Page 69 of Mending the Baron's Sins
“Horace?” she whispered. At her voice, he looked up, meeting her gaze again.
“I have made a decision. There are multiple reasons for it.” He nodded slowly. “But I believe it to be for the best reasons that I make this decision. Orla, I think it is time that I leave Ingleby Hall.”
Orla felt as if she had been knocked through the chest with some blade. She stepped back from him, a distance growing between them.
Chapter 20
Horace could read the shock on Orla’s face. Her eyes had widened, and she said nothing, just stumbling back away from him.
“Orla, wait.” He reached out for her, capturing her hand and pulling her forward once again. “There are things you need to know, reasons why I have made this decision.”
“Reasons?” she whispered.
“First, is my sister.” He sighed heavily. “Her marriage has not gone well. She is in an argument with her husband. The two have discussed separation, but now there is a child on the way, and things may grow worse for her. She is so lonely. She needs a friend with her. No matter my reluctance to leave my home, I know I must help her. She is my sister.”
Orla nodded at once.
“I understand.” Yet she didn’t look him in the eye. She looked down instead at the grasp they had on one another’s hands.
“There’s also the matter of the business affairs,” Horace whispered.
“What of them?” This caught her attention, and she looked up, meeting his gaze.
“Maybe I can’t change the business with Walter blocking me at every turn, but I am not content to sit by and leave things as they are.” He glanced a scathing look at the paperwork. “If I can’t change it from within the business, then I’ll step away and change things elsewhere.”
“You’re going to sell your part of the business?” She gasped at the possibility. “But why? It makes you money.”
“What of that?” He shrugged. “I hardly care about that. Not now. I’m planning on selling my shares, and with that money, maybe down south I could set up a new business. This time, I can put in safeguards and regimes from the beginning that will protect any worker of mine. It will be a rival company to compete with Walter, but all for the sake of the workers. To do that, I have to go south.”
Orla looked like she was reeling. Her hand in his grasp grew soft, and she clearly had the intention of pulling away, but he couldn’t let her go yet.
“I… I will be sorrier than I can say to see you go,” she whispered.
Now he understood her pain. He felt it in his heart too, that persistent ache.
“Orla.” He stood off the desk, moving nearer to her. “I would like you to come with me.”
Her eyes widened.
“I don’t want to abandon you.” He shook his head. “I find it hard to imagine my life without you in it now. I have made such plans, and I want you in them. You were right in what you said before, when you said a man’s salvation can only come from within himself.
I’ve been thinking hard, and I know now the way for me to get that is to start again, far away from Gladstone and Coates, and begin a new company. This time, I will do it right.” He took one of her hands between both of his. “I would like you by my side as I do this.”
“As your healer?” she whispered. Her fingers curled through his own. She was holding onto him again now, though she hardly looked overawed by the idea. “Or would you want me to be something more?” Her voice had become frail. “Would you want me as your mistress there, Horace?” She did not speak with any relish at the idea.
Horace hesitated. He had not gone that far with his thoughts. All he had dreamt about was getting him and Orla as far away from here as possible to start life afresh.
“I will admit, I didn’t think this far,” he whispered. “I would never ask you to be something you didn’t want to be.”
She smiled rather sadly, but it faded fast.
“Whatever you wanted, I would support you in it,” he spoke hurriedly, remembering what he had heard from Colm about her wishes, and what Orla had said to of her dreams. “Did you not wish to train as a midwife? I could sponsor you for it, secure you a position as an apprentice to a midwife in London. If you no longer wished to be by my side, I quite understand it. Lord knows it would be incredibly selfish of me to ask you to remain my healer forever.”
“I…” She struggled for a minute, but still didn’t pull her hand out of his own. It gave him hope that perhaps there was a way forward for the two of them. “I have just refused one man I did not want to be beholden to. I do not want to be beholden to another.”
“It wouldn’t be about that.”
“What about my family? Leaving them behind.” She bit her lip in deep thought.
