Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Frederick turned the pages of Alice’s journal as he waited for her to awaken. It was wrong of him to snoop, he knew, but the pages had been lying open on her desk, a reminder of everything she felt toward him.
All the anger. The resentment.
Every ink splatter confirmed it.
She had written this in a state of grief and sorrow and desperation, and each word cemented her true feelings.
She could not forgive him. She blamed him for her parents’ deaths.
All his kindness could not overturn her heartbreak.
The sight of her pain made his own worse, and he put the diary to one side, resisting the urge to rip it to pieces. He had done this to himself. All of this. It was not her fault that she could not forgive him, but his for believing she ever could.
He sat back in the uncomfortable chair beside her bed and waited for her to sleep off the worst of the alcohol.
Alice woke to a dry throat and a pounding head. She rolled over, reaching out a hand, propping herself up as she scrubbed at her eyes. Her insides felt as though they had been scraped raw by a wire brush, and she still felt traces of nausea in her system.
What had happened?
She searched her memory, but all she could recall was Charlotte saying she would bring back some lemonade. After that, the world turned into a blurry haze.
Some flashes were clearer than others.
Her confusion, and then her relief upon seeing Frederick and knowing that her world was all right again. But he had been cold to her and sent her away.
She frowned, trying to put the pieces together. Why had she been so confused? It had taken three footmen to force her into the carriage, and she remembered the disconcerting feeling of her limbs not obeying any of her commands.
“You’re awake.” Frederick’s voice caught her attention, and she turned so fast to him, her head pounded. She winced, squinting through the pain.
“Frederick.” The words scraped through her raw throat, and he handed her a glass of water. Still, she couldn’t help noticing his dour expression. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“Are you?”
She blinked, confused and hurt. “Why would I not be?”
“I hardly know.” He leaned in closer. “Perhaps because you chose our moment of unity—the unity that you proposed—to ruin me in a far more effective way than any of your past schemes.”
“I…” Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, which tasted foul. She pulled a face and drained the remainder of the glass. “I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? Let me put it plainly then.” He faced her with something alarmingly cold in his eyes.
“You deliberately got yourself drunk in public and you told everyone you were with that I forced you into marriage. Your friend accused me of it to my face. Everyone could hear.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, and she felt a wave of pain and guilt so intense, she almost retched from it.
“You induced me to trust you, and betrayed it at the worst moment for my career possible.”
“I didn’t! Frederick, I didn’t!” She launched herself at him, but the world spun and she collapsed onto the bed. “I don’t understand what happened, but I didn’t drink too much. I would have remembered—but I just remember this…”
She paused, trying to put into words how she had felt.
The few memories she did have. “I… I felt so confused and disoriented. But I would never have said anything negative about you! You have to believe me. I went there so I could support you and so everyone would believe we were a team. I don’t understand what happened.
” Her eyes filled with tears, and she thought she saw his face soften.
“I wanted to support you, Frederick, I swear it.”
His fingers brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I want to believe you,” he said, so quietly she barely heard him over the sound of her own breathing. “So much, it’s killing me that I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
In answer, he brought out her journal and handed it to her.
“I read this while you were sleeping off the spirits.” He shook his head, nostrils flaring, as Alice gaped in horror at the splattered ink.
This had been her last entry—she had been too busy thinking and spending time with Frederick to think about writing in it again.
Her pain lay in looping handwriting across the page.
“If you had just told me, I would have understood, Alice. I know how difficult this transition has been for you. But you made me believe that—”
“Everything I told you was true,” she insisted, looking up at him with blurred vision.
The nausea in her stomach rose, but this time she didn’t think it was just from the aftermath of her over-indulgence.
This time, it was inspired by fear that she might have lost everything she had come to want.
“Some days it is difficult to forget, yes, but I have forgiven you for everything, Frederick. I promise. I wrote that in a moment of anger, but that doesn’t mean I want to sabotage you any longer. I—”
I love you.
