This wasn’t like before, when her family had thrown her from her home. At least then she’d had somewhere to go. She’d had a plan. Not one of her choosing, but she’d known what she was supposed to do and when she was supposed to do it. Now she had two dresses, one coat, eleven pounds, and no prospects save prostitution.
And she could not do that. Dear God, she couldn’t. She’d given herself too freely once before, and she would not make the same mistake twice. And it would be far, far too cruel to have to submit to a stranger when she’d stopped Daniel before they had completed their union.
She’d said no because . . . She wasn’t even sure. Habit, possibly. Fear. She did not want to bear an illegitimate child, and she did not want to force a man into marriage who would not otherwise choose a woman like her.
But most of all, she’d needed to hold onto herself. Not her pride, exactly; it was something else, something deeper.
Her heart.
It was the one thing she still had that was pure and utterly hers. She had given her body to George, but despite what she had thought at the time, he had never had her heart. And as Daniel’s hand had gone to the fastening of his breeches, preparing to make love to her, she had known that if she let him, if she let herself, he would have her heart forever.
But the joke was on her. He already had it. She’d gone and done the most foolish thing imaginable. She had fallen in love with a man she could never have.
Daniel Smythe-Smith, Earl of Winstead, Viscount Streathermore, Baron Touchton of Stoke. She didn’t want to think about him, but she did, every time she closed her eyes. His smile, his laugh, the fire in his eyes when he looked at her.
She did not think he loved her, but what he felt must have come close. He had cared, at least. And maybe if she’d been someone else, someone with a name and position, someone who didn’t have a madman trying to kill her . . . Maybe then when he had so foolishly said, “What if I married you?” she would have thrown her arms around him and yelled, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
But she didn’t have a Yes sort of life. Hers was a series of Noes. And it had finally landed her here, where she was finally as alone in body as she had been for so many years in spirit.
Her stomach let out a loud groan, and Anne sighed. She’d forgotten to buy supper before coming back to her boardinghouse, and now she was starving. It was probably for the best; she was going to have to make her pennies last as long as she could.
Her stomach rumbled again, this time with anger, and Anne abruptly swung her legs over the side of the bed. “No,” she said aloud. Although what she really meant was yes. She was hungry, damn it, and she was going to get something to eat. For once in her life she was going to say yes, even if it was only to a meat pasty and a half pint of cider.
She looked over at her dress, laid neatly over her chair. She really didn’t feel like changing back into it. Her coat covered her from head to hem. If she put on some shoes and stockings and pinned up her hair, no one would ever know she was out in her nightgown.
She laughed, the first time she’d made such a sound in days. What a strange way to be wicked.
A few minutes later she was out on the street, making her way to a small food shop she passed every day. She’d never gone inside, but the smells that poured forth every time the door opened . . . oh, they were heavenly. Cornish pasties and meat pies, hot rolls, and heaven knew what else.
She felt almost happy, she realized, once she had her hands around her toasty meal. The shopkeeper had wrapped her pasty in paper, and Anne was taking it back to her room. Some habits died hard; she was still too much of a proper lady to ever eat on the street, despite what the rest of humanity seemed to be doing around her. She could stop and get cider across the street from her boardinghouse, and when she got back to her room—
“You!”
Anne kept walking. The streets in this neighborhood were so loud, filled with so many voices, that it never occurred to her that a stray “You!” might actually be directed at her. But then she heard it again, closer.
“Annelise Shawcross.”
She didn’t even turn around to look. She knew that voice, and more to the point, that voice knew her real name. She ran.
Her precious supper slipped from her fingers and she ran faster than she would have ever thought herself capable. She darted around corners, shoved her way through crowds without so much as a begging of pardon. She ran until her lungs burned and her nightgown stuck to her skin, but in the end, she was no match for George’s simple yell of—