Chapter 39 #2
“Nothing.” A chuckle of disbelief escaped Fiona as she brushed away the tears on her cheeks.
Tears she hadn’t even known were falling.
“He bowed like the consummate gentleman he is and walked away. Naturally, I could not manage a ladylike and contained response even after he had laid me so low. Instead, I ran after him and yelled at him that he had had his one and only chance with me and that one day he would be sorry.”
“Oh, my goodness. You always did have such panache!”
* * *
“Ye deserve a fair beating for being such a callous bastard.”
“I do,” Aylesbury said just as agreeably.
Glenrothes did not act on what might be taken as his permission to be used as a punching bag. Instead, he was silent for a long moment before he asked, “Were ye lying? When ye said that it meant nothing to ye?”
“Only to myself,” Aylesbury admitted. “Looking back, I wish I had handled it all differently.”
“How differently?” Glenrothes asked with a menacingly raised brow.
“Nothing untoward, I promise you. I was lucid enough by that point to keep my head.” Examining his nails for a moment, he considered his next words carefully.
“I was a fool, but the truth of the matter is that I was quite taken with Fiona almost from the moment we met. She was everything that the ladies of the ton were not. Honest, open. Natural. It was admittedly intriguing. It was everything I could do to remind myself of her position, her age...including reminding her of it. Again and again, as if that might make it all simply go away.”
Everything he said to her that night was meant to drive her away. Each word worse than the one before when they proved ineffective. He had needed to make her hate him, and it had worked all too well.
“I deserve some kudos, all things considered. I kept my distance. I stayed away.”
“I appreciate that. That single fact probably saved yer life.”
* * *
“He left Edinburgh a few days later, and I hadn’t seen him since until that night at the ball.
All that time, I hated him for breaking my heart so cruelly.
It is still the one thing I have not forgiven him for, but lately, I have begun to see it all from his side,” Fiona admitted, staring down at his ring.
“His side?”
“Aylesbury is an honorable man; I should have known he would never seduce me or allow himself to be seduced. Still, I threw myself at his head, and he did everything he could to let me down gently. Before that night, at any rate. I suppose, in the end, I deserved him having to be so blunt about it all. He has said that I am tenacious to a fault. I suppose I provoked all his slights by not backing off graciously. He must have been truly desperate to go on as he did.”
Looking back, it was incredible that she could see it all so differently. With a sigh of regret, she lifted haunted eyes to her friend and sister. “Oh, Ilona! Is it possible? Did I leave him no choice?”
* * *
Aylesbury laughed at Glenrothes’ softly spoken words.
“It would have been worth it, I think. Fiona was...is temptation personified. Yes, I fought it. Fought her. Fought myself. I was incredibly attracted to her. She lived so passionately, taking the world on her terms. Her effervescence was contagious. And despite her tomboyish ways, lingering on the fringes of womanhood as she was, she was lovely, feminine. Fiery. I wanted her badly...Perhaps I should not have admitted so much to you.”
Glenrothes shifted uncomfortably. “Perhaps no’.”
“But I did,” he repeated anyway and released a sigh.
“It is nice to finally admit that. I know, as her brother you don’t want to hear that, but as a man who loves a woman as you do the countess, I’m certain you can understand.
Looking back, I wish I had acknowledged—if only to myself—that I loved her even then. ”
“Why didn’t ye?”
“She was just a girl.”
“She was eighteen,” Glenrothes pointed out. “An age when many women wed. If it weren’t acceptable, they wouldn’t be thrown out into Society at that age.”
“As I’ve told Fiona, acknowledging her as a grown woman would have meant extending the same courtesy to Piper.
They’re of an age, you see. But that isn’t the whole of it.
There was my friendship with you, your brothers.
Additionally, over the years, I had thought myself in love or on the brink many a time.
It never lasted,” Aylesbury admitted, unable to comprehend that he was confessing so much and to Glenrothes no less.
“I suppose on some level, I had no desire to lead Fiona on, only to break her heart when I came to my senses, as I was sure I would. She deserved happiness. A happiness I was sure she would find without me.”
* * *
Ilona clasped Fiona to her for a long hug. “So what now?”
She held out her hand to show her sister-in-law the ring. “Now he says he loves me and wants to marry me.”
“It’s lovely,” Ilona said, fingering the diamond before squeezing Fiona’s hand. “You said yes?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“No?” Her sister-in-law blinked in surprise. “Why ever not? Haven’t you forgiven him? In your heart?”
Being able to talk about everything that had happened between them had been incredibly cathartic, purging her of the last of the hurt and humiliation in a way that her bitter vexation had never been able to manage. She felt free at last.
“Yes.”
“And you love him?”
She rotated his ring around her finger. What was it then that was holding her back? What was it that kept her from admitting what she knew was true? She loved Harry more than she had ever imagined possible.
“I want to trust him...”
“Not to break your heart again?” Ilona asked perceptively. “Wouldn’t spending the rest of your life without him break your heart more?”
“Yes, but what if...”
“What?”
Then Fiona realized what was holding her back from taking a chance on Harry. It had little to do with him and much to do with her and her expectations.
“What if what Harry and I have doesn’t fulfill all my desires? What if we cannot find what you have? I want the same bliss shining on my face that I see on yours every day. And on Eve’s, on Francis’, on Abby’s...” She sighed. “What if it isn’t all I hoped for?”
“What if it is?” Ilona countered. “There are no guarantees in this world, dearest. You must trust in your feelings and in Lord Aylesbury’s.
It’s only in that knowledge that you are loved, that your love is shared that you can find the bliss you’re looking for.
He confessed his love for you, Fiona. He’s given you his trust to hold his heart with care. Can’t you do the same?”
He had. He’d given her the power to turn the tables on him. To break his heart for all he had once trod upon hers. Considering how expressive she had been in reviling him for what he had done, he showed a lot of faith in her. Trust.
Because he loved her.
“And you do love him, do you not? Say it, Fiona!” Ilona demanded when she continued to vacillate. “You still love him.”
“I still love him,” she confessed softly, able to say it aloud at last.
“And you never stopped.”
Closing her eyes, she pushed the last of her doubts and fears aside as she felt a single tear slip down her cheek. Trailing a path over her cheekbone, hanging briefly before it fell free...as if it knew it would be the last tear she would ever shed for Harry Brudenall.
“No, I haven’t.”