“Let me understand.” Her stomach roiled as his meaning dawned on her. “You wish me to trick a man into marrying me?”
He drank his cup to the dregs, then declared passionately, “I wish you to find safety and security, Beatrice. This world is not kind to people without money.”
She knew it. She’d seen it.
She’d gone to the East End herself on many occasions and seen the poverty there. The children playing in veritable cesspits. Children who likely would not pass their fifth birthday.
Ladies who would not survive thirty. Dying of disease, living in filth…
Fear swept over her, stealing away her calm for a single moment, for she knew unequivocally how difficult it was for the lives of even the intellectual classes, the artists. Most of them lived in fear of debtors’ prison.
So many of the people she admired barely clung to stability, and they had the skills to manage and survive such conditions. She’d never been taught to do such a thing.
She could learn, of course. But it would be no small thing. She’d be a fool to think it would.
Whatever was she to do?
“Oh, Uncle,” she lamented, blinking her burning eyes. “This is terrible. I do not see how I can will myself to the fate to which you’ve resigned me.”
She placed a hand to her middle, determined to not be overborne.
“I am so sorry,” he said again, as if somehow his regret could change their circumstance. Her circumstance.
Her fate had been put into the hands of a man, of a guardian, and it had been his duty to ensure her safety—and he had failed.
The cruelty of it, the absurdity of it filled her until finally she stepped forward, took her uncle’s hand in hers, and said, “I shall always love you for the care you have given me, and I can never be angry with you or hate you, but I do find that I need a moment alone.”
“Of course you do, Beatrice,” he murmured, squeezing her hand.
“Uncle, I will always forgive you,” she said firmly. “But this…this is most difficult indeed.”
And with that, she turned and strode out of the room.
Marriage? Marriage?
All her jokes and teasing, all her protestations about how she’d never wed…how she would be no man’s fool. They flooded back to her, taunting her.
She couldn’t. She could not choose marriage. Her parents’ faces, so full of love as they gazed at each other, seized her thoughts. Beatrice bit down on her lip, the pain of the news so intense she longed to curl into a ball and sob.
Marriage without love?
All her happiness seeped out of her in that instant. How could she do something so traitorous to her parents’ memories? To herself?
She couldn’t.
As she entered the hall, she felt as if she was drowning in a vast sea and could not get air. Just as she was about to run to her own room so she could gather herself and decide what to do next, Heaton turned the corner and met her.
“Lady Beatrice, the Duke of Blackheath is here to see you.”
She blinked. William? She had not been expecting him this morning.
“He is waiting in the drawing room.”
Her throat tightened. “Tell him I am not available at the moment.”
“He seems most determined, and I am not certain how to tell a duke that you are not home when he knows that you are.”
She let out a long sigh, not wishing to put Heaton into such a difficult position.