.”
“What happened next?” St. Just asked, his voice grim.
“He fell over. There was . . . a lot of blood.” The smell of it came to her nostrils, as strong now as it had been thirteen years ago. Arabella shuddered. “He was too big for us to move, so I went to get Harry, and he carried him outside.”
“Did this man give you any more trouble?”
“We never saw him again.” She glanced at St. Just and saw his expression sharpen.
“Do you think that Harry—”
“I don’t know.” Arabella looked away. After a moment she said, “I think it far more likely that my mother killed him. It was a very heavy skillet.”
St. Just said nothing. His expression—when she darted a glance at him—was sober, thoughtful.
He caught her glance. “I must applaud your mother’s defense of you, Miss Knightley, but her manner of living . . . your exposure to her choice of occupation—”
“Her choice of occupation?” Arabella removed her hand from his arm. “Her choice?”
St. Just had the grace to look ashamed. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “What I meant was—”
Arabella was too angry to listen to his apology. “My mother took in washing, Mr. St. Just. She sewed. She cleaned and dressed the dead. She did everything, anything, to earn money. Whoring was never her choice; it was always a last resort. She hated it! Absolutely hated it.” Her anger died, as abruptly as it had kindled. She looked away from him. “She could only do it if she was drunk, and she always cried afterwards.”
“I apologize,” St. Just said again, quietly. “What I meant was that it’s terrible that you, or your mother—or indeed any female!—should be forced to live in such circumstances. I deeply regret—as your mother must have—that you were witness to such things.”
Arabella fiddled with a mother-of-pearl button on her glove. “You think she should have given me to my grandparents?”
St. Just hesitated. “I can’t be a judge of that. Do you think she should have?”
Arabella twisted the button. I don’t know. “It would have broken her heart.” The button came off in her fingers. She stared at it for a moment, at the snapped threads. “If she’d let me go, I would never have known her. I’d have no memories of her.” As it is, I have thousands. As many bad as good. She clenched the button in her hand. “My mother was a very brave woman.”
“Yes,” St. Just said. “She must have been.”
She glanced at him. He was looking down at the path. As she watched, he scuffed a stone aside with the toe of his boot. “I remind you of Lord Crowe and the man in the slums, don’t I?” he said, raising his head. His face was bleak. “That’s why you dislike waltzing with me.”
Arabella shuddered. “No, Lord Emsley reminds me of them.”
St. Just’s forehead creased. “Then why—?”
“It makes me feel uncomfortable.”
“More uncomfortable than waltzing with Emsley,” St. Just persisted.
Arabella looked down at the button. “Yes.”
“May I ask why?”
She flushed. “Because . . . because it feels dangerous.”
“Dangerous, how?”
“I . . . I find it hard to breathe, and . . . and my skin prickles and . . . I feel too hot.”
“Those symptoms, Miss Knightley, sound rather like the symptoms of, er . . . desire.”
“Oh, no!” she said, her gaze flying to him. “It couldn’t possibly be.”
St. Just smiled, his eyes creasing at the corners. “You sound very certain.”
“I am,” Arabella said emphatically. “I will never have physical congress with a man!”
His eyebrows rose. “Never?”
She shuddered again, remembering the ugliness of the noises, the rank male smell, her mother’s distress afterwards. “Never.”
“Ah . . .” His smile faded. “This is why you wish me to withdraw my offer.”
Her gaze fell. “Yes.”
St. Just was silent for several seconds. “You’re quite determined never to . . . uh, have physical congress with a man?”
“Yes.”
After several more seconds of silence, he held his arm out to her. “Shall we walk further?”
Arabella glanced at him from beneath the brim of her bonnet. His face was unsmiling. After a moment’s hesitation she laid her hand on his arm.
They strolled slowly in an awkward silence. Above them, birds sang, and from beneath their feet came the gentle crunch of gravel. Arabella was aware of a pang of regret.
“Tell me about your friend Harry Higgs,” St. Just said.
“Harry?” she
