Chapter Nineteen

H ope had never believed that telling Samuel the truth would be in any way cathartic but, even so, she was wholly unprepared for the depth of the shame which possessed her as she told the sordid story of her life. She watched the expressions of shock then horror cloud his handsome features as finally she unmasked herself, shedding Hope Swynford like a second skin and allowing Hope Sloane to walk free.

She told him about her childhood on that bleak Lillybeck hillside, about the lack of food and warmth, about how, one by one, her siblings had perished until she'd been the only one left. About how her father had sought to solve their problems through a life of crime, allowing life on the wrong side of the law to corrupt him so thoroughly, whilst her mother had tried to drown her sorrows in a bottle of laudanum. That part of Hope Swynford's story, she said grimly, had been true.

She told him about her mother's death, how it had left her at the mercy of her father's cruelty and callousness, and how he'd tried to force her into marrying one of his associates. Despite herself, and despite knowing how unsavoury Samuel would doubtless find it, she could not help but speak fondly of running away and joining a theatre company. Those few years of freedom, she told him, had been the making of her, and for all the danger and vice which lurked at the periphery of such work, she'd been happy for the first time in her life.

Her lighter tone dissipated when she reached the final chapter of her tale: the story of her return to Cumberland, of her kidnap and her father's second attempt at forcing a marriage on her. She barely managed to utter the words as she spoke of how depraved he'd become, how sinister, how hateful. How ready he had been to condemn her to a life with a man who, she knew, had the same blackened soul as him.

‘I've spent my life living on my wits, and when fortune smiled upon me for long enough to allow me to escape a second time I took the chance and I fled. I had nothing but the costume I'd been wearing the night that my father and his men snatched me from the theatre in Lowhaven. Nothing but that and my sheer determination to live my life on my own terms, and not his.'

‘And then you found Hayton, and me,' Samuel added sombrely, slumping down on his bed with a look of unmistakable disbelief. ‘So you're the actress Charles mentioned that day in Lowhaven. The one who went missing on the penultimate night of...' He shook his head, apparently struggling to remember.

‘ The School for Scandal ,' Hope confirmed with a grim nod. ‘I was playing Lady Teazle. Hence the beautiful gown I was wearing the night you found me in the woods.' She regarded him carefully, trying to ignore the tears which pricked at the corners of her eyes. ‘You have to understand, Samuel, that I did not know you—I did not know if you were good or bad, if you knew my father or not. My father supplies his wares to many of the big houses across Cumberland, and has more than a few landowners and magistrates in his back pocket. For all I knew, telling you my true identity and story would have led me straight back into his clutches. So when I realised that my clothes had led you to make certain assumptions about me, I decided to play along. I created Hope Swynford and her story to protect myself.'

‘Well, you are a consummate actress.' His grey-blue eyes were wide with dismay. ‘Never for a moment did I think you could be anything other than a gentleman's daughter with an enthusiasm for the theatre. You certainly had me fooled.'

‘Just as you fooled me into believing you were a baronet.'

‘Fair point.' He offered her a grim smile as he got to his feet again. ‘You were right—this is a real mess.'

She felt her lip tremble at his observation. ‘Like you, once I'd begun my deception I found it so hard to end it, even when I suspected that you would have no idea who Jeremiah Sloane is and, even if you did, I knew you were too good a man to give me up to him.' She shook her head at herself, tears still threatening to overwhelm her. ‘You said before that you liked the way I looked at you. Well, I liked the way you looked at me too. In truth, I felt ashamed of who I really was. I thought you'd be horrified if you knew who you'd allowed into your home. Gentlemen like you have nothing to do with low-born actresses with wicked outlaw fathers. The only time a woman like me encounters gentlemen is in the theatre, and believe me when I say that they are often anything but gentlemanly then.'

She watched as he flinched at her implication, and she realised then that she'd said far more than she should. It was bad enough that she'd spoken so frankly about the poverty and criminality which ran through her past like a poison, but to then confront Samuel with the sheer seediness and, at times, outright depravity of what she'd been exposed to off-stage and after dark—that was beyond the pale. Worse still, Samuel might believe that she'd been a willing participant in such behaviour—that she was, as Mr Gordon had once said of actresses, little more than a harlot.

