Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Tell me the truth, Elinor,” Annabelle walked beside her through Hyde Park.
Newton trotted ahead of them, his lead taut, his attention fixed on a cluster of pigeons that had not yet learned to fear him.
Elinor kept her gaze on the path. “I have told you the truth. The engagement ended by mutual agreement. There is nothing more to say.”
“There is a great deal more to say, and you know it.” Annabelle’s arm tightened through hers.
“I was at that ball, Elinor. I watched you dance with my brother. I saw the way he held you after the music stopped. That was not a man ending something. That was a man holding on to something he was terrified of losing.”
The words pressed against the bruise that had not stopped aching since the parlor, since the knuckle kiss, since the door closing. Elinor adjusted Newton’s lead and said nothing.
“Please.” Annabelle’s voice softened. “I am not asking as his sister. I am asking as your friend. Because you are my friend, Elinor, regardless of what has happened between you and Lucien, and I can see that you are not fine.”
“I am fine.”
“You are wearing the same dress you wore three days ago.”
Elinor looked down. She was. The gray one. The one she had put on the morning of the dissolution and apparently had not stopped reaching for since.
“It is comfortable,” she said.
Annabelle gave her a look that made clear she did not believe a word of it but loved Elinor enough not to press.
They walked on in silence. The park was crowded with the last promenaders of the Season, ladies in bright silks and gentlemen in polished boots, all performing the rituals of a world that continued whether or not Elinor wished it.
Newton caught a scent and lunged. Elinor steadied the lead, crouched to free him from a rosebush, and straightened to find a lord before her.
“Lady Elinor.” He bowed, smiling with practiced interest. “Lord Whitley. I could not help but notice you. I understand you were recently engaged to the Duke of Fairmont.”
“I was,” she said.
“A distinction indeed. A woman who catches a duke’s eye must have remarkable qualities.” His gaze traveled over her, appraising. “I should be honored to call, if you would permit it.”
He was handsome, well-dressed, and perfectly mannered. Elinor felt nothing. He was not Lucien, and that was enough.
“You are kind, Lord Whitley,” she said. “But I am not receiving callers.”
He inclined his head and moved on. Within minutes, two more gentlemen approached. One praised her spectacles with calculated charm. The other asked about her interest in science with strained enthusiasm.
She was polite to both. She smiled, thanked them, and declined. And with each, the hollow in her chest widened. They were not here for her. They came because a duke had once chosen her, and the echo of that attention made her visible.
Before the engagement, they would not have looked twice. After the novelty faded, they would not again.
Annabelle watched the third suitor retreat and turned to Elinor, sympathy sharpened by anger.
“Vultures,” she said.
Elinor almost laughed. “They are being polite.”
“They are circling.” Annabelle squeezed her arm. “None of them deserves you. Not one.”
Your brother did, Elinor thought, and the thought cut so deep she had to look away, pretending to watch Newton investigate a bench leg.
They walked the rest of the path in silence. At the park gate, Annabelle embraced her with the fierce, uncomplicated affection that had been there from the first moment they met.
“I am still your friend,” Annabelle said against her shoulder. “Whatever happens. Whatever happened. That does not change.”
Elinor held on. She held on because Annabelle’s friendship was the one thing the ruse had produced that was wholly, unambiguously good, and she could not bear to lose it alongside everything else.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For being here.”
Annabelle pulled back and looked at her. “Always.”
Elinor watched her climb into her carriage and disappear into the traffic. Newton sat at her feet, his tail curled around his paws, his gaze turned upward as though checking on her.
She picked him up and held him against her chest and walked home through streets that felt emptier than they had any right to.
“You look like hell.” Dominic stood in the study doorway, coat still on, his expression caught between concern and thinning patience.
Lucien sat where he had for three days. The brandy decanter had been emptied and replaced more than once. Georgie’s drawing lay on the desk, its edges worn. The fire had gone cold.
“Dominic.” His voice was rough, scraped thin by drink and sleeplessness. “I did not hear you arrive.”
“Your butler let me in. He is worried. So is your sister. So am I.” Dominic crossed the room and took the chair Annabelle had occupied. “You promised that when it was over, you would tell me everything.”
“I did.”
“It is over. I am here. Talk to me.”
Lucien looked at him. Dominic had always waited, always offered what he could without pressing. He was still here.
And Lucien could not speak.
The words pressed at his throat, heavy and immovable, and would not come.
“I cannot,” he said. “Not yet. I am sorry.”
Dominic studied him for a long moment. The frustration in his expression did not leave, but it made room for something else. Acceptance, perhaps. Or the understanding that some walls could only be dismantled by the person who built them.
“All right,” Dominic said. He rose. “But I will keep coming back, Lucien. Every day if I must. You do not get to disappear into this room and pretend the rest of the world does not exist.”
“I am not pretending.”
“You have been pretending for eleven years.” Dominic’s voice held no accusation. It held the sadness of a man who had watched his friend build a prison and call it a home. “At some point, you will have to stop.”
He left. The door closed. The study settled back into its silence, and Lucien sat in it until the walls began to close, and then he stood, pulled on his coat, and went out into the night.
The tavern lay south of Mayfair, where dukes went unremarked. Lucien sat in a corner with a tankard he did not remember ordering, watching the room without seeing it.
She approached after his second drink. Dark-haired, handsome, her gown cut to invite notice. She slid into the seat across from him and smiled with easy confidence.
“You look like a man in need of company.”
He studied her. She was beautiful, composed and deliberate. Once, he would have smiled back.
“Perhaps,” he said.
She rose and inclined her head toward the stairs. He followed.
The room above was small and clean. A bed, a candle, nothing more. She turned to him, her hand finding his chest.
The touch landed, and his body went cold.
Her fingers were warm and practiced. She knew how to draw a man in, how to make him forget. It did not matter. The moment her palm pressed to his chest, all he felt was the memory of another hand, smaller, trembling, clutching his waistcoat in a jasmine-scented alcove.
Lucien.
His name, breathless and trusting.
He stepped back. Her hand fell away, confusion flickering into offense.
“I …” he said. “I cannot.”
He left without another word. Down the stairs, through the tavern, into the night where the stars hid behind clouds.
He walked without direction, past darkened houses, along the quiet Thames, toward the distant glow of Mayfair where lives were performed and nothing was seen.
He walked until his legs ached and the sky paled. When he stopped, he stood before a building he knew, beneath the name painted above its door.
Lyra House.
The windows were dark. The children slept. By morning, the world he and Elinor had built would continue without them. That had always been the point. It was the right thing.
Lucien pressed his hand to the door and stood there as dawn broke.