Chapter 14 #2
He winced. “I had gone to her room. I’d suffered the smirk of her latest beau as we passed on the drive, as he’d just left her bed, I suspected. I went to confront her to see if my suspicions were correct. The bed was rumpled. She hadn’t even attempted to hide what she’d been doing.”
“She didn’t care if you were hurt?”
He shook his head.
“And she didn’t deny the affair?”
“No. She told me everything, in fact. About the others, too. More than I wanted to know—all the while smiling, obviously thrilled to cause me pain.”
“You yelled at her.”
“I raised my voice. I never do that.”
“You were provoked,” she offered.
He shook off her offer of explanation. “I’m not prone to tantrums.”
“Everyone can be pushed to their limit, but you were provoked to it that night, without a doubt.”
“Indeed, I was.” He bowed his head. “I lost that night. I lost all hope that there was any chance for us to live as husband and wife—happily, or even unhappily.”
Amelia reached out and lifted his face toward hers again. “Go on.”
“All of it started in her bedchamber. She flounced out of the room, telling me she would be leaving the next day for a rendezvous with another lover. But also seeking escape from my words, my complaints, too, I suppose.”
“You followed her?”
“Yes. I couldn’t stand the sight of her rumpled bed and sought escape from the house, as well. I pursued her along the hall and toward the staircase. I wanted to stop her and listen to me for a change and she did.”
“At the head of the stairs, where she fell?”
“Yes,” he said, remembering that night. Her body lying upside down on the staircase. Her head turned and neck obviously broken. Her skirts twisted up around her pale legs.
He closed his eyes. The stockingless legs he found particularly disturbing and impossible to forget still.
“She stopped at the top step and turned to me. Shouting out my inadequacies for anyone to hear. She sneered. Told me she would continue to do exactly as she pleased, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop her fun.”
“That must have made you angry.”
He paused. “No. It devastated me. I stood there—I remember just standing frozen, her words ringing in my ears—and I knew then that she likely had never loved me. She’d wanted to be a duchess above all else, and she would be one day.
She would mire the duchy in shame with her debauchery, and it would last decades unless I divorced her.
And even that would create its own scandal. ”
He was silent for a long moment, reliving those last horrible moments. The scorn on her face she didn’t bother to hide, which turned her as ugly as her heart. Her impatience for his father to die, just to wear the jewels he kept from her in the safe.
“I turned away, and then she screamed—”
“You turned away from her before she screamed?” Amelia interrupted, sitting forward, brow raised.
“Yes, I…” Milo stilled and stared at Amelia, too shocked for words by what he’d just said.
He hadn’t seen the fall—because he’d turned his back on his wife and their marriage.
Turned and took a few steps away, in fact, hiding his disappointment and disgust and tears.
He’d not been standing close beside his wife, as he had always believed he’d been.
Not close enough to save her.
Amelia touched his knee. “Perhaps it was your pride, that great heart of yours, that imagined you could have saved her and your marriage.”
He focused on Amelia’s eyes and her words, his heart beating wildly. She already understood what he had forgotten. “I turned away from her before she fell.”
Amelia smiled gently. “You turned away. You were not at fault.”
He sat back in shock. “I had turned from her because I knew our marriage was over. I knew she would never change. And it made me sick to my stomach—how she intended to trample my feelings. I turned away, took several steps, giving her up as a lost cause. And then she screamed.”
“If you took those steps away, you could never have saved her,” Amelia said. “No one could.”
“No. I couldn’t have. But how did you know?
” he whispered, staring at Amelia in awe.
Her belief in him hit Milo like a blow that cleared away his guilt, and his sore head, too.
His fear that he was somehow responsible had always been there.
That was at the heart over refusing to consider loving anyone ever again.
“I would never have let someone I loved fall, had I been close enough to save her.”
Amelia nodded firmly, her expression understanding.
“That is what I suspected when I heard the rumors and put two and two together. You cannot feel guilt over such a death. Your guilt was not over her fall, but because you had given up on her and your marriage. But that was long after she had given up on you, Chatham. I see no reason for any guilt on your part at all. Yes, you fought. Yes, you were at odds. Yes, you had fallen out of love with her that day. That can happen in any marriage, I imagine. But it is also what happens when love isn’t returned in full measure.
