Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03] by Duke Most Wanted

polite to say so, but only bowed and made the proper apologies for keeping her. She nodded, trying to keep the frantic need to flee from her manner.
    “If you don’t mind showing yourself out—?” A swing of her arm toward the door and the porcelain vase—which had never been in any danger in all the hours they’d spent together in this room—sailed several feet to shatter against the wall.
    Sophie jerked away from the crash. No. Not now.
Please not now
.
    It was no use. In her hasty withdrawal, she sent the small side table toppling, the crystal inhabitants of its top smashing themselves on the floor as well.
    “Sophie—”
    She felt his hand warm on her arm, the concern in his voice—or the pity?
    Unbearable
.
    She jerked away from him, sending the embroidered footstool shooting across the room with a random spasm of her ankle, then tripping over the edge of the carpet to nearly plant her face in the wood of the parlor door.
    “So sorry, must be off—” She had to get out get out get out—
    Then she was on the stairs, skirts held high in one hand, feet mercifully sure on the narrow treads. Her chamber, as bare as a cell in a convent, was blessedly empty of breakables.
    Good-bye, Graham
.
    She wished she was the sort of female who could throw herself across the bed and weep copiously. Alas, she could only sit, cold hands twisting in her lap, as she faced the end of a dream she hadn’t even realized she had.
    She’d thought herself adjusted to the idea that he would never be more than a lovely fancy and she’d determined to enjoy it for as long as she could, then walk away with no regrets. She’d thought herself realistic, yet though she’d known he would never want her, she hadn’t a clue how devastated she would be when he chose someone else.
    Good-bye forever
.
    He would find someone soon, for what more did any rich family want but to use their money to purchase a title?
    Just like Sir Hamish Pickering.
    Sophie paused as it dawned on her.
No
. She couldn’t do it. There was no possibility that she could convince Graham to marry her without breaking the conditions of the will by telling him—which would cost Deirdre her chance as well.
    No, the money was Deirdre’s, not hers. It was as good as decided, for Deirdre’s husband would be duke soon enough, and Deirdre had won him without cheating in the slightest. For Sophie to now steal it away with tricks would be too unfair.
    The quiet of the room pressed down on her. Silence. Isolation. She ought to be accustomed to it by now.
    She’d best become so, for she wouldn’t have much of a future if the world found out how she’d taken the money sent by Tessa to come to London without telling a soul, unaccompanied and unallowed. Unwanted.
    The future of a woman alone in England was an uncertain and dangerous one. Sophie had seen how the orphanage near Acton had turned its grown girls out with nothing but a dress, a meal tied in a handkerchief and barely enough reading ability to follow signs on the road.
    Some found work in the fields or even in Acton’s kitchens, and some disappeared entirely. Some traveled to find work in the factories—hard, filthy work that left young women old before their time. Some reemerged later as victims of violence and murder andsome became pale faces in the windows of bordellos in the city.
    She had a few more advantages than that. She had a lady’s education and a lady’s standing. That standing actually worked against her, however, for a relative of the Duke of Brookmoor would hardly make an acceptable governess. She might secure a place as a lady’s companion, but that too closely resembled what she’d run away from in Acton.
    She could sponge off Deirdre or Phoebe, be their household fixture as she aged and stultified. She could just see herself now, her spectacles thick from too much reading, her curling hair gone grizzled, her mind frayed from a lifetime of not mattering to anyone, lurking in unused portions of the