Eventually, her tears dried, not because she didn’t continue to weep, but rather because she had simply run out. Leaning over, she opened the small drawer on Nicholas’s side of the bed, looking for a handkerchief. She pushed aside letters and was pulling out his square of linen when she noticed a carefully folded envelope addressed to her.
Picking it up, she discovered a letter from Claire O’Connor, dated from before they had come to San Francisco, offering to pay her debt to Nicholas and reiterating her offer of work in her household.
Shame twisted in her gut as she realized Claire knew about her father’s debt and how she’d come to be in Nicholas’s employ. For the last several weeks, she had behaved like little more than a common doxy. Her father owed Nicholas money, and she repaid his debt with her body. She shouldn’t have been surprised. James was Claire’s brother, and he and Nicholas were friends and business partners. Why wouldn’t Nicholas tell James, and what reason would James have for keeping his silence?
His
reputation wasn’t on the line.
Lexie turned the letter over in her hand and noticed Claire provided a San Francisco address. She recognized her way out. She had a place to go, someone to turn to. More than that, she had a reason to be angry with Nicholas. She had been offered freedom, which he had denied her by not giving her this letter. It didn’t matter that if he had given the note to her back when it had been received, she would have refused. What mattered was that he had decided for her and allowed her to remain in bondage.
Woodenly, she changed her clothes into the faded red dress she had brought with her and packed her valise. She would take only those things she had come with. Well, that and the book of poetry from Nicholas’s library, the one she had been reading the first time he’d kissed her. The dresses and the jewelry she could part with, but not this book. She needed something tangible, something she’d be able to take out and touch when she wanted to feel his strong arms around her.
Something to remind her of him.
She walked downstairs and told the footman to ready the coach. She heard Nicholas’s voice, laughing loudly, and was shocked to see the entire day had passed. Taking a breath, she realized she owed Nicholas this one, last fight.
Yet something in his voice made her stop at the door and listen.
At first she admonished herself. She had been raised better than this, but that didn’t stop her. She’d done a lot of things recently that went against the way she had been raised.
“I think she’s run her course. She was good while she lasted, but I think it’s time to let her go.”
“You can’t mean you’re through with her? Already? After what you paid for her?” James Campbell’s voice rang clear. He sounded incredulous.
Though her heart pounded, Lexie stopped to listen.
“Well, if you’ll recall, I didn’t really want her in the first place,” Nicholas said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“She has been more than serviceable, but it’s not working out.”
“I think she’s still got some life in her,” James countered. “It seems like a waste of an investment to let her go right now. Keep her for a little while longer, make good use of her.”
Nicholas laughed. “I know how you operate. You would prefer to run her into the ground, use her up completely, while I would prefer to get rid of her while I still can.”
Lexie fought rage. The nerve of him, insinuating she was nothing more than a commodity to be bought and used up. For him to imply their relationship had run its course, well, that hurt worse than any of Buchanan’s threats, worse than anything she had ever experienced.
She could bear no more.
When she opened the door, Nicholas looked up, startled. “Lexie.”
In unison with Nicholas, James rose from his chair. “Miss Markland.”
“Mr. Campbell,” Lexie acknowledged curtly. Glaring at Nicholas, she said, “A word.”
Nicholas’s brows drew together, and his mouth twisted, but he complied. “Of course.”
He closed the study door behind him and stood in the dimly lit hallway of the house she’d made a home. He reached out to touch her, but she skittered away. She’d lose her nerve if she allowed him to touch her. “Don’t!” she hissed.
“Lexie, what’s wrong?”
“As if you don’t know!”
“I
don’t
know!”
“Spare me your lies, Mr. Wetherby! I know you don’t want me! I know I’m just a thing to you! So spare me your charming suitor routine.”
His jaw dropped as he stared at her. Making an angry gesture with his hands, he said, “What are you talking about? Have you gone suddenly mad?”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Lexie demanded, warming to her argument. “Same old routine, the woman being a crazy harpy. You’d like to look like the good guy, the maligned one. Only I see you for what you are.”
“Lexie, goddammit, what the hell are you talking about?”
Hurt and angry, Lexie quoted, “‘She was good while she lasted,’ Mr. Wetherby?”
His brows drew together over his nose. “What? Good while she...?” Then, laughing, he continued. “Lexie, you can’t think I was talking about
you
?”
Amusement lit his eyes and his lips curved into a jovial smile, and all it did was fuel her wrath. “As if you weren’t,” Lexie snarled. “I know what you think of me. You paid for me! Whether you got your investment’s worth is entirely up to you, but I want out. Now.”
Nicholas’s face fell, a concerned line forming between his brows. “What? You’re not an investment, Lexie.” Gesturing to the study where James still waited, Nicholas said, “That conversation had nothing to do with you!”
