Chapter Thirty-Six May #2
She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. May knew it was a terrible mistake, knew that it was too soon after his brother’s death to be talking of romance. But now that she’d admitted the truth, she found that she couldn’t stop.
She had been silent for too long, burying her feelings for George down deep. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear the thought of him not knowing the truth.
“I love you,” she said again. “I have loved you for so long, George. Since the open-air market at Osborne, when you gave me the mayflower. No, since last summer, when we were together at Balmoral—or even since we were children! I can’t pinpoint an exact moment,” she added helplessly.
“All I know is that I love you. I love your smile, and your generous heart, and your stubborn pride. It’s a bit like mine, you know.
I love that you make me want to be a better person. You make me want to deserve you.”
They had reached a walled garden with an obelisk at its center, a grand marble thing with gilded numbers on its face. The flowerbeds, bordered in low limestone bricks, were iced over with frost.
May held her breath and waited.
“I won’t lie; for so long I hoped to hear you say those words,” George told her at last. “Now I don’t know whether to believe them.”
“Of course you can believe them! Like I said, Eddy and I should never have gotten engaged. I only wanted to because I thought you and I—I thought Missy…”
“Is it true, what you did?” George asked quietly.
“Missy’s marriage is not my fault!” May protested. “All I did was tell Aunt Vicky that Prince Ferdinand had flirted with her! I can’t be blamed for recounting a simple story!”
George went very still, and May instantly realized her mistake. She should not have confessed. Not without knowing what she’d been accused of.
She placed a gloved hand on his arm, tentative. “Please, just let me explain.”
George stepped back, shoving off her touch. “Explain what? That you manipulated and threatened your way into getting engaged to Eddy? I didn’t even know about Missy,” he said bitterly. “But it’s good to know how much cruelty you’re capable of.”
It felt like a vise was closing over May’s chest. “I made a few mistakes—”
“Mistakes? Is that what you would call it, spreading rumors about Alix? I’d call it slander.”
“I may have told a few people about the fainting spell I witnessed, yes. I was worried about Alix!” Worried she might marry Eddy, in truth, but George didn’t need to know everything. “There’s no crime in recounting a true fact.”
“What about Hélène? Did you blackmail her?” George demanded.
May longed to deny it, to dismiss the whole thing as a misunderstanding, but Eddy had clearly spoken to George before he died. She knew George might forgive her mistakes, but he would never forgive her for lying to his face.
“I didn’t write the letter, but I did know about it. A friend impersonated me. I only found out after the letter had already been sent.”
“If that’s true, why didn’t you tell Hélène to ignore it?” George pressed. “You were perfectly happy to let her leave the country, so that you could swoop in and convince Eddy that he wanted a marriage of convenience!”
Yes, he’d definitely spoken to his brother.
“And now Eddy is dead, and you’re claiming that you loved me the whole time? Are you going to make me the same offer you made my brother? Tell me that I can sleep with anyone I want and you’ll never hold it against me?”
May stood up a little straighter, hands clenched. “I shouldn’t think I need to. You are not like him.”
“No, I’m not,” George agreed, in a caustic tone. “I’m just the younger brother, the one you flirted with as a precautionary measure—a backup plan—in case things with Eddy didn’t work out.”
“You know that’s not true!”
“I don’t know anything about you anymore, May! I thought you were different. And I did love you.”
The past tense of that statement seemed to echo viciously around the garden.
“When Eddy got engaged to you…that’s the only time in my life I remember truly hating him.
” All the fight seemed to have drained from George’s voice.
“Eddy always got everything he wanted, and I had never minded before, but then he had you. And he didn’t even appreciate you!
He saw you as a placeholder, a person to wear the crown while he did as he pleased.
Eddy had no idea what a gem you are—at least, that’s what I thought at the time,” George went on gruffly. “Now I’m not sure.”
May dared to step forward, taking his hands. To her surprise, he let her.
“You can be sure of this, George. I love you. I did some things that I am not proud of, but we are here now. You and I can have a second chance. I’m sorry about Eddy,” she added hastily, not wanting to sound insensitive.
“I hate that this is how we got here. But don’t you think we could start over? We still have each other.”
Gently, George pulled his hands from hers.
“No, May,” he said with heartbreaking finality. “I will continue to be cordial to you in public, which you deserve, as my late brother’s fiancée. But do not speak another word in this vein. I refuse to hear it.”
He was angry with her for hurting Hélène, and Missy, and Alix. Or perhaps he still didn’t trust that she loved him for himself, rather than his title. Either way, he was telling her no.
May wished she hadn’t waited so long to tell George how she felt. She could have professed her love for him a thousand times over, but she had always held back, out of…what? A fear of being rejected, as she was now?
“I am sorry,” she said again.
George nodded once, curtly, then turned on his heel and walked off.
May stayed in the garden until her hands grew numb from the cold, even in her leather gloves.
For so long she had been proud of herself—of her cleverness, her foresight.
Now she just felt a hollow sense of regret.
She had made so many mistakes, mistakes that were still playing out their consequences.
When she finally started back toward Windsor, May noticed icicles hanging from the branches of a nearby tree. They looked like frozen tears.