He scoffed. “Do not make more of my actions today than there is. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have not been there. If it hadn’t taken you challenging me to open my eyes, I would have remained blind to my own self-absorption.”
She made a sound of protest, but he waved it off.
“There’s no excusing it. I’ve been bitter, and for what? Because my father had no use for me or the mother who bore me, whom he treated as a broodmare? And then marrying at eighteen, I was entirely focused on myself and my feelings.”
He’d been… married? Her mind stalled. What if he was still married? She’d just assumed… But she didn’t really know him or his circumstances, no more than he knew hers. Her stomach turned over. Dipping the tip of her spoon into her chocolate ice, she tried for a nonchalance she did not feel. When she spoke, she tried to make her voice as casual as possible. “You… have a wife, then?”
Lowering an elbow, he angled his body in a way that prevented any audience from observing his mouth as it moved. “Do you think I’m the manner of man who wouldn’t honor my vows?” he asked, his voice faintly teasing and yet…she registered belatedly how she could have, with her question, inadvertently offended him.
“No,” she said swiftly. “I just… forgive me.”
And on the wave of guilt for that assumption she’d made came this glorious wave of relief, the manner of which filled her chest with the greatest lightness and left her giddy. Except, if he was no longer married… Her heart froze. “You’re a widower,” she whispered, shame, an all-too-familiar emotion around this man, taking up the place of her earlier happiness.
He stared at her for a long while. “I… the duchess did not tell you?”
“She did not.”
“I expected she would.” Harris attended his ice, scraping chocolate around the edge of the fluted bowl, and for a moment, she thought he’d say nothing else about his wife. Undoubtedly, an exquisite-in-every-way lady, so very different from a street waif like Julia. And Julia was torn between wanting to know absolutely every detail about the woman who’d been his marchioness and wanting to know nothing at all. Because somehow, along the way, she’d come to care about the man seated opposite her, more than she should. And that, however, was why she desperately longed for him to keep speaking.
“Did you love her?” she ventured. The handle of her spoon bit sharply into her palm, and she reminded herself to relax her grip.
“I didn’t even know her,” he said, still studying his chocolate ice. “She was an actual stranger to me.” A smile more sad than cynical formed on his beautiful, hard lips, and she wanted to brush away that melancholy grin. “Not even in the sense of the cold unions the nobility makes. It was at a formal ball. I heard a scream and went running. She was there in the garden, her dress torn, and it was just… me and her.” He chuckled and, with a wry shake of his head, sat back in his seat. “And then, of course, every other member of Polite Society was there. Her family’s appearance had been orchestrated.”
She gasped as his meaning became clear. “She trapped you.”
“Indeed.”
“What happened to her?”
“She did it to pass off the babe she carried as mine and to give the child a name. In the end, she died bearing that babe, and… that is all.”
That was all…
How very casually he spoke, and yet there was nothing simple about his words.
“So if I’ve been… cynical, unfairly judgmental, and suspicious of your motives, it is entirely because of my own insecurities.”
That was when she knew, unequivocally and with an absolute certainty, that she could not perpetuate this ruse. Yes, she’d told the duchess all, and for a brief time, Julia had even managed to convince herself that was enough. If the duchess didn’t expect her to share the truth with Harris or anyone else, then surely that was enough? But she’d been lying to herself as much as she’d been lying to Harris.
She stared out the shop window at the lords and ladies passing by in their brightly clad, rich garments and at the street waifs peppered into that larger crowd, their hands tilted hopefully up.
Those were her people. That was where she belonged.
Because regardless of whether the duchess knew and accepted Julia, the truth remained: Julia was not and never would be Adairia. And presenting herself before the world, letting people, letting Harris, believe that lie? It was craven and wrong.
Just then, her gaze landed on a girl with the brightest blonde curls that were a shade of golden that Julia had seen only once. The spoon slipped from her fingers and clattered to the table, and then her heart fell.
Not Adairia.
Of course, not Adairia.
Rather, another struggling, begging street peddler. Just then, a lady on the arm of a gentleman stepped in the line of sight of Julia and that beggar girl. The woman knocked into the child, upending the girl’s basket of flowers. Rage flitted across Julia’s vision. How many times had she been that young woman? Poor. Pathetic. So treated by Polite Society.
“Julia?” Concern laced Harris’ tones.
Julia was already out of her seat and flying across the shop. Squeezing past the couple just entering, she pushed through and raced outside. “You there,” she shouted, and uncaring of the crowd that had paused at her cry, Julia collected her hem and rushed toward the lord and lady. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, and the pair turned to face her.
Through her rage on the young peddler’s behalf came a dawning recognition. There was a familiarity to the exquisite creature, a beauty that could not be forgotten, and Julia briefly faltered as she
