49 #2
She was divorcing Trevor. He had signed, or would sign, or perhaps the papers were already on their way.
Their marriage had ended long before a court acknowledged it.
She did not love him in the way that allowed claim.
She did not want his future. She had leaned on Sebastian hours ago and felt, through grief, the beginning of a different kind of safety.
There was no rightful place inside her for jealousy.
And yet the news entered the same chamber where the old humiliations were stored.
Vanessa beside Trevor at dinners. Vanessa wearing the necklace.
Vanessa calling, Trevor leaving. Vanessa's tears being answered while Dorothy's calls died unanswered in a hospital room.
Vanessa, who had held Dorothy's stolen medical file and threatened to expose the miscarriage, now standing before the city with a hand on her abdomen, claiming the one thing Dorothy had lost in silence.
The cruelty of the symmetry made Dorothy feel physically ill.
She pressed one hand against her stomach, then lowered it quickly when she realized what she had done.
Sebastian saw.
His face changed, but he remained where he was.
Victor did not.
He crossed the room, rage finally breaking through the old aristocratic discipline that usually kept it contained. "I will destroy that girl."
"Grandfather," Dorothy said.
Her voice sounded distant.
"She did this deliberately."
"Yes."
"She waited until this, until tonight, knowing what she stole from you, knowing what she threatened, and then she made this performance with a child."
Dorothy looked toward the window, where the dark glass reflected Sebastian's outline near her own seated figure. "Yes."
Victor stopped.
The simplicity of her answer frightened him more than tears.
Hale spoke quietly. "The first clips are already spreading. Most major outlets have not published yet, but social accounts are moving quickly. They are connecting it to your pending divorce, Miss Perry, and to the earlier rumor involving Mr. Hood."
Sebastian's eyes sharpened. "They are bringing Dorothy into it?"
"Of course they are," Dorothy said before Hale could answer.
The room turned to her.
Her mouth curved slightly, but there was no humor in it.
"The city does not know how to discuss a woman's pain unless another woman is placed beside it for comparison. I was the unwanted wife. Then I was the hidden heiress. Then I was the woman suspected of cheating. Now I will be the barren, bitter ex-wife while Vanessa becomes the pregnant first love."
Victor's face went white.
"Do not call yourself that," he said.
"I am not calling myself that. I am telling you what they will."
Sebastian crossed the room then.
This time, he did not ask from across the distance. He came to stand beside her chair, close enough that his presence cut through the air around her without forcing her to take it. "They will say it because Vanessa wants them to say it."
Dorothy looked up at him. "Does that make it less humiliating?"
"No."
The honesty steadied her more than comfort would have.
She breathed once, then again, trying to find the composed Dorothy Perry the world had learned to fear. She found pieces of her. Not all. Enough to sit upright.
"I have no right to care," she said.
Victor's expression twisted. "Dorothy."
"I don't." Her voice grew sharper, because if she did not make the sentence hard, it would break in the middle. "I left him. I asked for divorce. I told him he does not get to mourn my child. I cannot then sit here feeling wounded because another woman claims she is carrying his."
Sebastian looked at her for a long moment. "You can."
She shook her head.
"You can," he repeated, not loudly, but with a firmness that stopped her. "Pain does not require legal standing."
Dorothy looked away because the sentence came too close to mercy.
"I hate this," she whispered.
The room fell silent.
She had not meant to say it aloud.
But once spoken, it became impossible to take back.
"I hate that she can still do this to me," Dorothy said, the words coming slowly now, each one stripped of the dignity she preferred.
"I hate that I can know Trevor failed me, know I do not want to return to him, know she is cruel, know this is performance, and still feel as if I am back in that ballroom watching him put diamonds around her neck."
Sebastian's hand closed once at his side.
Victor turned away, one hand covering his mouth.
Hale lowered his gaze to the papers with the discretion of a man who understood he was witnessing something more private than the legal emergency that caused it.
Dorothy continued because stopping would have meant choking on it.
"She always knew how to make me feel replaced. That was her gift. She could stand beside him without asking whether she belonged there, and everyone in the room would adjust around her confidence until I was the one who looked out of place. Now she has found the cruelest version of it.
She stands in a lobby and says she is pregnant, and suddenly I am back where I was, watching her receive what I lost."
Her voice broke on the final word.
Sebastian crouched beside her chair.
He did not touch her until she looked at him.
When she did, he offered his hand, palm up.
Dorothy stared at it.