Her heart stuttered at his words, for she recognized the truth in them. Whatever they’d been discussing hadn’t been her. Trying desperately to hold onto the edge of her anger, she held up the letter from Claire. “Just like this has nothing to do with me, I suppose.”
“What is that?” Nicholas asked her warily.
Waving the letter at him, she said, “This is a letter from Claire O’Connor, dated from before we even came here. She offered me employment and to repay my debt to you. She offered me freedom. Which
you
denied me.”
“Lexie, I was leaving for San Francisco at the time. I was going to be gone for months, and I offered you the chance to stay in Sacramento in my house without me. I wasn’t denying you freedom, I was granting it.
You
were the one who wanted to join me here.”
He had a point. He had invited her to come with him, but only after she had made her feelings toward him perfectly clear. “You’re changing the topic, Nicholas! You never gave me the chance to accept her offer. You never gave me a choice. You never offered me real freedom. The choices you gave me were to stay with you or to stay in your house. Either way, I remained your servant.”
“I never intended for you to stay my servant!
That’s
why I insisted you take a room above stairs. The help doesn’t stay in guest quarters. Besides, you haven’t even been staying in the guest room since the first week after we arrived, not really.
You’ve
spent most of your time in the master suite.”
“Lower your voice!”
“What, so Campbell won’t find out we’re lovers? Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but your dirty little secret is already out. He knows. Hell,
everyone
knows. You haven’t been acting the part of a servant since we got here, and for good reason. Because you haven’t been one.”
“No, Mr. Wetherby, I’ve been your mistress, your whore.”
Nicholas blanched. She might as well have slapped him, his reaction was so violent. “I have
never
treated you as a whore! No one has ever accused me of that, and don’t you start! You wanted this as much as I did. You always could have said no! We didn’t do anything you didn’t want!” he shouted, stabbing violently at the air with his index finger.
He was right, but it was easier to fight grief with anger, to fight his logical arguments with raw emotion. Her voice breaking on the words, she wailed, “But I’m still your servant! How can a servant ever refuse her employer?”
“You all but asked to come with me, Lexie! When I asked you to come with me, I made it plain you wouldn’t be coming with me as my servant. If you were so concerned about refusing me, you should have stayed in Sacramento, where you wouldn’t have had to abide by my presence! If you’ll recall,
you
were the one who initiated our dalliance with your ‘I would miss you if you left, Mr. Wetherby,’ and, ‘I’m seducing you.’ You were well aware what would happen if you came!”
“How was I supposed to know—I mean, really know?” Lexie spat. “You knew what I was when you brought me here!”
“Right back at you, Miss Markland.
You
knew what
I
was. I made my intentions plain, I gave you ample opportunity to back out, and if you were unhappy with our arrangement, then perhaps you should have said something!”
“I’m saying something now!”
“What
are
you saying? I don’t even know what we’re really fighting about!”
“We’re fighting about my freedom! We’re fighting because someone offered it to me and you didn’t even give me the chance to accept!”
“But you were happy!
We
were happy! You wanted to come with me to San Francisco. I thought the point was moot. I didn’t think you’d take Mrs. O’Connor up on her offer!”
“We’ll never know, will we?” she demanded, warming to an argument she had no right to win. “You never gave me a choice!”
He threw up his hands. “You want a choice? Fine! You have the letter from Mrs. O’Connor. You want to go work for her rather than stay here with me, go! You want the freedom to choose who you serve to work off your father’s debt? Fine! Make your choice!”
“I’ll do that!” Lexie shouted.
“Fine! I have work to do!” Nicholas shouted back, turning his back and going back into his study. He slammed the door shut behind him, and it was like the lid of a coffin closing. Painful and forever.
Lexie stared at the closed door for a minute, the hurt and the shock washing over her, regretting that this last time she spoke with Nicholas the words flying between them had been ugly. She’d never been a fallen woman in this house. She had been his mistress, but she had far more love here than she would with Buchanan, a man who sought to make her his wife. She would happily trade the title of Buchanan’s wife for the title of Nicholas’s mistress. Happy in sin, or unhappy in wedlock. There was hardly a choice to be made.
But she would was not willing to risk him. She wouldn’t be so selfish as to sacrifice him for her own happiness. She believed Buchanan when he said he would kill Nicholas. Nicholas dead, she and her father in jail—her happiness wasn’t worth the price Buchanan would exact. She thought she could even bear to go to jail herself, but she’d die before she watched Nicholas get hurt. Or worse.
Heart breaking, Lexie cast one last look at the door.
“Good bye, Nicholas,” she whispered, returning to the foyer and picking up her valise as she left his house. Forever.