‘What I mean to say is...' she began, now filled with the sudden urge to explain herself.

‘No—I understand,' he interjected, shaking his head again. ‘Believe me, I know exactly what some gentlemen are capable of. But surely you know me well enough to know that I would not...' He strode towards her, and her heart sank as she saw him reach out a hand to touch her before retracting it. Of course, he'd thought better of it. He always would now. He shook his head, as though he was trying and failing to find the right words. ‘I cannot imagine what you've had to endure...'

The look of horror which was etched in those wide, blue-grey eyes made Hope feel sick as it dawned on her that he was, indeed, trying to imagine it.

‘I'm not a harlot,' she said quietly. ‘I was never any man's mistress either. I'd run away from my father because he'd tried to trade me like contraband, and I didn't escape his clutches just so that I could sell myself to the highest bidder. I was determined that my life would be my own.'

‘But that didn't stop well-dressed drunken wastrels trying their luck,' Samuel pondered.

Hope smiled bleakly at his observation. ‘Quite. And some not so well-dressed wastrels, at times.'

An awkward silence descended between them as Hope waited for Samuel to say something—anything—more. But his words, if he had any, did not come. Instead, he simply stood before her, blinking, his sheer mortification and consternation etched on his face. His entire demeanour, from his wooden posture to the distance he'd placed between them, telling her that everything had changed. That what she truly was had shocked and appalled him, such that he might never recover. Such that he would never care for her again. Indeed, that he likely regretted ever saying that he did.

‘It is late,' she said in the end, stepping towards the door. ‘I should go.'

Samuel stared at her from across the room, but made no move to follow her. ‘Yes, of course,' he said after a moment.

He conceded defeat easily—perhaps, Hope considered, too easily. He crossed his arms over his bare chest, and Hope's fingers tingled with the memory of exploring that part of him a short time ago. A profound sense of loss gripped her as it dawned on her that she'd never touch that skin again, that there would be no more embraces. The chasm wrought between them by the truth was simply too great. Looking at his astonished expression, Hope could see that Samuel knew this too. He knew that he could never look at Hope the actress the way he'd looked at Hope the heiress. There had been too much deceit on both their parts. Too many lies. At least now they both knew that.

‘Goodnight, Samuel.'

Then, before he could utter a word in reply, she hurried out of his room. It was only when she reached her own and saw that Maddie had left that she allowed herself to weep in earnest—for all that had happened, and for all that could never be.

They'd both been lying. As he tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep, Samuel's mind kept returning to that thought. They'd both told stories, and they'd both had their reasons for keeping the truth from one another—some better reasons than others, but reasons nonetheless.

Hope's reasons, he knew, had been a matter of survival. Had he been in her position in those woods weeks ago, had he been injured and vulnerable and taken into a stranger's home, he might well have invented a tale about himself too. Hearing her confess the dreadful details of her past had been hard enough, but realising that it was shame which had motivated her to keep up the pretence of being Hope Swynford had been unbearable.

His heart had broken for her as she'd stood there and told him that she was ashamed of who she was and, in turn, he'd felt ashamed of himself too. Ashamed of the way he'd allowed his own wounded pride and misguided sense of honour to get the better of him, to lead him to pretend to be more than he was. Little wonder she'd felt unable to tell him her real story—between the baronetcy and the big estate, he must have seemed utterly intimidating. The bitter irony of this was not lost on him. In keeping up the pretence, he'd sought to make her feel safe and protected. Instead, he'd unwittingly placed a barrier between them.

If only he had been honest from the outset, he might have seemed more approachable.

Perhaps.

