Page 59 of Baron in Check
“Contingent, really,” List corrected himself. He smiled widely, baring bits of gold in his teeth. He probably ate a pirate and still had some of the loot stuck between his molars, for Hermy couldn’t imagine he’d be a patient of any dentist in London.
“Upon?” Greg took a wide stance, arms crossed.
“Since I married, the bishop and I have become better acquainted. The special license will be delayed until after the abeyance expires.”
Hermy felt her heart thrumming in her head and her vision blurred with fear. If she didn’t marry Greg in time, the earldom would pass to the Crown.
“And one more thing, Lady Ellsworth,” List spoke as if he enjoyed the process of stepping on the tail of a mouse andshimmying his foot to extend the pain. “My wife has sent notice to the Evening Post and the Times. You better make this wedding spectacular, whether it’s with Stone or Chanteroy.”
CHAPTER 27
Hermy froze when List uttered his threat and as soon as the butler shut the door after him, she ran to the top of the stairs to her chambers. Greg stared after her. How could he have been so naive as to think that List would let him win this round.
Greg wanted to see her to discuss what she’d witnessed. When he came to her door, he knocked, but there was no answer.
He knocked again.
Silence.
“Hermy?” He turned the knob and went in.
Under the shifting shadows on the balcony, Greg found Hermy, her eyes as deep and mysterious as the night. The rustle of her gown and the soft whisper of the leaves from the garden in the background were the only sounds in the tense air between them. He took a deep breath, gathering the shards of his courage before they could scatter in the wind.
Although her back was toward him, he saw her wipe tears from her face.
“I’m imprisoning you, Greg. And the Ton will be after me when they see the engagement announcement in the papers.” A delicate but sorrowful heave escaped her, and Greg’s chest hurtwith pain his heart couldn’t contain. “I am your doom. Scandal is attached to my name, and I can never shake it off. You love the Jews, they are more than your friends, Greg. They are where you belong.”
“So what? They’re happy to be your friends. And I don’t care about the scandal, nor the Earldom attached to you. I only ever cared about you, Hermy.”
“But I’d seal your fate with Christian children if you marry me, I’d make it impossible for you to return to their ranks.” If a Jewish man married a Christian woman, their children would be Christian.
“Hermy.” He kept his voice steady as he placed a hand on her shoulder. Her skin was cool, but the heat of her emotion burned underneath. “My decision to marry you is not a crossroads; it’s a path I’m already on. I’m taking it because I have always wanted to.”
She faced him.
“This path, my life, and the direction I’ve been on are not of my choosing, I admit it. I always envied Fave and Arnold for their family, and I have envied them for their wives and babies. Don’t get me wrong, Hermy, I love their children as if they were my own and their wives have become my friends, but when I shut the door to their house, I’m alone. I’m always alone, except when I’m with you.”
“You’d be even more alone with me because I’d set you on a path without return. You’d be shunned for the Ton because you’d be marginalized.”
“My parents already did that, Hermy. They set me upon a path they knew nothing about, dictating the course of my life as if it were theirs to command. I’m not Jewish; I wasn’t even born Jewish, despite our bloodline.” He paused, his gaze fixed on her, searching for any sign of understanding. “They thought it would be easier to go through life as a Christian, to get a title, and towield political power in parliament. Yet, I don’t think my father ever asked a single nobleman about the burdens he suffered and whether he’d take this path if he had the choice. No, my parents pushed and prodded, sent me to get a gentleman’s education, and bestowed upon me what they thought was a dazzling future, and now I am the ungrateful and unsuccessful son bringing shame to their efforts and sacrifice because I’m cracking under the burden.”
She swallowed and lowered her gaze. “I’m adding to this burden and making you crack.”
“No.” Greg lifted her face by her chin, then gently stroked her cheek. “It’s selfish of me but I’m hoping you’d shoulder it with me.”
“I was raised for this life, Greg, it’s my duty.”
“You were, as was I. But our duty doesn’t lie in entertaining society and throwing balls, it lies in leadership of our country, loyalty to the citizens, responsibility to our ancestors.”
“You speak like a Baron with a long line of forefathers.”
“I’m not that person, but I hope to create a new line, a branch, so to speak. As a Christian nobleman, I can do something to honor the Jews in my line and what they stood for. That’s why I’m trying to get the bills to pass, to lift the Jewish Disabilities Act and allow them emancipation. Just look at Fave and Arnold, and at what freedom can accomplish for Jews; they are more valuable to society than some aristocrat swanning from ball to ball. Arnold forged a trade route, his wife lifted poor Londoners out of their misery by building a factory, and all the Crown Jewelers are setting Prince George up with riches that demand respect from the whole world. If these few Jewish men have made such contributions to England in the turn of a generation, imagine what the future could hold.”
“And yet, you cannot be free to live among them and fit in.”
“It’s a cruel jest, is it not?” Greg continued, a bitter laugh escaping him, though it held no humor. “To be pushed and prodded towards a future that feels more like a prison than the freedom it’s supposed to offer. My heart aches with the weight of their expectations, expectations that clash so violently with my own desires but I don’t despise the path because it brought me to you.”
He stepped closer, the distance between them now barely more than a whisker. “But what pains me most, Hermy, is the thought that in pursuing their dreams, I might lose the very essence of who I am. That in trying to please them, I might forsake the dreams I hold dear, the very dreams that make me, me.” His voice softened, a vulnerable note threading through the words. “And it’s mean, so terribly mean, that my parents did this without a thought to how it would wound me. As if my feelings, my hopes, my fears, mattered naught in the grand scheme of their ambitions.”
