Page 80 of Seducing the Knave

As she gazed expectantly out over the unfamiliar world of St. Giles, a bit of sunlight broke through the perpetual clouds to gild the scene in a golden hue. It seemed like a sign. A beckoning.

Perhaps she couldn’t have the future she’d always imagined as the daughter of a marquess, but that didn’t mean she had no future at all. It was time to reimagine her life and what it encompassed. Time to step beyond this bloody room and see what the world still held for her.

Anticipation had her rushing through her morning ablutions as she dressed in a simple day dress and twisted her hair into a loose chignon. Then she strode confidently to the door tucked beside the fireplace. Max had said she was free to come and go from the premises. Time to test that assurance.

The spiral staircase was darker than she remembered, but she found her way to the bottom, where she stepped into the entry hall to find Langworth standing at the front door.

“Good morning,” she greeted him cheerily, as though her sudden appearance there wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary. “I’d like to go for a stroll.”

The large, hulking butler stared at her with a slackened jaw before he forced himself to reply. “A stroll? In St. Giles?”

“Yes. I’ll need my cloak, please,” she replied, hoping the poise and purpose in her tone shone through her manner as well. She was aware that strolling through one of the roughest neighborhoods of London might not exactly be the thing to do, but she was desperate to get out, to feel some purpose in her steps if it was only to reach the end of the block.

“I...uh...aye, of course, m’lady. Just give me...uh, one minute to find someone to cover me post.”

As the butler started across the hall toward the back of the house, Elle noted quickly, “I don’t intend to go far, I promise, and I’ve no desire to get you into any trouble by taking you away from your duties, Langworth.”

“Ye’re me duty, m’lady,” the butler replied before disappearing down a narrow hallway.

Only a couple minutes later, he returned with her cloak over his arm and another largely muscled, though not quite as tall, man behind him.

Altogether, Elle’s excursion lasted less than forty minutes, but it was likely the most enlightening forty minutes of her life.

Of course, she’d always been aware of how privileged and exceptional her life had been as the daughter of a wealthy peer of the realm. But she’d never really considered very deeply exactly what that meant. In just a few short blocks, she witnessed how different life could be for people who didn’t have what she’d had. Though she suspected Langworth carefully guided her away from the worst areas of the neighborhood, she still saw more hardship and stoic suffering than she’d ever seen in her life. Her heart started to break for the barefoot and dirty children running about and the elderly wrapped in torn blankets as they huddled on stoops. And the men—young and old—who passed by with eyes shadowed by desperation.

It was not easy to see how little some people had when she’d gone so long with everything she’d ever wanted.

But then she recalled some of Max’s words from the other night when she’d drunk too much ale. He’d talked of looking beyond the suffering to the beauty inherent in humanity. As she forced a shift in her perspective, she started to notice things...

She saw the easygoing strides and proud shoulders of two young men who walked side by side as they pushed a cart loaded with barrels, one of them giving a belly-clutching laugh at something the other just said.

She heard the shrieks and calls of the children as they chased each other in a game, their eyes bright with joy.

And she watched a group of women sitting around a giant washtub. They kept up a stream of chatter as they plunged their hands into the water and collectively kept watch over the little one toddling in their midst, every now and then passing an infant from one pair of arms to another.

There was hardship, to be sure, along these dank and narrow streets.

But there was comradery and joy and community as well.

When Elle returned to the house and made her way back up to Max’s room, she felt changed somehow. And though she realized it was a silly thing to claim after one short walk, it was real all the same. She felt as if her eyes had been opened. The world was so much bigger and more complicated than she’d ever imagined. It was full of contradictions and fear and loneliness but also so much potential and comfort and hope.

There was so much she didn’t understand about things she’d never known existed. She wanted to know more. She wanted to see and hear and experience more. But she’d never have the chance if she didn’t forcefully expand her boundaries.

If her parents had never died, she very likely would have spent her entire life within a very limited scope of experiences and acquaintances. And she likely would have been perfectly content not knowing or even wondering what she might be missing.

But everything changed for her on the day of that tragic accident. It was a fact she’d stubbornly resisted for years as her grief encouraged her to hold on to the past for far too long. She supposed if she were feeling generous, she might be grateful to Jasper for breaking her free of that.

But no. She wasn’t magnanimous enough to thank that degenerate arsehole for anything. She much preferred to credit herself for the courage and cleverness to climb from her window, hike across the countryside, hire a shameless London brigand to escort her to town, where she now had the means and the freedom to explore life on her own damn terms.

And that’s exactly what she intended to do.

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