On the other hand, as she'd told him, in her experience, gentlemen were not to be trusted. His stomach had lurched at her remark about the so-called gentlemen at the theatre, at her implication as to how they'd often behaved. He'd desperately wanted to show her that he was not like them, that his affection for her was heartfelt and genuine, and that it endured—whether she was a wealthy heiress or an actress without a penny to her name. He'd wanted to gather her into his arms and kiss all her feelings of shame away, and yet he had stopped himself. He had held back from her.

Why? Because, despite those familiar tender, protective feelings he had for her, he'd realised he had to tread carefully. The last thing he wanted her to conclude was that he was just another rich rapscallion, seeking to take advantage of her. So he'd kept his hands to himself, and when she'd wanted to, he'd let her go, even when so much remained unsaid.

Such as telling her that she was still the Hope he'd come to know and care for, whether her surname was Swynford or Sloane, and whether her father was a gentleman or a common criminal. Whether she spent her life in drawing rooms playing cards or on the stage playing roles. Such as reminding her that her pretend heiress, just like his pretend baronet, had been a mere costume, that it did not alter who either of them were underneath.

The Hope who'd been on the run from her invented nefarious uncle was the same Hope who'd escaped the clutches of a very real, very wicked father—a woman who loved to read, whose knowledge of Shakespeare was second to none. A woman who'd lost her mother, and whose own pain had made her alert to and empathetic towards the suffering of others. A brave woman, and one who, he now knew, had carved out a life for herself, escaping the clutches of those who'd sought to drag her down not once, but twice. If anything, her runaway heiress story—a story which, notwithstanding the wicked uncle, had implied a certain amount of wealth and status—had meant that he'd not been able to fully appreciate the sheer amount of hardship and wretchedness which she'd overcome.

He did now.

He did, and the strength of feeling that knowledge provoked in him was overwhelming. As he lay in bed, sleep still eluding him, he realised that he wanted to protect her from all of it. From her father's cruelty, from a forced marriage, from men leering at her in the theatre. From cold, damp cottages and poverty and hunger. Weeks ago, he'd offered her sanctuary in his family home; now, he knew, he wanted to offer her love and security, with him. Because he did love her—he understood that now, and knowing that truth had done nothing to diminish how he felt about her. If anything, he loved and admired her more than ever. To him, she was beautiful and she was perfect, and honestly, the way she spoke in that soft local tongue had the ability to drive him wild. He wanted to hear that voice to the end of his days.

He would tell her so, he decided, squeezing his eyes shut. In the morning.

The indigo light of the autumn dawn bathed Hayton's gardens as Hope stepped out of the door at the rear of the house. She breathed in deeply, allowing the cold air to refresh her as the wind teased the shrubbery and tangled the branches of the tall trees in the woods beyond, warning of an unsettled day ahead. How fitting, since it had been a restless night. Hope had not slept a wink, her room growing more stifling and her thoughts more relentless as the hours wore on. Eventually she had felt the need to escape, and so she'd slipped on a day dress and shawl—or rather, as she now knew, Rosalind's dress and shawl—then put on her boots and wandered outside for some air.

She walked slowly along the path, acutely aware of how heavy her weary limbs felt, and how her swollen eyes pricked and throbbed after so many hours of crying. For the first time in her life, she found herself at a loss. No matter what life had thrown at her, she'd always been able to formulate a plan or, at the very least, to take what she'd been given and run with it—sometimes literally. Now, she realised, she'd simply no idea what to do. No idea where she was going. Not to London—now that she was no longer Hope Swynford, there was no need for that. Back to Richmond? Back to her life in the theatre? Was that even possible? She didn't know.

All she did know was that the truth had changed everything, that Samuel would never look at her in the same way again. Her time at Hayton, her time with him in this blissful, peaceful sanctuary, was coming to an end.

The sound of stones crunching underfoot was the first clue that she wasn't alone. It was a clue which came too late, since by the time she realised a hand had already been clapped over her mouth, stifling any attempt she might have made to scream. The hand was dirty, coarse and all too familiar, as was the cold sting of the knife which was pressed against her throat.

‘Time to go home, my lady,' he said mockingly, hissing the words into her ear.

Finally, after all these weeks of searching, he'd found her.