Chapter 24 #2
“Both Lord Ashbourne and Lord Denby… have expressed their interest in courting you further.”For several heartbeats, she remained frozen—perfectly still save for the slight tremor in her hands.
Then, with movements that seemed to require considerable effort, she set down the secateurs and rose to her feet.
Her hands moved to brush soil from her skirts, but they were shaking badly enough that she curled them into fists at her sides instead.
When she finally turned to face him, her expression was perfectly composed. Perfectly, devastatingly blank.
“I see.” Her voice emerged flat, stripped of all inflection. “Then it seems my future is well in hand.”
“Of course,” he continued almost too quickly, “The decision remains yours. Who you allow to court you. They… both… both these gentlemen are quite… adequate…”
“Adequate?”
Blood rushed to his cheeks at the question in her voice. She’d had an adequate marriage before. Did she not deserve more? Much more.
“I… You… If either of them is the one who… the one you can see…”
She turned to face him.
“The one who takes Henry and me off your hands? The one I marry? Henry’s new father?’
He could not show her how much those words, those ideas, tore through him.
Henry calling another man papa. Her saying ‘yes’ to another man, becoming someone else’s wife…
Someone who would have the right to comfort her, to touch her, to look at her.
Tobias cleared his throat, suddenly uncertain of the ground that had seemed solid mere moments ago.
“I only wish to keep my promise. To see you settled. Secure.”
“Of course.” Her smile was small and sharp as the thorns surrounding them. “That was our agreement.”
He wanted to go back on that promise more than anything.
Wanted to tell her that he did not want her to leave.
Not that he could offer her anything. Which was exactly why he knew he needed to let her go.
Who was he but the rakish younger brother of her late husband?
Lord Ashbourne, Lord Denby… Either one of them would offer her security. A proper inheritance.
Safety from scandal.
They could offer her a husband who was born for his title, not one who inherited it from the brother who’d chosen her first.
“I… I only want what is best for you,” he muttered at long last. “For both you and Henry.”
The boy.
The boy who loved him, who called him Papa. The boy, who was the first person in memory to look at him as though he were something special. The boy who deserved to grow up far removed from tarnished reputations and whispers of scandals.
Neither spoke for a long moment. The silence stretched between them, heavy with things neither would voice. A bee droned past, absurdly loud in the quiet. Somewhere distant, voices drifted from the stables. The roses perfumed the air with sweetness that felt almost obscene in its cheerfulness.
Tobias found himself studying her—truly looking, perhaps for the first time in days.
The curve of her neck where sunlight painted her skin gold.
The way escaped curls moved with the slight breeze.
The rapid flutter of her pulse visible at her throat.
The careful neutrality of her expression that could not quite conceal the hurt lurking beneath.
His hands ached to reach for her. His throat closed around words he had no right to speak.
Amelia turned at last, meeting his gaze with eyes gone distant and unreadable. “If you’ll excuse me, my lord. I promised Henry a walk before supper.”
She bent to collect her basket, and her hair fell forward to obscure her face—whether by accident or design, he could not say. When she straightened, the mask was perfect again, polite indifference worn like armor against whatever wounds his words had inflicted.
I am sorry, he wanted to yell. I do not wish to see you married to anyone else. I do not deserve you, but neither do they. No one does. Stay. Stay here with me.
He wanted to say it, wanted to plead with her—wanted her to understand that if he had a choice…
Then what?
She moved past him then, careful to maintain proper distance. Her skirts brushed against rose bushes as she walked, catching briefly on thorns before pulling free with soft, tearing sounds that made him wince.
Tobias watched her go, every instinct screaming at him to call her back, to explain that his carefully maintained distance stemmed not from indifference but from wanting far too much.
That avoiding her required daily battles with himself, that he was losing with increasing frequency.
That holding her through Henry’s illness had felt more right than anything in his thoroughly misspent life, and it terrified him.
But the words remained locked behind his teeth, caught on guilt and inadequacy and the absolute certainty that she deserved better than his tainted regard.
When she disappeared through the garden gate, he exhaled sharply—a sound that was not quite steady, closer to breaking than breath.
His hands uncurled slowly. Half-moon indentations marked his palms where his nails had bitten deep. The roses surrounded him with their cloying perfume, beautiful and thorned, tended with such care by hands that were firmly walking away from him.
He shook his head, turning to face the roses in front of him.
“It is no use,” he muttered as though the flowers could understand his agony. “I talk of duty. Of deserving. And I know… Heaven knows me, I know that she deserves far more than I can offer. I know that I will only bring about scandal, but…”
He shook his head, unable to utter the truth even in solitude.
As much as he spoke of duty, as much as he spoke of what was right… and as much as that mattered—and it did, for her sake if not his own—he could no longer disguise or deny the horrible truth.
Be it to Lord Ashbourne or Lord Denby… he was losing her. He was losing the woman who was the first one ever to look at him as though he were more than a spare. The first woman to treat him with not only kindness, but respect.
The first woman who truly saw him for the man he was, rather than the rakish brother of his better.
He cared for her. Perhaps even loved her.
He turned back to the manor, desperate for a last sight of her, but there was none. Somewhere, she was walking with Henry—perhaps laughing, somewhere where he could not hear it. He was losing her.
And he had no one but himself to blame.