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.Something she could argue.She needed something to fight, because she couldn’t push away the darkness that filled her.Jessica took a deep breath and came to a realization.She couldn’t win against Weston, but she could thwart him.If Mark walked away from her, if she simply left… Weston could threaten him with nothing but innuendo, and that society might simply chalk up to jealousy.“No, Mark.Nobody pushed me.I fell.”“A man seduced you.And your father, your own father, told everyone you were dead—”“I could have said no.” Jessica spoke softly.“He didn’t force me.”“You were fourteen—”“I was fourteen, not a baby.You believe that you were capable of reason at ten, and able to discern right from wrong.I knew what he was doing, and I let him do it.” She looked at him and willed him to believe her.If he walked away, she could run.She could vanish before Weston appeared, and Mark’s reputation would stay intact.He’d survive, and his family would see him through.“But—”She put her hands on her hips.“I don’t exonerate him entirely, but I chose to fall.I chose to leave with him and go to London.It may have been stupid and it may have been wrong, but you belittle me when you relieve me of the responsibility of making it.You would make everything I’ve done a collection of events that has happened to me.”He was growing more and more confused.“Jessica.I don’t mean that you’re incapable of choice, just that—”“What am I supposed to think, when you imagine me pure as the driven snow? I am not a child.If you strip me of the responsibility for my decisions, you strip me of the capacity to make them, as well.I am not a kitten, to be rescued from the jaws of a wolf.I’m a grown woman.And it is not your place to solve my problems without asking me for my opinion.”She didn’t have to pretend her anger.She wasangry that this wasn’t for her, that once again, happiness had eluded her.He shook his head in frustration.“Jessica.I want to help you.”He did.If she showed him Weston’s letter, he’d undoubtedly spring into action.Just as undoubtedly, Weston would find a way to tell the truth.“You can’t help who I am,” she said.“All you can do is make me believe you for a few days—believe that I can be what you want me to be, believe that someone might think of me as something other than a whore.And what will happen when all that is revealed as the illusion it is? I’ll be small and powerless again.Only this time, you’ll realize it, too, and want to be rid of me.”“Stop.” He took her shoulders.“Just stop with this.If I could rid myself of you, I’d have done it weeks ago.I have waited all this time to find someone I want to share my life.I’ve found her.Listen to me.Stop panicking.I love you.”But that just made her want to recoil all the more, to fight harder.If she let herself believe in him, all this goodness would be stripped from her.She could survive her own disappointment.She couldn’t survive his.“You want to love the facsimile of a perfect woman, wronged by society.You don’t love me.I made mistakes.I made choices.I made myself who I was—not anyone else.And when I’d been brought to this point, I was the one who survived them.You admit your own sins, but you won’t give me the burden of mine.”“Jessica.” Mark took a step toward her.“I made a living manipulating men into paying me a great deal of money in exchange for something they could get for a few shillings along the docks.If you can’t see that in me, you are not looking very hard.You’re in love with an illusion.”“You had to survive.I don’t blame you for it.”“Why ever not?” she whispered.“I still blame myself.”When she’d first tried to seduce him on that long-ago night, he’d grinned at her and told her that he rather liked himself.And that, more than Weston, more than her reputation and all her fears for the future, seemed a suddenly unbridgeable gulf.She loved him.But she would never like herself.She couldn’t stand to stay long enough to see his fine regard gray and wither.She couldn’t risk breaking something so valuable.“I like you,” he said.“I treasure you.I want you to let me protect you.”“I don’t want a protector!” The words burst out of her, uncaged at last.“And I don’t care whether you call yourself a husband or a lover or just the man who offers me money for my favors.I know what it feels like to have all choice stripped from me.To really not have any power over the future.To have someone protect me.I’ve felt that before.”“You know what I mean,” he said.“I’m not going to apologize for wanting good things for you, for caring about your happiness.What on earth has got you so worked up? Why are you ripping up at me?”“Because right now, you put me in mind of George Weston!” she shouted.It was the worst thing she could have said.She could see it in the sudden lurch of his shoulders, the furious set of his mouth as he turned to her.This, then, was what she had to look forward to for years to come—anger, not affection
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