Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
William heard everything his brother had said to Clementine. All the vile, slanderous words that he would never forgive him for. The bastard ought to be ashamed of himself. How dare he speak to her, his betrothed, in such a way? He had no right to even breathe the same air as her.
Phillip strode from Clementine, whatever her whispered parting words sending him to the hills. He followed quickly on his heels, clasping his shoulder and ripping him around to face him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” William demanded, the words low and tight with fury.
Phillip wrenched out of his hold and straightened his coat, his lips twisting into a sneer that William had long since come to despise. “I might ask the same of you, brother. Accosting me in the middle of a ballroom? Have you no self-control at all?”
That from Phillip, of all people. William glanced beyond him, to where Clementine stood at the edge of the dance floor.
Several matrons were already whispering behind their fans.
Gentlemen had turned, openly staring. The orchestra, though still playing, had faltered enough that the musicians now watched with uneasy curiosity, as if deciding whether to stop altogether.
This was exactly the sort of spectacle he would once have avoided at all costs. One of the reasons he hated being part of the ton. Their fickle lust for scandal at other people’s expense. Tonight, he did not care.
Not when Clementine had stood there alone and borne the brunt of his brother’s malice with more dignity than either Hartwell brother deserved. Not when William himself had wounded her more deeply than Phillip ever could.
Shame washed through him that he’d allowed what others had done to tarnish what they had started to build together. Allowed the past to make him question if they were truly suited, if his feelings were genuine.
“I asked you a question,” William said, stepping closer. “What gives you the right to speak to Lady Clementine in such a manner?”
Phillip laughed, the sound carrying just enough to turn more heads in their direction. “Lady Clementine?” he drawled. “You mean the lady who could not decide between one brother and the next?”
The room around William turned crimson, and he balled his hand into a fist. Not because the insult was new, but because of the lie that lay within it.
Because Clementine had done no such thing.
Because she had been judged and cornered and made to answer for the sins of men around her, and he had been the worst of them all.
He had let doubt fester.
He had looked at her and seen the shadow of her father.
God, what a fool he had been. What a bastard who would have to beg for forgiveness.
He struck Phillip before anyone nearby could intervene. The sound of the blow cracked across the ballroom, rendering silence in its wake. Gasps rose immediately. The music jarred to a stop, and somewhere, a lady cried out in alarm.
Phillip staggered back, more from surprise than force, one gloved hand flying to his jaw. He looked at the blood on his fingers and then at William, disbelief turning quickly to outrage.
“You bastard.”
“And you are a coward,” William returned. “You speak against a woman because you cannot bear that she chose otherwise. You mean to shame her because you are jealous that she did not pick you.”
Phillip lunged. They collided hard, boots slipping on the gleaming floor before finding traction again.
William caught his brother by the lapels and drove him back a step, then another, until they slammed into the edge of a gilt console table.
A vase trembled dangerously, toppled, and shattered on the floor beside them.
The scent of crushed flowers filled the air.
Phillip swung, his fist catching William across the cheekbone. Pain flashed hot and immediate, but William barely felt it under the surge of rage pounding through his blood.
He answered with a punch to Phillip’s ribs.
His brother grunted, folding slightly, but then came back with all the viciousness of a man who had never once in his life been told no and made to endure it. They grappled, cursing under their breath, shoving and striking, heedless of the crowd that had parted into a wide circle around them.
William heard voices, distant and urgent.
“Good God.”
“Stop them.”
“Someone fetch Ravensmere.”
But it all blurred.
All he could think of was Clementine. The way she gave her time and patience at the shelter, nothing but kindness in her eyes. How she was breathless and flushed, the piercing way she had looked at him after their last kiss, stealing his wits and his heart.
Clementine in Ravensmere’s library, on the brink of tears when he’d told her he didn’t know how to separate her from the father who had wronged his sister. Shame tore through him a second time, sharper than his brother’s fists.
Because she had been right.
Entirely right.
He would never have accepted such blame from her. Had the situation been reversed, had her brother tried to ruin him with laudanum and coercion, had she dared to look at William and see only that man’s cruelty reflected in him, he would have called it monstrous.
And yet he had done precisely that.
To her.
The woman he loved.
The realization hit him with brutal force, arriving not as a gentle truth but as something fierce and undeniable. It settled in him with every strike of his heart.
He loved her.
Loved her stubbornness. Loved the way she challenged him. Loved the way she had looked at him as though there was still something worth saving in him, even after he had failed her. And he might have lost her because he had clung too tightly to the past.
To his dear sister Sarah and his inability to save her. Self-reproach pressed down on him, but more out of grief than guilt. It was not his fault, nor was it Clementine’s, and he’d been wrong to throw the blame in her face.
Sarah’s laughter had once filled their home.
Her downfall had hollowed it out. For years he had carried that grief like a stone in his chest, hard and unyielding.
Then the letters had come to light, and with them the hideous truth of the duke’s part in her ruin.
William had thought himself strong enough to bear it, rational enough to know Clementine was innocent.
But grief had a way of twisting reason until pain looked like justice.
It was not justice.
It was cowardice.
“Still mooning over her?” Phillip sneered, wrenching free enough to land a glancing blow to William’s jaw. “She’s not worth this. She’s her father’s daughter, nothing more.”
William stilled, before fury, cold and absolute, steadied his hands. “No,” he said, and drove his fist into Phillip’s mouth. “She is not.”
