Chapter 10
Elowyn covered her face with a pillow, her heart in a thousand tiny pieces.
A horrible, aching feeling. Never mind that she’d been the one to declare they owed each other nothing—that she’d told him to let them part on good terms. She hadn’t realized, until she saw his back as he walked away from her, how much she wanted him to stay.
How much she didn’t actually want the distance she insisted on.
How could she be so foolish?
In the end, wasn’t that just her running away? Retreating when something didn’t turn out the way she had planned? And hadn’t he agreed each time she insisted on going their separate ways? The man clearly didn’t want her complicating his “business.”
Urgh. She wanted to rage and wail at the injustice of life and this nightmarish season, but all she could do was lie numbly on her bed and silently scream into her pillow.
You just didn’t want to get hurt, Elowyn.
The irony.
She did get hurt. How many times had she relived that moment? His cold words. His even colder back. She couldn’t even count. A thousand, probably. Which explained her heart. It broke a little more each time she relived that moment.
“I shall challenge him to a duel,” Isadora announced.
Elowyn pulled the pillow from her face and groaned.
“Please don’t do that.” They’d been crowded with her on her bed for the past two days.
However, she couldn’t be more grateful for their presence.
She might have gone insane from her brother’s growls alone.
The only reason he hadn’t gone pounding on Mandeville’s door was because she’d made him promise.
But still . . .
Her season was ruined.
She was ruined. Well, partly ruined, at least. Ruined without being a pariah, she should say.
People were afraid to stir rumors of her.
A small mercy. However, Mandeville’s crude remarks had sparked so many fires for Lady Gabrielle, she had retreated to the country.
Elowyn couldn’t muster up sympathy for the woman.
The duke’s ruthlessness, on the other hand . . .
She loved even that part of him.
How cruel life was that when she finally found the person of her dreams, he could only exist in her dreams. Even if she could try again next season, even if she hadn’t been thoroughly compromised, her heart had been. Her heart didn’t want to continue.
“I’ll be your second,” Persephone piped up, her face turning pure evil. “I still can’t believe he’d been so gloriously cruel to Lady Gabrielle. The man deserves a knighthood.”
“She deserved it,” Isadora muttered darkly. “She should never have tried to trap a man like him in marriage in the first place or take out her jealousy on Elowyn.”
“A duel is not the answer.”
“You have black circles beneath your eyes, he should pay for them,” Persephone said darkly.
“Fine, challenge him to a duel then. Just don’t kill him.”
“Love him till the end, won’t you?” Persephone said with a mutter.
Her heart clenched hard. Yes. “My life has turned into a Shakespearean play.”
A beat of silence. “It’s not that bad,” Isadora murmured.
Elowyn didn’t agree. “Shall we just call my life The Tragedy of Elowyn’s Lost Seasons.”
Persephone sighed. “I should never have abandoned you with him for archery.”
Isadora nodded, looking regretful. “And lawn bowls.”
“Please do not blame yourselves. You couldn’t have known Lady Gabrielle would arrive at that moment. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Besides, if you ever find yourself in similar situations, I’ll be sure to abandon you, too.”
Her friends sent her eager looks.
“We give you our permission,” Persephone chirped, Isadora nodding along.
“I can’t believe she had Mandeville followed,” Isadora said with a scowl. “Something is wrong with that woman.”
Ah, yes. That was one of the rumors that were spreading rampant. Apparently, most of Gabrielle’s friends had abandoned her side. “I think her uncle encouraged her,” Elowyn admitted. “Mandeville alluded to that much in our dance.”
“He tried to warn you?” Persephone scoffed. “So the man has a heart after all.”
Elowyn’s throat went tight.
Yes.
And no.
There was another side to him, but it was not a side he wished to display. But Elowyn had caught those glimpses in their encounters. Her gaze drifted to the chair by the writing desk, to the jacket still draped over its back. His scent was gone. Just like the man.
“I still can’t believe you fell in love with that man,” Persephone murmured. “Is this the legendary love at first sight?”
I still can’t believe I told him to leave.
Isadora swatted Persephone, sending her a warning look.
Elowyn shook her head, picking at a loose thread on the pillowcase until it started to fray.
She wanted to know herself, quite frankly.
“I don’t know. Who knows what the heart yearns for and decides to fall for.
I do not regret anything, however.” Despite how it had ended.
She had still experienced her first kiss, her first dance, her first love.
That wasn’t nothing.
That was everything.
But she should move on. But . . . Was that even possible? Her gaze returned to the jacket. She should return it, right?
