Miss Pendleton (Update to C.222 END) - Chapter 61

Grosvenor Square in the middle of the night, just like now. Her figure, holding a large suitcase, wrapped in a completely different green silk shawl than now, shivering and looking around. She stood in the deserted park, waiting for the chartered carriage to pick her up, longing for her one and only lover who would be inside.

But the image of the girl filled with expectations of love gradually changed as one hour passed, and then two. From anxiety to fear, from fear to despair.

And finally, as dawn was breaking, all expression soon disappeared from her face. And by the time grocery carts and luxury carriages carrying ladies to early morning prayers at church were running through the streets, she had lost all hope.

Whenever she dreamed of that time, her whole body would always be drenched in sweat. She curled up her sweat-soaked body and shuddered. The foolish plan to elope that she had attempted at seventeen ultimately ended in complete betrayal by the other party.

How naive she had been back then. A young man who appeared in high society. Handsome and intelligent, but penniless without a patron. The only man who understood her when she first entered society, lonely and frightened.

She thought that man would save her. That he would take her away from the society that ostracized her and treated her like air.

But in the end, he didn’t show up with the carriage. By marrying a wealthy woman two months after betraying her, he made her look like a fool among the society people who already knew they were lovers.

‘Did the woman… commit suicide?’

She remembered what Miss Lance had said when she told her own story disguised as that of another lady. Suicide. Perhaps it would have been better if she had.

At that time, she was completely cornered. Everywhere in high society, people whispered about her story, and mockery and ridicule were regular desserts at tea time.

But she couldn’t commit suicide. She couldn’t bring despair to her grandmother who had abandoned her only child for her sake, nor did she want to leave this world with the story that Dolores Pendleton’s daughter died miserably like her mother. It was too shameful.

But above all, she wanted to live. She wanted to live properly once again. As Laura Sheldon, who was free before being entrusted to the Pendleton family.

She gritted her teeth and endured in high society with a label attached. She smiled kindly in front of those who mocked her, and behaved politely especially to those who spoke ill of her.

Her grandmother’s joy and friends’ kind companion, advisor to unmarried ladies. She endured, gritting her teeth to survive. To not hear that she followed in her mother’s footsteps until the day she left the Pendleton family, to repay all the kindness to her grandmother before leaving.

And finally, at twenty-nine, she was free from Pendleton.

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