‘Come to Little Westbury, go home to Maidenstone. I won’t pretend it will be easy, but you should try. For your son’s sake. He should be raised among friends and we’ll all be there, waiting for you,’ Preston urged one last time. It was the third time he’d asked since this conversation had begun. Intuitively, she knew he would not ask again.
‘I choose to stay,’ Beatrice said firmly. Here, she was safe, not just from Alton, but from all danger, all men.
Preston bowed his head in a curt nod. ‘Then you leave me no choice.’ It was an ultimatum.
‘That makes us even. You’ve left me with none either.’ It was bravado at best. If she ran, where would she run to? To whom?
‘I will come in the morning with the carriage in the hopes you will have reconsidered the nature of your exit.’ The words left her cold. The idea that she had no choices left wasn’t not the same as his. He was merely forced now to take action. But she was forced to the opposite—to take no action, to acquiesce. To surrender. For now. Perhaps it was not so much a surrender as a retreat. She was Beatrice Penrose. She would survive this.
Copyright © 2017 by Nikki Poppen
ISBN-13: 9781488021428
The Debutante’s Daring Proposal
Copyright © 2017 by Annie Burrows
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