She stopped herself, knowing he wouldn’t believe a declaration like that made in the heat of the moment, even though the pain in her stomach told her it was true. Only love could ever hurt like this.
She had lost her parents and now she was on the verge of losing the only other person she had ever come to care for in that way. His emotions were written all across his face—his hurt, the new distance established between them.
“I can’t deny that you have every right to act as you see fit regarding me,” he muttered in a voice she didn’t recognize.
“And I acknowledge that I hurt you in ways unimaginable to me. But this has been a betrayal the likes of which I cannot endure, no matter how much I might wish to. You are at liberty to do as you choose, but I am sorry, I can no longer stomach standing by your side and watching you do it.” He rose then, and more of that terrible, endless fear gripped her.
“Nothing will stop you from being married to me,” he continued. “And I would not choose anything else, even now. But this…”
He shook his head, and instead of finishing his sentence, walked toward the door, closing it behind him and leaving her alone.
She collapsed back on the pillows, her mouth dry and her head pounding. If she could have endured it, she would have cried, but there was nothing inside her but more of that awful hollowness.
Something was terribly wrong.
Surely she had not had too much to drink? She recalled asking Charlotte for lemonade, and the other lady must have done so, because she would otherwise have refused it.
So what happened?
Could she have suffered from a sunstroke? That might explain her illness now, but it wouldn’t explain the rumors going around the ton, if Frederick was to be believed. But why would they discuss her marriage and how it had come about now?
Why now?
She rolled over, squeezing her eyes shut, and when she opened them again, half the day had passed. She lay precisely where she had before, and it was obvious no one had come to disturb her.
Certainly not Frederick.
Along with her faculties, resolve returned to her. She could understand Frederick’s hurt, especially if he believed her to have behaved this way maliciously.
But she hadn’t.
The only thing she could do was appeal to his better side, the side that she believed must care about her.
All was not lost—she would not let it be.
She reached for her bellpull and rang for Jenny, and while she waited, found her way to her writing desk and dashed a quick note to Lady Rutland. If anyone would know how the land lay, it would be her.
“Send this to Lady Rutland,” she said the instant Jenny came through the door. “Ask her to come visit me. Or if she cannot, then I will visit her. Quickly now.”
“Your Grace.” Jenny twisted the letter in her fingers. “Are you… all right? The Duke has been in a rare taking all day.”
“He thinks I betrayed him,” Alice replied. “Understandable under the circumstances, but I would never—”
Her face crumpled beside herself, and she struggled to articulate her fear that she had contrived to ruin this wonderful, fragile thing between them. They had overcome so much, and it seemed almost ludicrous that this small thing could have so damaged their marriage.
Yet at the same time—he had been so gentle with her, so supportive even when she struggled, and he had confided in her how much restoring his reputation meant. For him to have opened up in such a way to her, and to have her turn against him so cruelly—that was a blow not easily overcome.
All she had to do was make him understand that she hadn’t turned against him.
If she could do that.
Under Jenny’s concerned gaze, though, she could no longer hold back her terror, and she sank onto the bed. Her fingers shook as she pressed them into her eyes.
“I haven’t just forgiven him,” she confessed, the words torn from her like rotten teeth. Even admitting this felt like a hurdle she almost couldn’t clear. “I think I might—I think I might care for him, too. Deeply...”
She’d known ever since she’d thought about what his pain did to her.
That feeling of sharing someone’s anguish—that came from love. You could sympathize, empathize even, with someone you didn’t love, but you didn’t feel their pain as though it was a dagger to your own heart.
Now she suffered both his hurt and her own pain. And the only way of solving both would be to persuade him that she hadn’t acted maliciously.
“I don’t know if he’ll forgive me,” she whispered hoarsely, digging her fingers into her eyes.
She would not cry, but she felt her chest caving in.
“I don’t know how it happened, but he became the person I could tell everything to—even my feelings about my parents.
He listened and he gave me advice, and he was gentle even when it reflected badly on him.
How could I have ruined things so badly? ”