A Simple Deception

XVIII

"All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property." Gary L. Francione

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XVIII.

Susanna spent the days following feeling very sorry for herself indeed. She cried, whimpered and sobbed intermittently between feeling like an utter fool. She had never imagined that she would be the type of woman to be so easily tricked.

In fact, she had once prided herself on this very knowledge. She would not be one of those tragic debutantes ruined by the sweet whispers of a man with ill intentions.

And yet, she had fallen victim all the same. And how convincing he had been. Susanna couldn't fathom the lie. She couldn't understand how or why the man that she had known could do such a thing. But then Susanna had to remind herself that Alex was not the man she knew. She knew a façade, a character that he had wanted her to see, all the while plotting for how he was going to cheat her family out of inordinate sums of money.

Her family were delicate with her, which was at times maddening. Susanna did hear their whispers and curses for both Alex and Mr Bishop when they thought she could not hear them. She also heard her mother's constant fretting about her reputation.

Susanna, in her anger and sadness, did not care a bit for her reputation.

But seeing as no news had arrived from London detailing of Susanna's downfall, the family assumed that both Mr Bishop and Alex had heeded Adam's threat and had kept their mouths shut about the whole affair.

Over the next two weeks, Susanna's tears eventually stopped. Her sadness dissipated and her anger weakened as she began to think. She began to analyse and dissect every conversation, every moment that she had ever shared with Alex.

Their first meeting, when he had pulled her out of the crowd of onlookers at the faire. He had to have known who she was. But the rescue could not have been planned, could it? He hadn't known whether the horse would charge. But then Susanna began to second guess herself and wonder if that, too, was part of the act, though she couldn't understand how.

Susanna remembered Mr Bishop making a fuss about Alex's shoulder, as though he had injured it in the rescue. That was what had induced their intimacy with the family, and it had resulted in an invitation to the house.

But everything after that ... their walk through Mayfair at night, their conversations, their time spent together at Ashwood ... what he had told her about his childhood ...

Susanna's eyes watered as she thought back to the sight of the dark scars that marred Alex's back. Those were not faked. Those were very real indeed, as was the extraordinary agony behind them.

There had been truth in Alex, but how much? From the first time they had laid eyes on one another, to the moment Alex had declared his love down by the pond, how much of it was real? This question alone was enough to twist Susanna's stomach into giant knots. It was as though her heart was determined to make him good when her head knew that he was not.

Perrie's third birthday was to be celebrated quietly at home, with not all the fanfare as had been made the year before. Susanna knew that the party was kept small on her account.

On the morning of the twenty-ninth of September, Susanna made her way down to the kitchen to visit Mrs Hayes in the housekeeper's sitting room. She knocked twice before hearing Mrs Hayes' beckon. When she opened the door, Mrs Hayes was sitting behind her writing desk when she looked up at smiled at Susanna.

"Susanna, my dear," she welcomed, standing up to receive her.

"Happy birthday, Mrs Hayes," wished Susanna, presenting her dear nanny with a bouquet of seasonal blooms.