Chapter 33
Selina might not have been speaking to the groom, but there was no stopping the wedding preparations. The days blurred together, bringing her closer to the one where she would have to decide if she would walk down the aisle to Philip or walk away completely.
The shame would ruin me. I would be unmarriageable.
One broken understanding might eventually be overlooked, but two? It would be the end of her prospects.
Then again, if Philip was certain about wanting to remain childless, that was an end to her prospects too.
She had barely left her room since her rescue from Lord Ramsbury’s clutches. The Dowager Duchess had tried to cheer her up with the altered wedding gown, fresh from the modiste, but Selina hadn’t even put it on. It sat in the wardrobe in a cloth covering—unseen, untouched, and unworn.
A knock sounded at the chamber door.
“Who is it?” Selina called.
There was no answer, just her two friends bursting in.
“Come on,” Lizzy said. “It is a fine day, and you are not spending it in this room.”
Melody offered an apologetic look. “We know you have had a difficult time, Selina, but there is nothing to fear here anymore. No one is going to hurt you.”
“Yes, exactly.” Lizzy cleared her throat. “There is no danger anymore, and people are starting to wonder where you are.”
Selina turned back to the notes she had been writing to try to make sense of her mind. She crumpled the paper into a ball.
“I do not care what people are wondering. Let them wonder,” she muttered. “I am quite content in this room.”
Her friends came closer, Lizzy leaning against the desk and Melody perching on the nearby window seat.
“What is the matter, Selina?” Lizzy asked, somewhat impatiently. “I thought you would be happy now that you are back here, with the wedding to look forward to.”
“If you are worried about Lord Ramsbury,” Melody interjected, “then you needn’t be. He was sentenced this morning. He has been sent into exile; he really will not trouble you again. By all accounts, he has chosen to spend his exile in Spain.”
It was far enough, certainly, but that wasn’t the problem.
“Have you tried on your wedding dress yet?” Lizzy said cheerily. “That might cheer you up, get you feeling more bridal, more ready to become my sister-in-law.”
Her friends were smiling with such encouragement that Selina hated to burst their good humor. Yet she could not pretend either.
“I am not sure that there will be a wedding,” she admitted quietly, tears pricking her eyes.
“What?” Lizzy straightened.
“But… everyone is making final preparations,” Melody said, frowning. “Why would there not be a wedding? Do you need more time after your ordeal? Of course, everyone would understand, but you should really say something sooner rather than—”
Selina shook her head. “I do not think that more time would change anything.”
“Selina, what is going on?” Lizzy’s voice was harder than before.
This was, after all, supposed to be a wedding between her brother and her friend. The moment that would bring Selina into her family.
Selina scrunched the paper ball tighter in her hand. “Your brother wants to end your father’s bloodline with him.” She took a steadying breath. “He doesn’t want children… and I do not think I can marry someone who will not allow me to be a mother.”
Lizzy’s eyebrows shot up. “Of all the stupid, selfish… Well, I can solve this. I shall go and have a word with my brother right this minute.”
“No!” Selina lunged to grab her friend’s hand, stopping her. “No, don’t. It will only make things worse. We have spoken about it, and his mind won’t be changed. He does not want to take the risk that any child of ours might grow up to be like your father.”
“Our father was a monster because his father was one,” Lizzy said with a scowl.
“I have heard my grandmama speak of it a thousand times. How sorry she was that she didn’t take her son away when he was little, to be raised with kindness and gentle discipline, where my grandfather wouldn’t be able to reach him. ”
Selina frowned. “Philip said your father was wicked from birth. That he did terrible things as a child.”
“Because he was allowed to, by his father,” Lizzy shot back, exasperated.
“My grandfather was despicable. He wanted my father to be wicked, so he raised him that way, encouraged him to be cruel. Grandmama wasn’t even allowed to see him for the first years of his life.
By the time she was, it was already too late.
He was unkind toward her too, just as my grandfather had planned. ”
“What?” Selina whispered. “Why didn’t Philip mention that?”
Lizzy rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know, perhaps because he was never told. He was rarely permitted to spend time with Grandmama, and when he was, it was under Father’s supervision.”
She shook her head, her hands balled into fists. “He suffered because of our father. Suffered in a way that… I was spared because I was fortunate enough to be born a girl. Therefore, invisible, unimportant, free to be placed in Grandmama’s care.”
“Suffered how?” Selina sat on the edge of her seat.
A muscle twitched in Lizzy’s jaw. “He was beaten, he was berated, he was punished for the slightest mistake and for no mistake at all.”
She paused. “It is probably not my place to say, but someone must. He had a stammer as a child. Our father was embarrassed by it, thought it was a sign of weakness. I was too young to witness all of my father’s cruelty toward him, but my first memory is of Philip being struck across the face when he asked for the salt and could not get the word out. ”
Selina’s heart cracked.
“When he was sixteen,” Lizzy continued, “Father removed him from Eton and sent him away to war. Claimed the teachers were useless because they couldn’t do anything about his stammer.”
“Sixteen?” Selina choked out.
A boy in society was pretty much considered a man by then, but even so, that was so very young. No more than a child, really. A child sent to war by his own father.
Lizzy nodded. “My brother remained a soldier for fourteen years, until our father died. I rarely saw him when he was on leave. He never stayed long, for obvious reasons, though all that fighting somehow got rid of his stammer.” She shrugged.
“My father would occasionally suggest that Philip could come home now, but Philip refused.”
“Up until your father died,” Melody said quietly, her eyes wide behind her spectacles.
“Exactly.” Lizzy puffed out a breath. “Although it seems my brother did not leave his idiocy on the battlefield. What is he thinking? Surely, he would rather prove that there is nothing wrong with the men of his bloodline? I mean, there is certainly nothing wrong with the women.”
Selina almost cracked a smile, but as a faint chuckle reached the back of her throat, it choked into a sob.
“Oh, Selina…” Melody’s arms went around her.
Lizzy’s arms soon joined, the two holding the brokenhearted bride with all the force of their love and affection.
If that could have been enough to fix things, Selina knew she would have been healed.
But it was not enough. Their embrace could not put her back in Philip’s embrace, and she could never return to that affection unless he changed his mind.
An impossible task.
“He is resolute,” Selina whispered into Melody’s shoulder, her tears soaking through her friend’s dress. “I… may understand better now, but… I don’t think I can persuade him.”
“And you truly desire motherhood?” Melody asked softly.
Selina burrowed her face deeper into her friend’s shoulder. “I do.” She gasped in a breath. “I didn’t realize how much I wanted it, but… I do. I cannot marry him. Oh, heaven help me, I cannot…”
The answer was a vivid ember in her mind, burning.
She had gone back and forth during her self-incarceration inside her chambers, but now that she had the support of her friends—both physical and emotional—she had her conclusion without doubt.
If Philip did not change his mind, she could not marry him. It was as simple, devastating, and heartbreaking as that.
“I ought to box his ears,” Lizzy muttered. “Are you sure you do not want me to speak to him?”
Selina could barely choke out the word no.
What could his sister do to convince him that Selina could not, aside from leaving bruises? No, he had made his choice, and so had she.
Even if it ruined her.
Then again, if I cannot marry Philip, I do not want anyone else.
So, perhaps this was all for the best.
Her father would not agree, and would likely lose his mind, but he would just have to live with it, same as her.
I have my answer.