Chapter Fifteen
The study was cold.
William had not called for a fire. Had not rung for tea or brandy or any of the creature comforts that might soften the edges of what he was about to do. He wanted the cold. Wanted the discomfort. Wanted something external to match the ice that was slowly crystallising around his heart.
He sat at his desk with a blank sheet of paper before him, a pen in his hand, and absolutely no idea how to begin.
Dear Eliza seemed too intimate. Miss Hayfield was too formal; a mockery of everything they had shared. He could not very well address her as my love when the entire point of this exercise was to convince her that she had never been loved at all.
The pen hovered. A drop of ink fell, spreading across the pristine paper like a wound.
He crumpled the sheet and reached for another.
I am writing to inform you,
No. Too cold. Too businesslike. She would see through it immediately, would recognise the formality as a shield rather than a genuine expression of indifference. Eliza had always been able to see through him. That was the problem. That was the entire damnable problem.
Another sheet crumpled. Another begun.
What we shared was…
Was what? Magnificent? Transformative? The single most profound experience of his miserable existence? He could not write that. Could not give her ammunition for hope when hope was precisely what he needed to destroy.
The pen scratched across the paper, leaving nothing but false starts and abandoned sentences. William stared at the growing pile of crumpled sheets and felt something very close to despair.
He had seduced dozens of women. Had ended dozens of affairs with varying degrees of elegance.
He had a reputation for being kind in his cruelty, for letting women down gently, for preserving their dignity even as he withdrew his interest. The Rake Who Never Ruins, they called him. The Duke Who Knows When to Leave.
But he had never loved any of those women.
And he had never had to convince one of them that he did not love her when every fibre of his being screamed the opposite.
The clock on the mantel marked another hour.
Tomorrow, she would know.
He needed to have his words ready. Needed to have constructed the perfect speech, kind enough to preserve her dignity, cruel enough to kill her hope. A surgical strike. A clean cut. The sort of wound that healed cleanly rather than festering.
You deserve better than me.
True, but she would argue. Would insist that she wanted him regardless of what she deserved. Would fight for them with that stubborn courage that had first captured his attention.
I cannot give you what you need.
Also true, but vague. She would demand specifics. Would ask him to name what he could not give, and he would have no answer that did not reveal the depth of his feeling.
I don’t love you.
The lie he needed to tell. The only weapon sharp enough to sever the bond between them.
William’s hand trembled as he wrote the words, then stared at them until they blurred.
I don’t love you.
Four words. Four simple words that would destroy Eliza. Four words that would set her free to find someone worthy of her, someone whole, someone capable of giving her the future she deserved.
Four words that would haunt him for the rest of his miserable life.
He set down the pen and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, trying to force back the burning sensation that had nothing to do with fatigue.
This was the right thing to do. He was certain of it.
Almost certain.
Reasonably confident, at least, in the cold light of reason.
“You look like death warmed over.”
William lifted his head from his hands to find Worthington standing in the doorway, impeccably dressed despite the hour, his expression cycling through concern, exasperation, and something that looked uncomfortably like pity.
“How did you get in?”
“Your butler. Apparently, you have been in here for hours, muttering to yourself like a character from a Gothic novel. He seemed concerned you might be having some sort of episode.” Worthington stepped into the room, his gaze sweeping over the desk, the crumpled papers, the half-empty inkwell, the single sheet with its damning words.
“He was not wrong to be concerned, I see.”
“This is a private matter.”
“Private matters become my concern when my oldest friend appears to be losing his mind.” Worthington picked up one of the crumpled sheets, smoothing it out to read the abandoned words. “I think it best if we, good grief, Will. You are composing a dismissal letter? After everything?”
“It’s not a dismissal letter.”
“Then what would you call it?”
“A necessary communication.” William snatched the paper from Worthington’s hands, crumpling it again with more force than necessary. “Miss Hayfield and I have reached the natural conclusion of our arrangement. I am simply… formalising the ending.”
“The natural conclusion.” Worthington’s voice was flat with disbelief.