There’s only so much pain, betrayal, a body can stand.
You were a good husband. You are a good man at heart. ”
He nodded, struggling still to accept her praise.
Amelia stood and leaned over him, stretching out her hand to his face again. Her fingers brushed across his cheek, removing the moister there…and he realized he’d been crying.
Something he hadn’t done in a very long time.
He drew Amelia closer and pressed his face to her belly—and let it all go.
Let go of his pain.
Let go of his torment.
He had been a good husband. He had played no part in his first wife’s fall and death.
He clutched Amelia hard and sobbed against her body, little caring that he was allowing his emotions to control him again. The release was what he needed—a release from guilt, a release from everything that had been holding him back. Every emotion he’d struggled to suppress for years.
He held tight to Amelia, and she let him cry his heart out for the guilt and pain of his failed first marriage…and he marveled at her compassion after what he’d said the night before.
“It’s all right. I’m here now. I’m here,” she whispered. “I’d never hurt you like that. I’d never be so cruel.”
He drew back from her and looked up. “I know.”
Amelia smiled down at him and cupped his face. Held his head. Then leaned down to kiss his forehead like a mother would a child.
He drew back to look up at her again. “I’m so sorry about what I said last night. I am so sorry that I embarrassed you in front of others. I do know that you’d never welcome Dunstan’s attentions.”
“Certainly not.” She pulled a face. “Your father told me you left the estate last night and I believed him. I didn’t know what to do or when you’d return.”
“I am sorry for that, too. It is not what you think.”
“Was the duke wrong? You must have gone somewhere to make him say such things?”
“I woke up in the stables, in a horse stall. My brother and Rafferty offering brotherly sympathy as I woke only to cast up my accounts,” he confessed.
“That sounds unpleasant and explains the odor about you,” she said, but a tiny smile twisted her lips. “So, were you on horseback at some point last night?
“Yes, it seems so.” He winced. “I think I was going to fetch your harp from Devon.”
Her brows rose high. “My harp? From Devon?”
He nodded sheepishly. “I thought if you had that back, you’d be happier here.”
“A grand gesture but a foolish one, as all decisions made while under the influence of spirits surely are.” She sniffed the air and her nose wrinkled again. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Keep me,” he begged. “I promise to…
Her fingers pressed over his lips, silencing him. “No more promises.”
He nodded, agreeing with her request.
“You need some time, Chatham. You need a bath, a shave and definitely fresh clothing to wear. Some food in your belly couldn’t hurt, either. We will not speak of your first wife again. We can both move on, content with our marriage and building a life together if that is what you still want.”
“Of course I still do,” he swore.
But contentment?
Had he ever been that in a marriage?
Every day, he discovered he hardly understood the remarkable woman he had married.
His first wife had caused chaos every day of her life, but Amelia smoothed it all away.
Amelia wanted a peaceful existence with him.
That was what they had promised each other in the beginning, and she was holding true to her word even after last night.
He nodded. He had made a wise choice in marrying her, but he hadn’t ever known Amelia’s true value when he’d proposed.
He did now.
She drew back, slipping from his fingers before he was ready to let her go.
She smiled gently at him. “Now, I am expected to return to the duchess and your sisters’ little party. I’ll leave you alone and perhaps you can come and find me later today.”
He didn’t want her to go, but he did need time to adjust to the truth. The revelation had changed him. “Yes. I’d like that.”
“Do let your father know you never left the estate. He was worried.”
Amelia smiled and slipped from the room without another word, leaving him to rebuild his composure on his own terms. Finally facing a future without the guilt that had been haunting him for so long, he cursed his late wife roundly.
He’d no idea she’d been controlling his emotions from the grave all this time.
Thank God Amelia had come to rescue him from his misery.
He wiped his face to make sure he was free of tears and stood, determined to make another new start. Those tears would have shamed him once upon a time, to have any woman see. He would never have cried in front of his late wife, but Amelia looked at him with compassion instead of scorn.
His second wife was one of a kind, it seemed.
They might not ever feel love for each other, but he respected her more and more each day. Given enough time, he was sure he would feel something akin to love…but of course, he would never say so out loud. That went against every ideal their marriage strove for.