The Promise by Lesley Pearse Read Free Book Online Page B

past few years, but the gentlemen they think are suitable are always so dull and earnest.’
    ‘And I imagine you weren’t supposed to go out walking on your own either?’ Belle suggested.
    Miranda half smiled. ‘No, Mama would’ve been furious if she knew. I couldn’t ask Frank to call on me either as we hadn’t been introduced by friends or family. So right from the start we had to meet in secret.’
    Belle guessed that Frank was a complete cad. He’d taken advantage of Miranda knowing full well that as she couldn’t invite him to meet her parents, he could make up any cock-and-bull story about himself without fear of being exposed.
    ‘What did he tell you about himself?’ she asked.
    ‘Not a great deal. What was there to tell? A gentleman with private means.’ She shrugged. ‘He dressed well, and he said he lived in Westminster.’
    ‘Where did you go with him?’ Belle asked.
    ‘We went for walks mostly, usually down to Greenwich because I didn’t dare let anyone in Blackheath see me with him. Sometimes we took a boat up river and we’d have lunch out. I could only see him about once a week or my absence would’ve been noticed.’
    ‘I meant where did he take you to seduce you?’ Belle asked.
    Miranda blushed. ‘To a room in Greenwich.’
    Belle shook her head. ‘Didn’t that strike you as odd when he’d told you he lived in Westminster?’
    ‘He said his servants might talk,’ she said. ‘I was so in love with him by then I would’ve gone anywhere with him.’
    ‘And when did he tell you he was married?’
    ‘When I told him I thought I might be having a baby.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘I really believed he’d tell me not to worry and we’d get married straight away. But he wouldn’t even look at me. We were in a tea shop, and he just looked out of the window and said, “Then you’ve got a problem,” not even “we’ve”. I started crying and I could see that irritated him. We left the tea shop and then he said I knew all along he was married.’
    ‘How crafty to make out it was your fault!’ Belle exclaimed. ‘What a cad!’
    Miranda sighed, and screwed up her face as she got another stronger pain. ‘We always made arrangements for our next meeting. When he said he’d meet me at the usual time in the rose garden in Greenwich Park the following week I felt hopeful that would give him time to think it through and he’d find a solution. He kissed me goodbye down by the Naval College in Greenwich just as tenderly as he always had. But that was the last time I saw him.’
    ‘And I suppose you had no way of contacting him?’
    Miranda shook her head. ‘I had no address, nothing but little stories about people that I suspect now probably weren’t even true. I went into the tea shop we often went to in Greenwich and asked the girl behind the counter if she’d seen him, but she said, “He only ever came in here with you.” What else was there to do? I’d already been round to the house where he took me a few times, he’d said a friend of his owned it. But I’m afraid when I spoke to someone there it became clear to me it was a place where rooms were rented out by the hour.’
    Belle took Miranda’s hand and squeezed it. She could guess that finding out she’d been used as a whore, without even being paid, was the worst humiliation.
    ‘When tonight is over you must put all this behind you,’ she said gently. ‘Most of us have something in our past we are ashamed of. But all you are guilty of is being a little gullible. He is the bad person for pretending he loved you.’
    ‘That’s the part that hurts most,’ Miranda said. ‘I really loved him, I risked everything to be with him. Why would anyone do that to another person?’
    ‘I think some people are born wicked,’ Belle said. ‘I’d say he was a practised philanderer, but at least he didn’t try to get money out of you.’
    Miranda looked shamefaced. ‘I did give him fifty pounds,’ she admitted.