The Removal #2
"Florinda." Margot's voice cut through the moment like a blade. "The carriage is ready."
Frederick stepped forward. For one wild moment, Florinda thought he might—but no. He merely bowed, formal and correct, every inch the Duke.
"Safe travels, Lady Florinda."
"Thank you, Your Grace."
Margot's footmen wheeled her toward the door. She did not look back. She could not look back. If she looked back, she would break, and Ashbournes did not break in public.
Twenty-three steps from the entrance hall to the carriage. She counted every one.
* * *
Frederick watched them go.
He stood in the doorway of Carthedge Hall—the doorway his father had stood in, and his grandfather before that—and watched the Raventhorn footmen lift Florinda carefully into the carriage whilst others secured the wheeled chair to the back, strapping it down with practiced efficiency.
Watched her stepmother settle beside her, the small child scrambling onto Margot's lap with the boneless enthusiasm of the very young.
Twenty-three steps from the entrance hall to the carriage. He had counted them.
He would count the days until he saw her again. That number would be worse.
The carriage door closed. The driver gathered the reins. Frederick catalogued the precise shade of the horses—bay, both of them, well-matched—and the angle of the afternoon sun across the gravel, and the number of stones that shifted beneath the wheels as the carriage began to move.
Fourteen stones. Forty-seven rotations of the wheels before the carriage passed through the gates. One hundred and twelve heartbeats until it vanished from view.
He was losing his mind.
"Frederick." Penelope's voice came from behind him. She had been crying; he could hear it in the thickness of her words. "Come inside. There is nothing to be gained by standing in the cold."
"It is not cold."
"Then there is nothing to be gained by standing in the mild." Her hand touched his arm. "Please."
He turned. Penelope's face was kind—genuinely kind, not merely polite—and he felt a stab of guilt so sharp it stole his breath.
This woman had done nothing wrong. She had not asked to be betrothed to a man who could not stop counting the gold threads in another woman's hair.
She had not chosen this impossible situation any more than he had.
"I am sorry," he said, though he was not certain what he was apologising for. Everything, perhaps. Nothing he could name aloud.
"I know." Penelope's smile was sad. "I know you are."
She led him inside. The entrance hall was empty now—no wheeled chair, no golden-haired woman with sharp wit and sharper pain, no trace that Florinda Ashbourne had ever been here at all.
"The weather seems to be holding," Frederick heard himself say. "We might ride out tomorrow, if you wished. The south pasture is pleasant this time of year."
Penelope looked at him with what might have been pity. "That sounds lovely."
"Good. Yes. Good." He straightened his cuffs. Adjusted his cravat. Did all the small, meaningless things that gentlemen did when they were attempting to behave as gentlemen ought. "I should see to the estate accounts. If you will excuse me."
"Of course."
He walked toward his study with measured steps.
He did not count them. He would not count anything.
He would sit at his desk and attend to his correspondence and be the Duke of Carthedge, and he would not think about fourteen stairs or golden hair or the way she had looked at him this morning as though he had broken a promise he had never made.
He would be fine.
He was not fine.
* * *
The carriage rounded the bend in the drive. Carthedge Hall disappeared behind a stand of oaks, and Florinda kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead.
"You did not look back," Margot observed.
"No."
"Good."
Silence stretched between them. Florinda waited for Margot to say more—to lecture, to pry, to demand explanations. But Margot merely adjusted Hope on her lap and gazed out the window with the practiced patience of a woman who knew when to leave well enough alone.
"Dr. Blackwell expects you shall be walking with a cane within the month," Margot said instead. "He is optimistic about a full recovery."
"How encouraging."
"You shall have to learn to navigate stairs again. Without assistance."
Florinda's jaw tightened. "Yes. I imagine I shall."
Margot's lips twitched, but she said nothing more. The carriage rattled on.
Hope squirmed in Margot's lap, demanding attention. "Mama, I am bored. When shall we arrive?"
"Not for several hours, darling. Try to sleep."
"I do not wish to sleep. Aunt Florinda, tell me a story."
Florinda looked at her niece—four years old, imperious, blissfully unaware that the world contained anything so inconvenient as heartbreak. "What sort of story?"
"A story with a princess. And a dragon. And a tower."
"Very well." Florinda drew a breath. "Once upon a time, there was a princess with very long hair who lived in a tower—"
"Why did she live in a tower?"
"Because," Florinda said, "it was safer than living in the world. In the world, there were dukes who counted things and broke one's heart without meaning to."
"What is a duke?"
"A very inconvenient sort of person."
Margot made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob. "Florinda."
"I am merely answering the child's questions."
"You are being dramatic."
"I have a broken leg. I am entitled to drama." Florinda turned her face toward the window, watching the countryside roll past—green fields and grey sky and the road stretching ahead.
She did not look back.
She wanted to.