Chapter 28
Fiona read the letter three times, her vision blurring with tears.
He loved her. He had always loved her. And he had let her go anyway, because the fear was stronger than the love, because the voices in his head were louder than the voice in his heart.
She folded the letter carefully and tucked it back into her reticule, alongside the handkerchief. Then she pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window and wept.
She wept for the future they would never have. For the children they would never raise. For the life she had glimpsed, briefly and brilliantly, before it was snatched away.
She wept for Christian, alone in his castle, convincing himself he had done the right thing.
And she wept for herself, heading toward a world that no longer felt like home—because home, she had discovered, was not a place. It was a person.
And she had just left him behind.
Molly did not speak. She simply moved to sit beside her mistress, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and holding her as she cried.
Outside the carriage, the miles rolled past—hills and fields and villages, all the ordinary landscape of England, indifferent to the heartbreak happening within the small wooden box that carried two women toward London.
Fiona did not know how long she wept. Long enough for the tears to run dry, for her body to ache with exhaustion, for the sun to climb high in the sky and begin its descent toward the horizon.
Eventually, she raised her head from Molly’s shoulder and wiped her face with the handkerchief—Christian’s handkerchief, his mother’s handkerchief, the final token of a man who loved her deeply, yet not enough to overcome his fear.
“What will you do, miss?” Molly asked quietly. “When we reach London?”
Fiona considered the question. She could not go to her parents—not yet, not with her heart so raw and her grief so fresh. They would demand explanations, make accusations, try to repair the reputation she no longer cared about preserving.
But there was someone else. Someone who might understand.
“We shall go to Lady Ashworth,” she said at last. “Christian’s aunt. He once told me she is the only member of his family still living who ever treated him with kindness. Perhaps she can—perhaps she will know what ought to be done.”
It was a fragile hope, scarcely more than a whisper. But it was all she had.
And for now, it would have to be enough.