Page 111 of To Wed an Heiress
“What has happened to you, Mercy? You were never rude before.”
“Is it rude to speak the truth?”
“You need to be home,” he said.
Home, where she could be watched and guarded. Home, where her days were strictly regimented.
Her freedom was gone. Her future was laid out before her. The message was clear: she’d better come to like it because it wasn’t going to change.
Unless she changed it herself.
The decision had been long in coming, but it felt right. She’d return to New York with her father and live in the big gray house. Just long enough to set up her own establishment. She’d find a place to live, hire her own staff, and be the one to dictate her life. She didn’t care if she shocked all of New York society. Or if she was held up as an object lesson of how not to behave.
She opened the door, her back to her father.
“You’ll be ready?”
“Yes,” she said, wishing her voice didn’t sound as if it held unshed tears.
She turned to face him, a determined smile on her face. Her misery was her own and she wouldn’t share it with anyone.
He looked hard at her before finally turning to leave. At least he hadn’t asked her if she was well. She wasn’t. Her heart was breaking. She’d never truly understood what that expression meant until now.
After closing the door, she leaned against it, both palms flat against the wood. The door felt solid, but she didn’t. She felt as if she were in pieces, floating somewhere above her. She’d ceased to be herself the minute she’d left Duddingston.
She missed Lennox. She missed the person she’d become in the past weeks. She missed Ruthie.
The life she was heading back to was a mirage. This was her true life here.
The sad fact was that even if her father hadn’t come, she would have had to leave Scotland. No one wanted her here. Not the Macrorys. And not Lennox.
He may have been her first lover, but he wasn’t willing to be her husband.
She’d even thought about getting rid of all her money and coming to him penniless. Would that have made her more acceptable? How could her fortune make the difference? She was still the same person whether she was able to support herself or not.
One thing her parents had instilled in her was the idea that wealth didn’t build character. It didn’t make you a superior person. It didn’t create goodness where there was none. She was expected to support the arts, to be generous to charities, to see the need in other people and use her money for good.
She didn’t want to go home. Home. The gray mansion in New York with its six-foot stone wall didn’t feel like home now. It was a showplace, an example of the magnificence that wealth could create. Her four-room suite was luxurious, featuring a sitting room, a bedroom, and a bathing chamber with a massive bathtub carved from marble, hot and cold running water, and fixtures from England. She had a separate dressing room with three armoires filled with the most recent fashions from England or France. Every want was satisfied almost before she voiced it.
For a prison it was magnificent.
However, her father was right. Most people would want the life she had. How strange that she didn’t.
She wanted to climb Ben Uaine and explore the woods around Duddingston Castle. She wanted to learn about each of the artifacts in the Clan Hall and go to the dungeon Lennox said was beneath part of the courtyard. She wanted to see the Merry Dancers, the northern lights in the winter sky.
Foolish wishes. Wanting to remain in Scotland was foolish, too. Yet despite everything she couldn’t regret coming to Scotland. Nor could she ever be sorry about meeting Lennox or loving him.
When someone knocked on the door, Mercy opened it. Lily entered the room bearing a tray and put it on the table beside the chair.
“Mrs. West thought you might be hungry, Miss Mercy.”
“Thank you and tell Mrs. West I appreciate her thinking about me.”
The housekeeper had always been kind to her.
“McNaughton said Ruthie wasn’t with you.”
She was surprised McNaughton had noticed. “No, she’s staying here.” Since the two women were friends, she told Lily that Ruthie and Connor were to be married.
