Chapter 19 The Reveal
The Reveal
“Again,” Hereford commanded the next day, pacing around her with growing frustration. She had not seen him following their lesson or at breakfast. Had he spent the night elsewhere? She was distracted by her husband’s whereabouts and why she couldn’t stop wondering.
“The lunge must be fluid. You’re hesitating before the forward movement.”
Sweat trickled down Amelia’s back as she resumed the en garde position for what felt like the hundredth time. Her flesh ached where it met the wooden leg, protesting the repeated movements.
“I said again,” he snapped when she didn’t immediately move. “How do you expect to defend yourself if you can’t manage a basic lunge?”
“I’m trying,” she gritted out, teeth clenched against both pain and anger.
“Try harder. Your enemies won’t wait for you to find your balance.”
She bit back a retort and attempted the lunge again. This time something shifted wrong in her prosthetic—the straps loosened by repeated movement, the wood worn smooth with sweat. Her forward momentum carried her past the point of recovery.
She hit the floor hard, but that wasn’t what made her blood run cold. The distinctive clatter of wood against wood echoed through the practice room, followed by a shocked silence.
Her prosthetic foot, still in its shoe and stocking, had skittered across the floor to rest at Hereford’s feet.
“Dear God,” he breathed, staring at it. Then his eyes snapped to her, taking in her incomplete form on the floor, understanding dawning in his expression.
Amelia pushed herself up, face burning, unable to meet his gaze. “Don’t…”
But he was already moving, bending to retrieve her prosthetic with careful hands. When she finally forced herself to look at him, she found no disgust in his face. No pity either. Just a kind of wondering comprehension.
“So this is why your balance is so unstable,” he said softly. He crossed back to her, kneeling beside her with her prosthetic cradled almost reverently in his hands. “May I help you reattach it?”
She stared at him, thrown by his matter-of-fact response. “I… no. Please turn around. I can manage.”
He nodded and turned his back, but his voice remained gentle. “The straps must have worked loose with the repeated movements. We’ll need to account for that in future lessons.” A pause. “How does it usually attach?”
Amelia’s fingers trembled as she worked with the familiar straps and buckles. “Leather straps around my knee. It’s… the wood can grow slick with sweat.”
“We could line the contact points with felt,” he said thoughtfully. “Absorb some of the moisture. And perhaps add a secondary strap above the knee for stability?”
She secured the last buckle, oddly touched by his practical response. “You’re not… disturbed?”
He turned back to face her, offering his hand to help her up.
“By what? Your determination to learn despite what must be considerable discomfort? Your ability to move so well that I didn’t even realize the extent of your injury?
” His lips quirked slightly. “Or the fact that you’ve been hiding a wooden leg in those trousers for two lessons without my noticing? ”
A startled laugh escaped her. “When you put it that way…”
“Tell me about the mechanics,” he said, still holding her hand. “How much flexibility does it allow? What movements are most difficult? We’ll adapt the techniques accordingly.”
She studied his face, looking for any sign of the revulsion she’d feared, but found only professional interest and something warmer, almost like admiration.
“Why aren’t you angry?” she asked suddenly. “That I kept this from you?”
His expression softened. “My lady, you owe me no explanations about your private matters.” He squeezed her hand once before releasing it. “Though as your fencing instructor, I do need to understand your physical capabilities. So, shall we discuss modifications to your equipment?”
Amelia felt something shift between them—some wall crumbling, some trust beginning to build. She nodded slowly. “The ankle is fixed, obviously. And the knee joint…” She gestured to her leg. “Would you like to see how it works?”
“Please.” He pulled a bench closer. “Show me everything. We’ll design our lessons around your strengths rather than fighting against the prosthetic’s limitations.”
As she demonstrated the prosthetic’s mechanisms, she kept waiting for his professional demeanor to crack, for disgust or pity to show through. But he remained engaged and analytical, asking intelligent questions about pressure points and weight distribution.
“Right then,” he said finally, standing. “Shall we try that lunge again? This time with proper adjustments for your equipment?”
She looked up at him, this man who had somehow transformed from a rakish aristocrat into someone else entirely—someone who saw her limitations not as weaknesses to be pitied but as challenges to be solved.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Though perhaps with an extra strap this time?”
His answering smile was warm enough to make her forget, just for a moment, that she was supposed to dislike him.
She was beginning to suspect that nothing about Charles Bartholomew Hereford was quite what it seemed.
*
Hereford sat in his study, a glass of brandy untouched before him, turning Amelia’s wooden prosthetic over and over in his mind.
The moment of its discovery kept replaying.
The hollow sound it made hitting the floor, the look of mortification on her face, the way she’d waited for him to recoil in horror.
What kind of life had she led to expect such a reaction? How many times had she seen disgust or pity in others’ eyes?
He picked up the brandy, then set it down again without drinking. His initial frustration with her seeming reluctance now filled him with shame. She’d been pushing herself far harder than he’d realized, working against limitations he hadn’t even understood.
And yet she’d never complained. Never made excuses. Never asked for special treatment.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, rubbing fatigue from his face. All those Society events where she’d stood for hours. All those times he’d watched her navigate crowded ballrooms and uneven garden paths. He’d known she had some sort of injury, yes, but this…
The memory of her demonstration rose unbidden. Her matter-of-fact explanation of straps and joints, her clever modifications to compensate for the prosthetic’s limitations. She’d turned catastrophic injury into an engineering problem to be solved.
He found himself desperately curious about the accident itself. A factory injury, he knew that much. But the details? She guarded them as carefully as she’d guarded the extent of her disability.
His eyes drifted to his desk where several sketches lay half-finished—ideas for improving the straps, for adding stability without sacrificing what little flexibility she had. He’d started envisioning them while she explained the prosthetic’s mechanics, his mind already racing ahead to solutions.
“Focus on the practical,” he told himself firmly. This wasn’t about his growing admiration for her determination, or the strange ache he’d felt watching her brace for his rejection. This was about ensuring his student had proper equipment.
But he couldn’t quite forget how her face had transformed when he’d treated her prosthetic as a technical challenge rather than a source of shame. For just a moment, her guard had dropped, revealing something vulnerable and wondering in her expression.
He’d seen Amelia angry, disdainful, coldly professional. He’d seen her match wits with journalists and trade barbs with Society’s elite. But he’d never seen her look quite so vulnerable. As if no one had ever simply accepted her exactly as she was.
The thought made something protective stir in his chest. Which was ridiculous, of course. She’d made it abundantly clear she neither wanted nor needed his protection. And this was still just a marriage of convenience with an expiration date.
Even if he was beginning to wonder what else he might have misunderstood about his wife.
“Right,” he said aloud, standing abruptly. “Seven tomorrow.” He had modifications to design, equipment to procure. He needed to focus on the practical aspects of teaching her to fence, not on the way her rare, genuine smile had made his chest tighten.
But as he moved to his desk to refine his sketches for improved straps, he couldn’t quite suppress a different kind of wondering. What else was Amelia hiding beneath that carefully maintained facade of independence? What other surprises lay behind those walls she’d built so high?
For the first time since their marriage, he found himself genuinely looking forward to finding out.