Chapter 34
“Good God, you look like death.”
Ernest stood in the study doorway, immaculate in a dove gray morning coat, his expression cycling through shock, concern, and irritation in rapid succession.
“How did you get in?” Aaron didn’t bother turning from his contemplation of the empty crystal.
“Your butler let me in. After I convinced him I wasn’t here to rob the silver.” Ernest closed the door behind him with deliberate care. “Thornton seems to think you’ve given orders not to be disturbed. By anyone. Ever.”
“Perceptive man, Thornton.”
Ernest crossed the room, his footsteps muffled by a Persian carpet that had probably cost more than most men earned in a lifetime. Wasteful. Everything in this room was wasteful. Precious objects accumulated by generations of dukes who thought possession meant something.
“When did you last eat?” Ernest lifted the empty decanter, frowning at its weight. Or lack thereof.
“Tuesday.”
“It’s Friday.”
“Then Wednesday.” Aaron finally turned from the window where he’d been watching nothing happen in the garden for the past hour. Or possibly three. Time had become negotiable.
Ernest’s expression shifted to genuine alarm. “Christ, Aaron. You look like you’ve been sleeping in your clothes.”
“That would require sleeping.”
His friend settled into the chair across from Aaron’s desk, a deliberate invasion of space that would have irritated him if he could have summoned the energy for irritation.
“The Densham ball was two nights ago. You were expected.”
“Was I?” Aaron found his glass, remembered it was empty, and set it down again. “How disappointing for them.”
“The entire ton is talking about your absence. And about the Burrows family’s return to Sulton House.”
Louise’s name hit him like a physical blow. Aaron’s fingers clenched involuntarily, knuckles white against dark wood.
“Some are suggesting there was impropriety. That you discovered something unsavory about the family and cast them out.”
“Let them suggest what they like.”
“Others think Louise refused an offer from you. That she found your attentions unwelcome.”
A laugh escaped Aaron, harsh and bitter as the dregs of brandy coating his throat. “If only that were true.”
Ernest leaned forward, elbows on knees, the posture of a man preparing for battle. “Then what is true? Why are they gone?”
“Because it was time.”
“Bollocks.”
Aaron’s gaze snapped to his friend, a warning that would have sent lesser men scurrying. Ernest didn’t even blink.
“I saw how you looked at her at the Ashworth ball. Like she was the sun, and you’d been living in darkness your whole life.” Ernest’s voice gentled, which was worse than his censure. “And she looked at you the same way.”
“It doesn’t matter how we looked at each other.”
“Doesn’t it? Aaron, you’re destroying yourself. Look at this room. It smells like a distillery. You haven’t bathed in days. When did you last leave this study?”
Aaron turned back to the window, where winter light exposed every dead thing in the garden. The rosebushes Buttercup had destroyed. The bench where Emily had performed Shakespeare. The path where Louise had walked every morning, her copper hair catching sunlight that seemed brighter then.
“Cecilia takes that beast to visit them.” The words emerged without permission. “Every morning. I watch them leave from here. The dog knows where they’re going. His tail starts wagging before they even reach the gate.”
“Then why don’t you go with them?”
“Because I have no right.” Aaron’s hand pressed against the cold glass, leaving a print that would annoy the staff. “I had my chance to claim her, to offer her everything, and I chose cowardice instead.”
Ernest rose, moving to stand beside him at the window. “So, choose differently now.”
“It’s too late.”
“Says who? Some arbitrary rule you’ve created to torture yourself?” Ernest gripped Aaron’s shoulder, forcing him to turn. “You’re not your father, Aaron. You never were.”
“You didn’t see him.” The words scraped out raw, bleeding. “You didn’t watch him collect women like artifacts, use them, discard them. You didn’t see the wreckage he left behind.”
“No, but I see the wreckage you’re creating now.” Ernest’s grip tightened. “You’re so afraid of destroying Louise that you’re destroying yourself instead. And her. Cecilia says she looks like a ghost.”
Aaron jerked away, needing distance from truths he couldn’t bear. “She’ll recover. They always do.”
“Listen to yourself. ‘They always do.’ You’re already categorizing her with your father’s victims.” Ernest followed him across the room, relentless. “Except your father’s women didn’t love him. Not really. They loved his wealth, his power, his attention. Louise loves you.”
“Stop.”
“She loves the man who protected her sister. Who gave her shelter without demanding payment? Who found her worthless brother and brought him home.”
“I said stop.”