“You have, by all accounts, spent the past month behaving like a lovesick fool, missing social engagements, watching her across ballrooms, looking at her as though no other woman existed. And now you are telling me that the natural conclusion is a letter telling her it is over?”
“What would you have me do?” The question came out sharper than intended. “Marry her? Make her my duchess? Bind her to me for life and hope I do not destroy her the way my father was destroyed? The way he destroyed himself?”
“You are not your father.”
“You do not know that.” William rose from the desk, unable to bear the sight of his own cowardice any longer. “No one knows that. I certainly do not know it. And I refuse to gamble Eliza’s future on a hope that might prove unfounded.”
“So instead, you will what? Push her away? Break her heart? Spend the rest of your life alone because you’re too afraid to take a chance?”
“I will set her free.” William moved to the window, staring out at the grey morning.
The sun was just beginning to rise, painting the horizon in shades of pink and gold.
It would be a beautiful day. The sort of day made for new beginnings, for hope, for all the things he was about to destroy.
“She is young. She is beautiful. She is the daughter of a respectable family. In a year, perhaps less, she will have forgotten me entirely. She will marry some worthy man, someone who can give her what she deserves, and she will be grateful that I had the sense to let her go.”
“You actually believe that.”
“I have to believe it.” His voice cracked on the words. “Because the alternative is unthinkable.”
Worthington was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler, stripped of its usual sardonic edge.
“What happened, Will? Since last I saw you, what changed?”
Everything. Nothing. The weight of thirty-two years of certainty crashing down on him in the grey light of dawn, reminding him of all the reasons he had sworn never to let anyone close.
“I realised what I was doing,” William said quietly. “I realised I had let things go too far. That I had allowed myself to feel things I should never have permitted. That I was in danger of becoming something I had sworn I would never become.”
“In love?”
The word landed like a blow. William flinched but did not deny it.
Worthington’s expression changed.
“Tell me, Will,” he continued, “why, in the name of sense, are you writing a letter to end it?”
“Because loving her is not enough.”
“It is rather more than you have offered anyone else.”
“That is precisely the difficulty.”
Worthington stared at him.
William looked away first.
“I cannot be certain of myself,” he said quietly. “Not in this. Not with her. I thought I knew what I was. What I could give. What I could withhold. And then Eliza came, and every rule I had made for myself became worthless.”
“Good.”
William gave a harsh laugh. “You would think so.”
“I do think so. I think it is the first honest thing that has happened to you in years.”
“It is also the most dangerous.”
“To whom? You, or her?”
William’s jaw tightened. “To her.”
Worthington was silent for a moment.
“And so you mean to hurt her now, in order to spare her some imagined hurt later.”
“Yes.”
“That is cowardice dressed up as mercy.”
William absorbed the blow without flinching. “Perhaps.”
“Not perhaps. Certainly.”
“This is not your concern.”
“No,” Worthington said. “It is hers. And you are about to rob her of any say in it.”
William turned back to the desk. The sheet lay there, stark and damning, the words he had rehearsed until they no longer felt like language.
I don’t love you.
Worthington saw it. His face hardened. “You are going to lie to her.”
“I am going to tell her what she needs to hear.”
“That does not make it right.”
“No. But it will serve its purpose.”
“And what purpose is that? To free her? Or to make certain she hates you enough not to come after you?”
William said nothing.
Worthington’s disgust was quiet now, which somehow made it worse.
“She gave you her trust,” he said. “Because she believed there was something in you worth trusting. If you do this, Will, if you look her in the eye and make her ashamed of having believed in you, then you had better be certain you can live with it.”
“I have lived with worse.”
“No.” Worthington moved towards the door. “I do not think you have.”
William did not turn.
At the threshold, Worthington paused.
“For what it is worth, I do not think you are protecting her. I think you are punishing her for seeing you too clearly.”
He left without another word.
***
William remained at the window long after Worthington’s carriage had disappeared down the drive.
The sun was fully up now, burning away the morning mist, flooding the world with the warm golden light of early summer. Birds sang in the gardens. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. The ordinary sounds of an ordinary morning, carrying on as though his entire world was not about to collapse.
He thought about what Worthington had said.
You are punishing her for seeing you too clearly.