Chapter Fourteen The Siege of the Bingley Carriage #2
"I do love you." His voice emerged hoarse.
Broken. "I know how it looks. I know what the evidence suggests.
But Caroline—Miss Bingley—I am not here for your fortune.
I am here because the thought of you walking away from me makes it impossible to breathe.
I am here because you are the most infuriating, impossible, magnificent woman I have ever met, and I would rather be shipped to the West Indies to die of tropical fever than spend another moment pretending I do not—"
"Stop."
The word was quiet. Final. The sound of a door closing.
Caroline's face had gone very still. The fury was gone, replaced by a weariness that aged her ten years and made his heart crack down the middle.
"Just stop, Colonel. I cannot—" She pressed her gloved fingers to her temples. "I cannot do this. Not tonight. Not ever. You have made your gambit, and it has failed. Accept your defeat with whatever grace you can muster and leave me in peace."
"Caroline—"
"Miss Bingley." The correction was a bucket of ice poured over his head. "We are not intimates, Colonel. We never were. You were my strategic advisor, and I was your contingency plan. That is the sum total of our association. Do not insult us both by pretending otherwise."
The carriage swayed slightly as Lindon finally managed to extract the driver from his murderous rage. Richard heard footsteps on the cobblestones, heard Lindon's voice murmuring soothing platitudes about excellent braking and the importance of not committing murder in front of witnesses.
He looked at Caroline.
She looked back, and there was nothing in her eyes. No anger. No pain. Just a vast, terrible emptiness that made his chest feel like it had been caved in by a French cannonball.
"Go, Colonel." Her voice was barely a whisper. "Please. Just go."
Richard went.
He climbed out of the carriage on legs that did not feel like his own. The night air hit his face. Lindon was there, relief giving way to concern as he took in Richard's face.
"Fitzwilliam? What happened? Did she—"
The carriage door slammed shut. The driver cracked his whip—shooting Lindon a glare that promised future retribution involving horses and large wheels—and the vehicle lurched forward.
Richard stood on the pavement, watching the lanterns recede into the darkness, until the carriage turned a corner and disappeared.
She was gone.
She was gone, and she had laughed at him, and every word she had spoken was a blade that had found its mark.
How stupid do you think I am?
"Fitzwilliam." Lindon's hand landed on his shoulder. "Richard. Talk to me. What did she say?"
Richard could not answer. His throat had closed. His chest felt as if it had been hollowed out and filled with broken glass. He stood on the pavement in his ridiculous dress uniform, in the middle of Mayfair, at God-knew-what hour of the night, and felt his entire world crumble into dust.
He had told her he loved her and she had laughed in his face.
"I need to go home," he heard his voice say. It sounded very far away. It sounded like a stranger's voice, coming from a stranger's mouth.
"Of course. I will find us a hackney—"
"Take me to Matlock House, Edmund."
The use of his Christian name silenced any further objections. Lindon nodded once and went to flag down a passing cab.
Richard stood on the pavement and did not move. He was dimly aware of the hackney arriving. Dimly aware of Lindon guiding him into the seat like an invalid. The hackney rattled through the night.
"She did not believe you," Lindon said quietly. It was not a question.
"No."
"Did you explain about the deadline? That you do not actually want her money?"
"She knows about the deadline. That is the problem." Richard stared at his hands. They were shaking. He could not make them stop. "She thinks it is all a scheme. That I have been playing her from the beginning."
"Have you?"
Richard's head snapped up. "What?"
Lindon's voice was carefully neutral. "Have you been playing her? I am not accusing you. I am only asking. Because you deserve to be honest with yourself."
"No," he said finally. "It was never a scheme.
It started that way, maybe—or I told myself it did—but it stopped being strategy somewhere between the teashop and tonight.
I love her, Edmund. Genuinely. Stupidly.
The kind of love that makes a man chase a carriage through Mayfair and get his best friend trampled by horses. "
"Nearly get me—I was fine."
"You were three inches from becoming a decorative feature on the cobblestones."
"A calculated risk." Lindon shrugged. "Besides, the driver clearly had excellent reflexes. I told him so."
"He threatened to feed you to his horses."
"Passionate man. I respect that." Lindon leaned back against the seat. "So. What now? She does not believe you love her. She thinks you're after her fortune. How do you convince her otherwise?"
Richard stared out the window at the passing streets. "I do not know."
"That is not very helpful."
"I'm aware."
Matlock House loomed out of the darkness—a great stone monument to generations of Fitzwilliam wealth and consequence.
The windows were dark. The household was asleep.
Sensible people, all of them, who had gone to bed at reasonable hours and were not currently experiencing the complete dissolution of their romantic hopes.
Richard climbed out of the hackney.
"Lindon. Thank you. You are a good friend."
Lindon nodded and the hackney left.
Richard turned and walked upstairs, directly to his father's chambers.
The door was heavy oak, polished to a shine, bearing the Matlock crest in brass.
He had stood before this door a thousand times—as a boy seeking approval, as a young man receiving lectures, as an officer reporting on campaigns and requesting funds.
He had never knocked at three in the morning to announce his complete and total failure.
He knocked.
Silence. Then shuffling. Then a muffled curse and the scrape of a tinderbox.
The door opened.
The Earl of Matlock stood in his nightshirt, a banyan hastily thrown over his shoulders, his grey hair standing up in tufts like an irritated owl. He was sixty-two years old, and resembled a bear that had learned to walk upright, and his eyes—dark as Richard's—were sharp despite the hour.
"Richard?" The irritation gave way to concern. "What in God's name—it is the middle of the night. What has happened? Is it Robert? Georgiana? Is someone dead?"
"No one is dead. Everyone is fine."
"Then why are you standing at my door looking like you have been dragged behind a horse?"
Richard looked at his father, and took a breath.
"Ship me to the West Indies."
The Earl blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"Your deadline. Easter. Tick-tock. The marriage requirement.
" He met his father's eyes and felt a strange, cold calm settle over him.
He had lost everything and had discovered that rock bottom was surprisingly peaceful.
"I am not meeting it. I am not marrying for money.
Ship me to the West Indies. Let me die of the fever. I do not care anymore."
"Richard—"
"I found a woman, Father." His voice cracked.
He did not try to hide it. "I found a woman I actually love.
Not for her money, not for her connections, but for her.
For her sharp tongue and her ridiculous feathers.
And she laughed in my face. She thinks I am a fortune hunter.
She thinks every moment I spent with her was a calculation, a strategy, a scheme to secure her twenty thousand pounds before Easter. "
The Earl stood frozen in the doorway.
"The worst part—the absolute worst part—is that I cannot even blame her." Richard spread his hands. "From where she stands, every piece of evidence supports exactly that conclusion. What else is she supposed to think?"
"Richard—"
"I am done." The words came out flat. Final.
"I am done playing this game. I love her, Father.
I love Caroline Bingley. And she will never believe me, because I waited too long to tell her, and I was too proud to admit it, and now she thinks I am exactly the kind of man I have spent my entire life trying not to become. "
His voice broke on the last word.
"Ship me to the West Indies. Let me serve out my days in some godforsaken colonial outpost where the only thing trying to kill me is the climate.
At least there, I will not have to see her.
At least there, I will not have to know that I had one chance at happiness and I destroyed it through my own stupidity. "
Silence stretched between them.
The Earl studied his son—the haggard face, the red-rimmed eyes, the uniform that was rumpled and stained from alleyways and carriage-chasing and the general wreckage of the evening.
Then, very slowly, he stepped back from the doorway.
"Come in, Richard." His voice was quiet. Thoughtful. Not angry—which was somehow worse. "I think we need to talk."