Chapter Twenty-Six
It was early morning and the ground was wet with dew. September had always been his favourite month. He loved the crisp mornings and the hint of yellow and orange as the leaves started to turn.
Today he hardly noticed the beauty of the estate. Everything but his mission had faded into the background.
He had buried his sister a little over a year ago, choosing a spot in the magnificent grounds of Ashmead Hall, the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Ashmead.
It had been her favourite of their many properties and it gave him a little comfort to think of her spirit roaming free around the grounds, as she had as a child.
Her grave lay at the crest of a gentle hill, overlooking the rolling countryside, with the hall far in the background beyond the lake.
‘Good morning, Catherine,’ he murmured, placing a hand upon the cold stone.
The grave was immaculately tended; Will had seen to it personally.
He visited without fail whenever he came to Sussex, and the gardeners had standing orders to keep the place clear of weeds and fallen leaves, as though his sister herself might scold him for any neglect.
He wished she would speak back to him. Theirs had been a close bond, strengthened after he’d become her guardian when they’d still been so young. Normally he could conjure her voice, her teasing, her unflinching wisdom. Yet this morning, she was silent.
‘I have created a terrible mess,’ he said, his fingers still resting on the smooth surface of the gravestone. ‘I fell in love.’
The words lingered in the air. Now that he had admitted it aloud, he felt the truth of it settle in his chest. It was not mere desire, nor fleeting infatuation. His feelings for Amelie had become something enduring, something that reached into his very core.
‘I denied it, of course,’ he went on, his voice rough.
‘Denied it to myself and, worse, denied it to her. When she spoke from her heart, I responded with cruelty. I told her she was not good enough to be my duchess. My duchess…’ He gave a bitter laugh.
‘The most unforgivable of insults, to the very woman who had given me back my will to live.’
Will paused, making himself confront the image of Amelie’s face when he had ignored her declaration of love.
‘My thoughts are so mixed up, I cannot fathom what to do. For so long I have focussed on my duty, on fulfilling the expectations everyone has of me. I think I wanted to do a good job, but more than that it was something to hide behind, an excuse to stop me from really living my life.’
He thought of his grief following Catherine’s death, this need to shut himself away from the world.
Only Amelie had been able to break through the walls he had built around himself.
With her patience and kindness, she had burst into Will’s life and revived him when he’d been struggling the most. How could he ever have thought she was not worthy?
Amelie was the very definition of goodness.
‘I think I was afraid,’ he said slowly. ‘Afraid of getting it wrong.’ He let out a sharp bark of laughter. In the end, he had got everything wrong.
Will bowed his head, the damp grass cool beneath his boots.
‘I told her she was not suitable to be a duchess,’ he whispered, unable to believe the words had come out of his mouth, shame clawing at him.
‘I uttered those words as though they were truth, when in fact they were the greatest lie. She is the best person you could ever meet. Yet I cast her aside because I was afraid of something tarnishing the Ashmead name. As if she could ever diminish it.’
He ran his fingertips along the carved letters of Catherine’s name. ‘I thought duty must come first.’
The silence pressed against him, heavy and unyielding. He desperately wanted to hear Catherine’s voice even though he knew it impossible.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine her as he had loved her the best: hair streaming out behind her, running through the grounds of Ashmead Hall, calling out for him to chase her before collapsing to the ground, giggling, when he’d drawn near.
Then he thought of the late afternoon when Catherine had extracted the promise from him.
She had asked him to plump up her pillows and help her sit up in bed.
Normally even when she felt weak and breathless she found it hard to keep a smile from her face, but that afternoon she had been deadly serious.
Will remembered how she had taken his hand and asked him to grant her this one thing—to take some time for himself, away from his duty, his responsibility, to do something that would make him happy.
At the time and in the months following her death, he had thought of it as Catherine’s way of helping him to heal, to make him stop for a little while and see the world outside of his duties to the dukedom and parliament, but now he realised it had been so much more than that.
It had been a promise not to see the world in such a black-and-white fashion; to understand that, although his sense of duty was important, it could not be the only ruling emotion.
There needed to be balance, space for happiness to bloom and develop.
As he opened his eyes, a ray of sun shone out from behind a cloud and Will felt something shift inside him.
He had behaved terribly; he hurt the woman he loved most in the world in the cruellest way.
Whatever the outcome, he needed to make amends.
He needed to find Amelie and tell her he was sorry, that he had been completely wrong.
She would make the finest duchess, and he would shield her from anyone who had something to say about her social standing or her family’s scandal.
It was what he should have told her a week ago when they were still in Grantchester.
The pain he had caused might be something she could never forgive, but he had to try all the same.
‘I must beg her forgiveness,’ he said quietly. ‘And then, if she will let me, I will spend every single day showing her how much I appreciate her.’
He straightened slowly, the pale sun glinting upon the stone, as though blessing his resolve. ‘If she can forgive me, my duty will be to make her happy each and every day.’
This was what his sister had asked of him when she had sought his vow not to think solely of duty, to take time for himself. To find a way to balance his own happiness with his responsibilities.
Will pressed a kiss to his fingertips and laid them upon the gravestone. ‘Wish me courage, dearest sister. For I mean to win her back.’