Chapter 26 #2
The simple sentence pressed hard against Emmeline’s already aching heart. She wanted to defend Rowan. She wanted to resent him. She wanted, foolishly, to hear his step in the hall and feel everything repair itself by force of wanting.
Instead, she reached for the toast. “Perhaps we should not sit indoors all morning. Biscuit has been looking very solemn. I believe he requires a walk.”
At the sound of his name, Biscuit emerged from beneath the chair with toast crumbs on his nose and an expression of deep innocence.
Aaron’s face brightened despite himself. “He does.”
Juliet gave Emmeline a grateful look, but the gratitude was edged with guilt. Emmeline could not bear it for long.
They went out after breakfast. The morning was pale and cool, the sky washed with thin clouds. Biscuit darted ahead as though entrusted with the safety of the entire party, pausing every few steps to investigate stones, leaves, and suspicious patches of grass.
Aaron chased after him with a laugh that softened the worry on his face. “Biscuit, no! That is not food.”
“Perhaps he is conducting scientific inquiries,” Emmeline called.
“Into dirt?”
“Many gentlemen have built careers on less.”
Aaron laughed properly then, and the sound steadied something in her. This she could do. Whatever had happened with Rowan, whatever cold arrangement now lay between them, she could still love the child who had somehow become hers.
Juliet walked beside her in silence for several moments, twisting her hands.
When Aaron moved farther ahead, with Miss Harrow following close enough to intervene if Biscuit attempted treason, Juliet finally spoke.
“I have ruined things between you,” Juliet whispered. “I am so sorry.”
Emmeline’s breath caught.
The words found the wound too precisely. For a moment, she could not answer. She watched Aaron crouch to untangle Biscuit’s lead from a shrub, his small hands careful, his expression intent. The sight gave her something to hold onto.
“You did not ruin anything,” she said at last. “The difficulty was already there.”
“That is generous, but not honest.”
A faint, sad smile touched Emmeline’s mouth. “I am trying to be both. It is proving difficult.”
Juliet looked at her then, and the remorse in her face was almost unbearable. “He is angry with you because of me.”
“He is angry because I hurt him.”
“And because I asked you to.”
“Yes,” Emmeline admitted.
Juliet pressed a hand to her mouth, eyes shining again. “I should have gone home the moment you found me.”
“Perhaps,” Emmeline said softly. “But fear rarely asks wisdom for permission before it acts.”
Juliet gave a broken little laugh through her tears.
Emmeline said nothing.
Juliet looked down at her trembling hands.
“I keep telling myself I ran because Rowan would not have listened. Because he would have forced me to go through with it. Because he would have chosen duty and reputation over me.” Her voice broke, and when she lifted her eyes again, there was shame in them now, raw and clear.
“But that is not true. Not entirely. Perhaps not at all.”
Emmeline’s chest tightened.
“If I had gone to him,” Juliet continued, “if I had stood before him plainly and told him I could not marry Lord Wellfield, I do not truly believe he would have dragged me to the altar.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “He would have been angry. Disappointed. But he would not have forced me.”
“Juliet…”
“I was a coward,” Juliet said, and the words came out with such quiet violence that Emmeline fell silent.
“I was afraid of his anger, so I made him crueler in my mind than he had ever been to me. I made him into someone I could run from without guilt. And then, when everything fell apart, I kept hiding behind that version of him because it was easier than admitting I had wronged him terribly.”
Emmeline looked at her, seeing the girl beneath the scandal, beneath the deception, beneath the chaos she had caused.
And even with her own heart aching, she could not hate her.
How could she? Emmeline knew too well what it meant to stand before a life arranged by others and feel the walls closing in.
But understanding fear did not make its consequences disappear.
“It is not wrong to have been afraid,” Emmeline said. “But it is wrong to let fear make a villain of someone who loved you.”
Juliet closed her eyes, and the tears slipped faster. “I know.”
“And it is wrong to let others suffer for the choice you made.”
Juliet nodded, pressing one hand against her stomach as though the truth pained her there. “I know that too.”
“Then tell him.”
Juliet looked at her again.
“Tell him the truth,” Emmeline said gently. “Tell him you were afraid. Tell him you were unfair. Tell him you are sorry.”
Juliet’s mouth trembled. “Do you think he will forgive me?”
Emmeline thought of Rowan’s face the previous night. The coldness. The hurt. The way he had said wise as though he had sealed them both into separate rooms.
“I do not know,” she said.
Juliet drew in a shaking breath. Then she nodded once.
“I will beg his forgiveness,” she whispered. “I owe him that much.”
Aaron looked back, waving one hand. “Biscuit found a stick!”
Emmeline lifted her hand in return. “A triumph.”
Aaron beamed.
Juliet watched him with open longing. “He has grown.”
“Yes,” Emmeline said. “He has.”
“And you love him.”
The words were simple. They nearly undid her.
Emmeline looked at Aaron, at the boy laughing as Biscuit tried to drag a stick twice his size along the path, and the ache inside her shifted into something tender and absolute.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Juliet’s face crumpled again, but this time there was relief in it too. “I am glad.”
Emmeline swallowed, forcing the tears back because she had spent enough of them in private and would not spend them here. “So am I.”
They walked on, the puppy bounding ahead, Aaron’s laughter rising into the pale morning, Juliet quiet beside her. Emmeline smiled when the boy looked back, called encouragement when Biscuit tripped over his own paws, and kept her voice bright enough that no child would hear the fracture beneath it.
Inside, she felt hollow. It felt as though something precious had been placed in her hands for one brief, impossible season, warm and alive, and then taken away before she had learned how to hold it safely.