***
In all of Julien’s life, he’d only ever regretted one damn thing—not being able to save his mother as Silkin drove a dagger into her.
Of course, the rational part of him now knew he had only been a boy.
Unfortunately, regret did not distinguish age.
What did it care about logic, or physics, or the sheer impossibility of a child overpowering a grown killer?
The blasted emotion wore the skin of a grown man’s failure.
And that single failure had become the foundation upon which every other choice in his life was built.
In a way, it demanded the strength of the man he was now, to answer for the helplessness of the boy he had been. But did that matter when the past could not be rewritten, no matter how strong he became? And now he had one more regret in his life.
Lady Elowyn Price.
He was failing.
Again.
Correction, he had failed.
Again.
That’s all. Two words, and he’d made all their moments sound like nothing at all—which was, he told himself, precisely the point. “Nothing” could not be taken away from him. If this was the case, then why the bloody hell was he consumed by loss, and the plaguing thought: What the devil had he done?
The right thing?
Then why the blazes did it feel so damn punishing?
“You look like shite, old chap.”
Julien looked up from the bottle he was nursing to Wrath. The man was cleanly shaven and fresh, whereas he, on the other hand, was pretty sure he’d spent two days drowning in White’s. Even the servers had started to circle him to avoid the stench of his misery.
“I am shite.”
“Can’t argue there.” Wrath dragged out a chair and sank down, regarding him. “You ruined two women in one fell swoop. Remarkable.”
“Don’t bloody jest,” he growled. “I only ruined one.”
“If you believe that, Mandeville, you really are a damn idiot.”
“I made things clear.” There shouldn’t be any rumors that harmed her.
“No harm no foul, then? You didn’t see Lady Elowyn’s face. The ruin you caused was not so much her reputation as something else.”
Julien cursed, then drained his glass and poured another. “I can’t take it back.”
Wrath arched a brow. “Do you even want to?”
“Yes.” Christ yes. He’d do anything to take it back.
He rubbed his eyes. They bloody burned. “But I can’t.
I can’t turn back time.” But he could ruin.
And Dansbury, oh the things he had in store for him.
He’d already been stripped of his last hope at the Duke Alliance and had been cut loose by Cranbrook the moment the scandal broke.
Julien had also put out word that whoever stood beside that arse, stood against him.
His political ambitions were just as ruined as his niece’s marriage prospects.
“You don’t need to turn back time, Mandeville. You just need to bloody decide what to do with yours. Go apologize.”
Was it truly that damn simple?
He didn’t know. But was that even the point?
What happened to the conviction he had clung to at the disastrous bloody tea party?
It had dwindled, that’s what. He couldn’t even remember why he had done what he’d done.
Silkin, yes. But what the hell of him? The blackguard would be gone soon.
Did the wildflower even have to know about this part of him?
He could hide it all his life if need be.
If it meant he could always see her smile. So why had he been such an idiot?
It won’t work.
For how long could a man split himself in two before one half started rotting the other?
He didn’t know when the wanting-out had started.
Somewhere between the first moment he saw her and the last, probably.
He only knew that some nights, lying awake running through Silkin’s downfall, he’d catch himself wishing he could simply stop.
Not because he’d forgiven the man. God, no.
But because he was so damned tired of carrying him.
He just didn’t know how a man put down twenty years of purpose and still knew who he was after.
“What else are you going to do?” Wrath asked. “What comes after all your revenge? What comes after all this destruction?”
“Why don’t you bloody tell me, oh wise one,” Julien muttered, taking another swig. The man knew just how to take a hammer to his heart.
“Your grave, Mandeville. That’s what comes next if you don’t claim the only person who could drag you back out. Go get the woman you love. Make her yours. Christ, you’d save me a lot of trouble in the future.”
The woman he loved . . .
Ah, Christ. “She hates me.”
“You don’t know that.”
Julien shook his head. “No, she doesn’t want me near her. I ruined everything. I don’t know how to face her.” He suddenly laughed. “It seems I’ve dug my grave after all.” And he, the empty, lonely, corpse, just needed to lie in it.
“You can still climb out.”
Could he?
Harsh laughter bellowed through the room, and Julien lifted his head to scowl at the disturbance. Who the devil—
Christ.
Just what he needed.
No, you fool. Exactly what he needed. His mind raced with a plan.
If he didn’t have the confidence to face his wildflower by himself, what better way than be dragged to her feet.
Julien rose from the table. “Well, well, what do we have here?” He sent the man a saucy grin.
“Zachary Price. How’s your sister doing? ”