Phillip reeled. William followed, striking again, forcing him backward across the ballroom floor while shocked guests scattered out of the way.
A lady stumbled into her husband’s arms. An elderly matron hissed that such barbarity had never been seen under Kenworthy’s roof.
Somewhere behind William, Ravensmere was barking orders, trying to press through the crowd.
But William could not stop. Not yet.
Not while Phillip still stood.
Not while every bruise he laid upon him was an answer to the slander Clementine had just endured.
“You will not speak of her father in the same breath as her,” William roared, catching his brother by the front of his coat and shaking him once, hard.
“You will not set her up for blame because you cannot own your own cruelty. You drugged her. You cornered her. And when she rejected you, you tried to ruin her publicly for it. That is what you are.”
Phillip spat blood onto the floor and laughed, though there was less certainty in his actions now. “And what are you, William? Her champion? A little late for that, is it not?”
The words struck home because they were true.
Too late, perhaps.
Far too late.
The memory of Clementine turning from him, tears in her eyes, rose before him. He had asked for time to think, as though she were some problem to be solved, as though her heart could be set aside while he weighed old wounds against present love.
He had deserved every cutting word she gave him.
She had loved him, he was certain, and he had answered with hesitation.
God, if he had lost her…
The thought weakened him for an instant, enough that Phillip twisted from his grasp and slammed a fist into his stomach. Air left William’s lungs in a sharp rush. He staggered, but only one step. Then he straightened and launched himself at his brother with renewed purpose.
They crashed to the floor, the impact jarring up William’s spine. He rolled, came up first, and hauled Phillip up only to strike him cleanly across the jaw. His brother went down again, harder this time, his limbs less coordinated, his face already swelling.
William kneeled over him, chest heaving.
Around them, the ballroom had gone so quiet that every breath seemed thunderous. The chandeliers blazed overhead. Candlelight glinted off broken porcelain and spilled petals scattered across the polished floor. Society looked on, rapt and horrified, but William could not bring himself to care.
“William, enough.”
Ravensmere at last. The duke caught his arm as William moved to drag Phillip up again. His grip was firm, commanding, but not enough to fully restrain him if he truly wished to break free.
William looked down at his brother. Phillip blinked up at him through blood and fury, no longer smug, no longer untouchable. A marquess brought low before half the ton. It should have satisfied him. It did not. Because the injury that mattered was not here on this ballroom floor.
It was standing across the room in pale silk and wounded pride, watching him only now become the man he ought to have been all along.
He wrenched his arm out of Ravensmere’s grip, but did not move to strike again. Instead, he pointed at his brother. “If you ever speak to Lady Clementine again, if you whisper one more word against her name, I will end you.”
Phillip pushed himself up to one elbow and sneered through split lips. “You think she’ll have you after this?”
William swallowed hard. Because that was the question he had been asking himself. Was he too late? Would she see this brawl and know what he had failed to say? Or would she look at him and see only more violence, another Hartwell acting upon impulse and pride?
He slowly turned and sought her out. Across the ballroom, Clementine stood, one hand resting lightly upon Rosalind’s arm. Her face was composed, but he knew her well enough now to see the strain beneath it, the hurt she fought so valiantly to conceal.
Their eyes met, and in that instant, the ballroom disappeared. All the guests, all the whispers, all the ruin and scandal and past grievances fell away until there was only her.
He should have trusted his feelings, not pushed them aside and refused to believe he could be happy. Trusted her and what had grown between them, fragile and extraordinary all at once.
The past had teeth, yes. It could wound and echo and poison the present if given leave. But it could not be changed. Sarah was gone. The duke was dead. No amount of anger would alter what had been done to injure their families. What remained was choice, and William had made the wrong one.
Until now.
“I love her,” he said, not even realizing he had spoken aloud until the words hung there between himself and a room full of witnesses.
A murmur ran through the crowd. Ravensmere’s grip on his arm slackened. Phillip laughed, though the sound was broken and mocking. But William didn’t care who heard. He kept his gaze on Clementine.
“I was wrong,” he said, louder now, his voice rough with regret. “About all of it.” He didn’t know whether he spoke to Ravensmere, to the room, or only to her.
Perhaps all three. Because she deserved to hear the truth of his struggles.
She deserved more than the quiet apologies offered in drawing rooms. She deserved a man willing to stand before all of society and admit his failure.
“The past is not yours to bear,” he said.
“And I was a fool to make you carry it.” His throat tightened.
He had never been a man for public declarations.
Never had the inclination to lay open his heart before others.
Yet there was no dignity now in reserve.
Not when it had nearly cost him everything.
“If you will still have me,” he said, each word deliberate, each one a step nearer to the precipice, “I will spend the rest of my life proving that I know the difference.”
Silence followed. Heavy and waiting.
William’s pulse pounded in his ears as he looked at her. Would she believe him? Give him a second chance? He had fought for her honor, yes. But winning her back would require more than fists. It would require humility, patience, and trust. Things he ought to have offered from the first.
And as he stood before society, bruised and bleeding in the middle of the Kenworthy ball, William knew one truth with terrible clarity. He could not change the past. Not Sarah’s. Not the dukes. Not even his own shameful reaction to learning the truth of the past.
But he could choose what kind of man he would be from this night forward. Change the future for the better. And if Clementine allowed it…
He would choose her.