Chapter Twenty-Two
“Reginald!”
Augusta stormed into her brother’s bed chamber, the butler hot on her heels. The room was dark, but some sort of animal instinct must have taken over her, because she saw everything with clarity. Namely, her brother in bed, violently jolting awake at the sound of her voice.
“Auggie?” he asked, his voice raw with sleep as he rolled onto his back with an unmanly snort.
Augusta marched over to his side of the bed while the butler stammered apologies.
“She just flew in here, my lord, and you told us never to turn her away-”
Still squinting, Reginald held his hand up to quiet the man. “You may go, Edwin.”
Shooting nervous looks between Augusta and Reginald, Edwin disappeared back out into the hallway, leaving them alone.
“What on earth are you doing here?” Reginald asked, sitting up. He looked so young in his nightshirt. Not at all like a man who ought to have control over her life. It only served to enrage her further.
“Did you know?” she demanded.
He made a pinched face of confusion. “Know what?”
“About Sebastian, God damnit!”
She was practically screeching, the pent-up energy that had been building in the carriage now finally seeing its release. Reginald jumped, his face falling into panic at her accusation. It was all the answer she needed.
“Tell me you didn’t,” she said, forcing the wobble in her chin to stabilize. She needed him to assure her that it was a lie. Just a terrible, awful dream that she was going to wake up from.
Instead, he stood slowly, shuffling off the duvet, his eyes never leaving her face. It was the look he used to give her during a spell, when he thought she was not looking. Wary.
“Auggie, I…What did he tell you?”
Even now, with her right in front of him, he was concerned about not outing his friend.
In all of this, Augusta had felt certain that she was only ever at the forefront of her brother’s mind.
Now, she realized that his friends would always take priority for him.
She was an afterthought compared to Sebastian’s wants and wishes.
“Why don’t you just try telling me the truth for once?” she said through gritted teeth.
Reginald seemed to think this over. Every second that he contemplated, Augusta hated him more and more. Hadn’t she once had great affection for him? She could not recall it now.
“He came to me at the end of the Season. He needed a dowry to change his family’s fortunes - his father had gambled everything away. I told him to stay away from you at first, but…you have to understand, I really thought that he would be good for you.”
“Good enough to lie to me?” Augusta shot back, disbelieving. How great of a fool had they taken her for?
How great of a fool had she been?
Reginald choked on his words, his eyes bugging out for a moment before he collected himself. “No! No, I never wanted to lie to you.”
With a caustic laugh, Augusta threw her hands out at her sides, gesturing about the room. “And yet, here we bloody are!”
Reginald did not appear to know what to say to that. Eventually, he sighed. “Neither of us ever intended for you to find out. I promise, I only wanted what was best for you.”
She stood still as a statue as the truth washed over her.
“You thought a sham marriage was the best I could do?” Because, in the end, no one believed that someone could love her truly. Not without incentive. Even her own brother.
“That’s not what I said, Auggie. I just mean-”
“Why don’t you tell your friends how little you’re wanted, then?”
She felt ugly, pulling out such a cruel blow. But God, did it feel good to watch Reginald suck in a breath, shame creeping into his features bit by bit until it had taken him over completely.
“Auggie, come on. Do not do this.”
“No,” she said, drawing herself up, her spine fortified by vitriol. “Why don’t I go home right now and tell Sebastian all about your secret little wife, and how you treated her so abominably that she had to flee the country? Then your friends can have a little laugh at you, for once.”
“No one was laughing at you-”
Hang him. Hang the whole lot of them. With a disgusted scoff, Augusta turned on her heel and strode from the room, thinking that she would be happy if she never, ever saw her brother again.
Let the whole trio remain in their group, saving one another and cursing all others, until they asphyxiated on their own self-importance.
*****
The townhouse was quiet when Augusta arrived.
The footman cast her an apologetic look as she stepped down from the carriage, likely due to the redness of her tear-stained face.
She wished she could pull herself together before going back inside, but her pale skin tended to show her crying fits for hours afterward.
She could only hold her head high and try to push through, hoping that she might successfully avoid him.
