Justin’s lips firmed as though he was biting back a pithy retort. But before he could utter it, Sarah plunged on.
‘It was the very opposite. I tried and tried to make friends with her, but she simply wasn’t interested. You were the only Latymor she cared about. Even after you were so beastly to her that night she still came to the battlefield to find you. And wouldn’t let anyone else nurse you back to health. What I should like to know,’ she said with reproof, ‘is what, exactly, you have done now, to drive her away? Surely you know that you’ll never find anyone who loves you as much as she does?’
‘I thought you came here under a flag of truce. I thought we were not going to argue about our private affairs.’
‘It is not a private affair, what you have with Mary. You should marry her.’
‘As you plan to marry Bartlett?’ His lip curled scornfully. ‘The man is a rake. A scoundrel. You know I didn’t want you to so much as speak to him, let alone marry him!’
‘I didn’t say I was going to marry him. But I’m most certainly not marrying anyone else. Not after what—’ she lifted her chin, and though her cheeks felt hot, she made sure to look her brother straight in the eye ‘—not after what we have been to each other.’
‘You don’t know what you are saying,’ he spluttered. ‘You cannot ruin your whole life because of one stupid, mad interlude.’
She glared at him. ‘Tom has not ruined my life. I will always be grateful to him for what he’s shown me this week.’
When Justin looked as though he was about to explode, she laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘And I don’t mean that. Please, try to understand. I told you that I only ever lived through Gideon, before. And, well, it is as if, since he has died, I have started living my own life, at last. This week, for the first time, I have started to ask what I want from life. I’ve learned more about myself, of what I’m capable of, of what I truly think, than I
have in the whole of the preceding twenty-two years, when I was content to just sit at home, like Rapunzel in her tower, watching life through her window.’
‘Don’t try making Bartlett out to be some prince, climbing up to your turret and setting you free. This is no fairy tale, Sarah.’
‘No. It is my life. And I know full well that Tom is just a man. You aren’t really listening, are you? You are fixated on Tom.’
‘Fixated on Bartlett?’ He gave her an indignant look. ‘Nothing of the kind.’
‘Good. Then you do accept that it was Gideon dying that shocked me out of my stupor.’
‘I know it was certainly a shock to you, yes,’ he conceded. ‘But—’
‘But nursing Tom,’ she interrupted, ‘living with him, a life so very different from anything I’ve ever experienced before, has opened my eyes. I know what I want now.’
‘I dare say he can make any woman want that.’
‘I dare say he can,’ she replied loftily. ‘But that isn’t what I meant. When he asked me to marry him—’
‘Do you honestly expect me to give him my permission? And don’t forget I have control of your inheritance. Let’s see how much he wants to marry you without it.’
‘You would cut me off without a penny if I married Tom without your permission? Ooh, you...you...’ If he wasn’t so ill she would have shaken him. ‘You think I’m hen-witted enough to accept a proposal from a rake?’ She got to her feet. ‘And so unattractive that he wouldn’t want me without my fortune?’
‘Wait. You haven’t accepted his proposal?’
‘You can keep my money, Justin,’ she cried, ignoring the relief washing the tension from his face when she’d said she’d turned Tom’s proposal down. ‘I don’t need or want it. I can earn my keep.’ She could. Surely she could. Somehow. After all, Mary did. And it would mean she wouldn’t be dependent on any man, any more, not even to manage her fortune. She really would be able to take control of her life.
‘I could become a teacher.’
‘Have some sense, Sarah,’ he said, with that all-too-familiar tone of exasperation. ‘No school would hire a woman who’s been ruined and put her in charge of impressionable girls.’
She flinched. She wasn’t used to being spoken to like that any longer. Tom never treated her as though she was an idiot. If she’d told him she would be a teacher, he would probably...
‘Now sit down,’ said Justin sternly. ‘And calm down. We don’t need to fall out, not if you aren’t going to marry Major Bartlett.’
‘I don’t see why you are so against him,’ she said huffily, though she did sit down again. Justin had gone alarmingly pale when she’d started talking about marrying Tom and she really didn’t want him to suffer another relapse on her account.
‘He isn’t a bit like Papa, you know. He would never treat me the way Papa treated Mama. Because Papa never pretended to love Mama, not even at the start, did he? It was one of those dynastic unions, arranged by our grandparents, wasn’t it? And Tom does love me.’
‘Not the way a gentleman should love his wife. Or he wouldn’t have ruined you. The man’s a rake and a scoundrel.’
‘I cannot see that Tom’s behaviour has been any worse than yours,’ she retorted. ‘Or Gideon’s. There is a vast difference between a single man enjoying his freedoms, and a married one breaking his vows, is there not?’