“She loves the man who sits in this study drinking himself into a stupor rather than risk hurting her.”
Aaron spun, his fist connecting with Ernest’s jaw before conscious thought could intervene. His friend staggered but didn’t fall, hand going to his face with something like satisfaction.
“There he is.” Ernest worked his jaw experimentally. “The man instead of the martyr.”
“Get out.”
“No.” Ernest straightened his cravat with deliberate calm. “Hit me again if you like. At least it’s better than this walking death you’ve chosen.”
Aaron’s hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. Violence hummed through his veins, seeking an outlet, finding none that wouldn’t prove he was exactly the monster he feared.
“She left.” The words came out broken. “I told her to go, and she went.”
“Because you gave her no choice.”
“I gave her every choice! I could have taken her that first night when she threw herself at me. It could have ruined her completely. Instead, I protected her virtue, gave her shelter, and saved her brother.”
“And then abandoned her when she needed you most.” Ernest pressed a handkerchief to his split lip, the white linen blooming red. “You did everything perfectly except the one thing that mattered. You didn’t fight for her.”
Aaron sank into his chair, the fight leaving as quickly as it had come. “I don’t know how.”
“Yes, you do.” Ernest perched on the desk edge, informal and insistent. “You fought Wigram’s men. You fought to find George. You fought everything except your own fear.”
Through the window, he could see Cecilia returning with Buttercup. The dog’s head hung low, tail dragging through mud that would horrify the staff. Even from this distance, Aaron could read dejection in every line of the beast’s body.
“She deserves better than what I can offer.”
“What you can offer?” Ernest’s voice rose with frustration. “You can offer her wealth, status, security. More importantly, you can offer her love if you’d stop being so bloody terrified of it.”
“Love.” Aaron tested the word, finding it sharp as glass. “My father loved my mother. It destroyed them both.”
“Your father was obsessed with your mother. There’s a difference.” Ernest slid off the desk, crossing to the brandy cabinet. He pulled out a fresh bottle, pouring two glasses despite the early hour. “Love requires equality, vulnerability, trust. Your father only knew possession.”
He handed Aaron a glass. The amber liquid caught the light like Louise’s eyes in candlelight.
“Every day you waste is a day you can’t get back.” Ernest raised his own glass in mock toast. “Every night she spends crying over you is a night stolen from potential happiness.”
“How do you know she’s crying?”
“Because Cecilia told me. Because I have eyes. Because anyone who’s seen you together knows you’re two halves of something that should be whole.”
Aaron drained the brandy in one burning swallow. It did nothing to fill the hollow space where his heart used to be.
“It’s been five days.” The admission emerged raw. “Five days, three hours, and approximately twenty minutes since she left.”
“You’re counting.”
“I can’t stop.” Aaron pressed his palms against his eyes. “Everything reminds me of her. This morning, Thornton tried to serve me eggs the way I’ve eaten them for years, and I nearly threw the plate because Louise takes hers differently.”
Ernest set down his glass with deliberate precision. “Then go to her.”
“And say what? ‘Forgive me for being a coward’? ‘Please come back so I can continue being terrified of hurting you’?”
“How about ‘I love you’?” Ernest moved toward the door. “Novel concept, I know. Actually telling someone how you feel instead of brooding in dramatic isolation.”
He paused at the threshold, looking back with something between pity and exasperation.
“She won’t wait forever, Aaron. Someone else will see her worth, offer her what you won’t. And then you’ll spend the rest of your life knowing you had everything and threw it away because you were too afraid to be happy.”
The door closed with finality, leaving Aaron alone with empty glasses and bitter truths.
Outside, the garden lay dormant under gray skies. But beneath the frozen ground, seeds waited. Spring would come whether or not he wanted it. Life would continue its relentless forward motion while he sat frozen in this moment of self-imposed exile.
Somewhere across London, Louise was probably helping Emily with her lessons. Maybe braiding her hair. Maybe pretending everything was fine while her heart broke a little more each day.
Aaron poured another brandy, raised it to his lips, then set it down untouched.
Ernest was right. Every day was a theft from potential happiness.
But knowing that and doing something about it remained two different things, separated by a chasm of fear he didn’t know how to cross.
The clock chimed noon, marking another hour lost, another moment when he could have chosen differently and didn’t.
Aaron turned back to the window and continued his vigil over the empty garden, counting minutes like a miser counts coins, knowing the wealth of time was slipping through his fingers but unable to close his fist to stop it.