She slogged up the stairs, every step feeling like a mountain to climb. Her whole body ached. Hopefully Sebastian had felt the same and gone off to bed. After all, his life had not changed much. He’d had a wife he did not want and all of her money, and he still had those things.
She, however, had lost everything. Foremost, her dignity.
Surely, despite what Reginald had told her, they all must have laughed at her, at some point.
Maybe together. They must have brayed at her wide-eyed stupidity, how easily she’d walked into unrequited love and believed it to be true.
Moreover, in their more chastened moments of regret for what they’d done, they must have pitied her.
That, she thought, was so much worse.
And God, the way she had been in bed with him.
The sounds she’d made, the way she had completely given into passion because she’d believed that they were both inflamed.
He must have thought her completely wanton.
Had he found it funny, the way that she had so fallen?
The way that she had practically melted into his touch?
And to think, she’d once thought herself too intelligent to swoon. At the first temptation, she’d swooned all the way into a den of vipers. Now she was trapped; married, with no lawful reason to divorce and no one who cared about her future as she did.
She was the most stupid, wretched woman to ever live. Her patients deserved better judgment than she could provide. Dr. Pinkton deserved an apprentice with much greater discernment.
That was her final thought of woe before she reached their bedroom door. Luckily, without her husband in sight. Perhaps she would make it to their bed without having to run into-
She pushed the door open. Sebastian sat upon her bed.
Blast it all. She wanted to crawl beneath her duvet and disappear from the world, and instead she had to do this.
He stood as soon as she entered, his expression both shocked and nervous.
“Where were you? Are you alright?” True concern seemed to be etched into his voice. Then again, she’d thought he’d had true love as well all these weeks. She really did not know him at all, did she?
“I am fine. I’d like to go to bed now.” It was all she wanted in the whole bloody world.
Sebastian nodded, but did not move. “I’d like to talk. If you are able.”
He had the audacity to sound worried about her.
She swallowed, her throat dry. “I think we have said everything that ought to be said.”
He sighed, crestfallen. Or, seemingly crestfallen. Was he even really human? Did he even really feel?
“Not everything,” he said quietly. “I have…God, I have so much to say. Starting with the fact that I am absurdly sorry. For everything. For how we started. I want to tell you-”
“I would like to go to bed, my lord,” she said coldly. She could not hear another word of this, nor could she look at his lying face a moment longer.
He paused a while, as though hoping to wait out her resolve. But he couldn’t. She would get something out of tonight, even if it was only oblivion.
With a nod, he acquiesced. “Of course. We can speak tomorrow. Sleep well, love.”
She winced at ‘love,’ which earned her a sad, downcast expression from him. As though he had any right.
He stepped around her, hesitating at one point, during which she feared that he might attempt to offer her a kiss upon the forehead. Blessedly, he didn’t. He left the room, shutting the door so softly behind him that the little sound was its own kind of apology.
She stood still for some time. Perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour.
Staring at the wall. When she finally got the gumption to undress herself and crawl into bed, she felt like a corpse crawling to its grave.
It was only when she plopped down, weightless, that saw blissful darkness on the horizon.
The reality was dire. Unless a miracle occurred, her time as an alienist’s assistant would end, almost as quickly as it had begun.
When she awoke tomorrow morning, she would be all the things she now feared the most: merely a wife, merely a woman, merely set dressing.
But for now, she could run away from it all.
Just before sleep overtook her, she promised herself one thing: that no matter how weary and sad, how alone and miserable she felt, none of this would lead her to a spell.
*****
A spell was on its way. Augusta could feel it.
The trappings had all been present since she’d awoken that morning: feeling like her breath was not her own, her limbs detached from her torso, and her tongue heavy and dry.
Sounds seemed far away and garbled, especially speech.
When her maid asked her if she might prefer butter on her toast or jam, Augusta had hardly heard her.
“Jam,” she’d said quietly. Even her own voice had sounded as though it were underwater.
Now, shortly after noon, she sat at the writing desk in her room with a blank piece of parchment in front of her, and she knew that the full grip of melancholy had finally sunk in its icy claws.