Chapter Fifteen #2
Was that what he was doing?
Not only that, he feared. He was punishing her for making him want what he had spent half his life denying himself.
He had never actually wanted to be saved.
Until Eliza.
The realisation settled coldly in him. He had wanted her to be the exception. The answer. The one person before whom he might finally set down the armour and still survive.
But wanting did not make it possible.
Better to hurt her now, while the wound was survivable.
Better to be the villain than to risk becoming her tragedy.
He heard the carriage in the drive a little after noon.
William drew a breath and made himself turn from the window. Made himself cross to the chair by the cold fireplace, sitting with a deliberate casualness he did not feel. Made himself compose his features into an expression of mild regret, the face of a man ending a pleasant interlude, nothing more.
The door opened.
“William?”
She stood in the doorway in her walking dress, her bonnet in her hands, her eyes searching his face.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
And he was about to destroy her.
“Good afternoon.” His voice came out even, controlled. “I trust your journey was comfortable.”
Something flickered in her expression. “My journey?”
“There was no need to come in such haste.”
“You promised me an answer.”
“Yes.” He rose. “And I mean to give you one.”
She stepped into the room, still watching him with that too-perceptive gaze. “Something is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong. That is precisely the difficulty. Nothing has changed. I am still the man I have always been, and that man is not capable of giving you what you want.”
“What I want is you.”
“No.” He kept his voice gentle. Regretful. “What you want is the idea of me. The reformed rake. The wounded soul redeemed by the love of a good woman. It is a beautiful story, Eliza, but it is not real.”
“So you have not changed your mind.”
The question was quiet.
William felt it nonetheless.
“No.”
She stood very still.
“I see.”
The words were composed. Too composed.
For the first time since she had entered the room, she looked away from him.
Not in defeat.
In thought.
As though she were rearranging something inside herself.
“When you asked for time,” she said at last, “I believed you were struggling with a decision.”
“I was.”
“No.” Her gaze returned to his. “You were struggling with how to justify a decision you had already made.”
William said nothing.
The silence was answer enough.
A flash of hurt crossed her face. Not because she had lost him. Because she had trusted him.
“You let me hope.”
“Eliza.”
“You did.” Her voice did not rise. If anything, it grew quieter. “You asked for time. You promised me an answer. And all the while, you had already decided.”
“I was trying to spare you.”
A bitter laugh escaped her.
“There it is.”
His jaw tightened.
“There what is?”
“That certainty that you know what is best for everyone.” Tears glittered in her eyes, but her voice remained steady. “You never once considered that I might have the right to make my own choices.”
He had no words. Because she was right. Again.
She took a slow breath.
“I loved you enough to trust you with every vulnerable part of me.”
The words struck harder than any accusation.
“And now you are standing there asking me to believe that none of it meant anything.”
“It meant something.”
“Then stop talking as though it did not.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The room seemed painfully quiet.
At last, she looked at him, and the anger gave way to something infinitely worse.
Sadness.
“Tell me one thing honestly.”
William’s throat tightened.
“What?”
“Was I a mistake to you?”
“No.” He crossed to her without thinking, reaching for her, then stopped himself at the last moment.
He could not touch her. If he touched her, he would break.
“You were never a mistake. You are remarkable. Brave and beautiful and so full of hope that it makes me ache. But I am not the man to honour that hope. I am not capable of giving you the future you deserve.”
“Then why…” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, a gesture so vulnerable it nearly undid him. “Why make love to me as though I mattered, if you meant to do this?”
“Because I am selfish. Because I could not bear to let you go without…” He stopped, aware he was revealing too much. “It was a mistake. I should have ended this sooner. I am sorry.”
“Sorry.” The word came out bitter and hollow. “You are sorry.”
“I am.”
She stared at him for a long moment, grief and anger moving across her face before settling into something worse.
Understanding.
“You are not sorry,” she said finally. “You are afraid. And one day, when the fear is all you have left, I hope you remember that I tried to choose you.”
She drew herself up, wrapping her dignity around herself like armour.
“But I will not beg. I will not demean myself by pleading with a man who has already made up his mind.”
She turned towards the door.
“Eliza…”
“Do not.” She stopped but did not turn. “Do not say my name like that. As though you care. As though this is hurting you as much as it is hurting me.”
Her voice cracked.
“Just… do not.”
She walked out.
William listened to her footsteps in the hall, listened to the front door open and close.
Only when the silence had settled completely, only when he was certain she was gone, did he allow himself to collapse into the chair by the cold fireplace.
I love you, he thought, the words he would never say aloud.
But it was too late now.
The house was silent.
Not the comfortable silence of solitude, the kind William had cultivated for years. This was something else. Something hollow. The emptiness of a place that had briefly held warmth and was colder for its absence.
He sat in the chair for what might have been minutes or hours, staring at the cold fireplace, feeling nothing.
At some point, he poured himself a brandy.
Then another.
The hours passed. Servants came and went. Meals appeared and disappeared untouched. A letter arrived from London and remained unopened on his desk.
None of it seemed particularly important.
Only one thing felt real.
Eliza was gone.
And this time, she would not be coming back.
Late that evening, he found himself standing in the doorway of the bedchamber.
He did not enter.
After a moment, he turned away.
Tomorrow, he would return to society.
Tomorrow, he would resume the life he had always lived.
Tonight, there was only silence. And the uncomfortable knowledge that he had chosen it himself.