The next three weeks were the longest of Eleanor's life.
Her father barely spoke to her. The servants whispered. Her few acquaintances stopped calling—word had spread, as it always did in London society, that Eleanor Hawthorne had formed an unsuitable attachment and was in disgrace.
Only her lady's maid, Betty, remained loyal. "It's not right, miss," she said one evening as she brushed Eleanor's hair. "The way they treat you, and him. My own mother was in service before she married. If she'd been unlucky like Mr. Moore's mother…" She trailed off, but Eleanor understood.
Julian sent letters, which Betty smuggled to her. He begged her to be sensible, to accept her father's terms, to forget him.
"I cannot be the reason you lose everything," he wrote. "Your family, your home, your future—it's too much. I'm not worth such a sacrifice."
She wrote back furiously:
"Don't you dare decide my worth or what I can bear to lose. I'm not a child or a fool. I know what I'm choosing. But you don't get to make that choice for me. If you truly care for me, then respect me enough to let me choose my own path—even if that path leads away from comfort and toward uncertainty."
She met with him one last time before the month's end, in the same spot where they'd first truly spoken, among the books in the public library.
"Are you certain?" he asked, his grey eyes searching hers. "Eleanor, I have so little to offer you. A tiny flat, uncertain income, a name that's worth less than nothing in society's eyes."
"You offer me something more valuable than any of that," she said softly. "You offer me honesty. Partnership. A life where I can be myself rather than a decoration in someone else's house."
"You'll be ostracized. Cut off from everything you've known."
"I've been isolated my entire life, Julian. At least now I'll be isolated with someone who sees me."
He pulled her close then, uncaring of who might see, and buried his face in her hair. "I don't deserve you."
"Good thing it's not about deserving. It's about choosing."
10
The day Eleanor left her father's house for the final time, it was raining.
She took very little—some clothes, her mother's jewelry (which was hers by right), her books. Betty helped her pack, crying openly.
"You're sure, miss?" the maid asked one last time.
"I'm sure."
Her father didn't come to say goodbye. But as the cab pulled away from the house on Baker Street, Eleanor saw him at his study window, watching. For a moment, she thought she saw regret in his posture, but the cab turned the corner and he was gone.
Julian was waiting for her at the bookshop. The proprietor, Mr. Blackwood, had agreed to let Eleanor rent a small room on the top floor until she and Julian could marry—quietly, in a registry office, with no one present but Mr. Blackwood and Betty as witnesses.
The scandal was immediate and complete. The papers that had once listed Eleanor at fashionable parties now mentioned her only in cautionary terms: "the Hawthorne girl who threw away her future for an unsuitable attachment."
Margaret, her married friend, sent one letter:
"I don't know whether to admire your courage or pity your foolishness. But I think… I think I envy you. Even if you end up poor and struggling, at least you'll have chosen it. I chose safety, and I'm miserable. Perhaps you're braver than all of us."
The first year was harder than Eleanor had imagined. She gave piano lessons to children in the neighborhood, charging a pittance. Julian wrote articles under various names, his income unpredictable. There were days when they had only bread and tea for supper, when the fire went unlit to save coal.
But there were also moments of unexpected joy. Sunday afternoons spent reading to each other in bed. Walking through the city markets, marveling at things they couldn't afford to buy but could enjoy looking at. Long conversations that stretched into dawn, about everything and nothing.
Julian published a novel under a pseudonym—a story about a woman who defied society to claim her own life. It was well-reviewed, though no one knew he'd written it. With the modest payment, they moved to a slightly larger flat with space for a small desk for Eleanor, where she began writing essays about women's education for progressive journals.
Slowly, grudgingly, Julian's reputation began to shift. A few editors who cared more about quality than scandal began accepting his work under his own name. He started teaching again—not at a prestigious school, but at a ragged school for poor children in the East End, where his own past made him particularly suited to understand his students.
Two years after leaving her father's house, Eleanor received an unexpected letter. It was from Sir Charles.
"Eleanor,
I cannot say I approve of your choices. But Mrs. Crawford recently told me something about Mr. Moore that I had not known—that the charges against him were fabricated by a woman whose advances he rejected. She heard it from the woman's sister, who was ashamed of the lie. I made inquiries and found this to be true.
I was wrong about him. I may still be wrong about the wisdom of your choice, but I was wrong about his character.
If you would allow it, I would like to see you. Not to demand you return or to apologize exactly, but simply to see that you are well.
I remain, inadequately,
Your Father"
Eleanor showed the letter to Julian. "What do you think?"
He read it carefully, then looked at her. "I think he's trying, in his way. The question is, do you want to see him?"
She thought about it for a long moment. The anger had faded over the years, replaced by something more complex—pity for her father's rigidity, gratitude for the freedom she'd claimed, even a strange fondness for the life that rejection had given her.
"Yes," she said finally. "But on our terms. In our home, such as it is. If he wants to see me, he can see all of me—not just the daughter he tried to mold, but the woman I've become."
The visit, when it happened, was awkward. Sir Charles sat stiffly in their modest parlor, clearly uncomfortable. But he stayed for tea. He listened as Eleanor talked about her teaching and writing. He was painfully formal with Julian but not unkind.
As he was leaving, he paused at the door. "You look well, Eleanor. Happier than I remember."
"I am, Father."
He nodded slowly. "Then perhaps I was wrong about more than just Mr. Moore's character."
It wasn't a full reconciliation. But it was a beginning