Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The fire crackled in the grate of Hugo’s study, spitting sparks that flared and faded like his thoughts.
He was supposed to meet with Dominic and Laurence at their usual gentlemen’s club, but he had sent word of a headache that was not a complete lie, for one was starting to form at his temples.
By morning, considering the amount of brandy he intended to consume, there would absolutely be a headache to complain about.
He sipped from the glass he had just refilled and glowered at the dancing flames, cursing their merriment.
If she is not happy with the arrangement, then why is she doing it?
Of course, she had not said she was not happy with the arrangement, but he had seen the panic, the terror, the misery, etched upon her beautiful face. Her plea for him to leave was surely because he had been tapping too close to the root of the truth.
“You cannot possibly want him for a husband,” he muttered, as he grabbed one of the scrunched-up balls of paper on the side-table and tossed it into the fire.
There was a considerable pile of them: the failures from his attempts to write a letter to Evelyn, asking all of the questions she had already refused to answer.
The edges of the paper blackened and curled, tinged with glowing red for a moment, before it disintegrated into ash.
“He would bore you senseless,” he continued, tossing another ball. “He is unworthy of you. Not once did I hear of him asking how your ankle was. You will simply be going from one gloomy existence to another if you—”
A knock at the door halted his soliloquy.
“Who is it?” he barked, his words already slurring.
The door opened and Octavia poked her head inside, her eyes widening in shock as she saw him. “I… thought you were in here with someone. Did I not just hear voices?”
“I was reciting poetry,” he said with a snort, as he gathered up another ball of paper and hurled it into the flames.
She frowned and stepped further into the room, closing the door behind him. “Are you not supposed to be out somewhere with Dominic and Laurence?” She paused, noting the decanter of brandy. “Is it your plan to be desperately unwell at the botanical gardens tomorrow?”
“It does not matter if I am, for I am not going,” he replied, taking another pointed sip of his drink. “I should never have agreed to it in the first place. Yes, I realize that the auction was for a good cause, but I would have given the money myself if I had known that…”
He trailed off as something snagged in his throat, a feeling he did not like, rising emotions that needed to remain buried.
It was, perhaps, the one trait of his father’s that he had not sought to shuffle off: not giving himself permission to feel things deeply when such feelings might be dangerous.
“If you had known what?” Octavia sank down in the armchair opposite, a rather stern look upon her face.
Hugo shrugged. “I have forgotten how I meant to end that sentence.”
“No, you did not,” she replied sharply. “You were going to say something, you lost your nerve, and now you are feigning ignorance.”
He had to laugh, for his sister never failed to figure him out, even when his thoughts were a mystery to himself.
“Now, explain to me why you are not going to the botanical gardens tomorrow?” Octavia said. “Is Miss Parsons aware of this?”
“I sent word to her earlier,” he replied, tapping his skull. “Bad headache.”
“Brandy will not remedy that,” his sister said, her voice a shade softer. “But you do not have a headache, do you? I have a sense that the ache is just a little lower down, somewhere around here.”
She touched a hand to her chest, above her heart.
“Would that be fair to say?” she asked.
“Ridiculous.” He sniffed. “My heart is a solid as a rock. It does not ache.”
She sighed and drummed her fingertips upon the armrests. “Will you rearrange the outing with Miss Parsons?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have no desire to maintain the charade of the thing,” he replied tersely, and immediately regretted it. “I do not want to give Miss Parsons false hope. She is wasting her time with me.”
Octavia nodded slowly. “And why is that?”
“What do you mean?” He narrowed his eyes at his sister, uncertain of when she became so astute.
“She is the diamond of the Season, she is beautiful, she is well connected, she is actually quite a nice person. Why is she wasting her time with you when, by all logic, she should be an ideal match for you?” There was a sly note in Octavia’s voice as if she already knew the answer; she just wanted him to admit it to her.
He shrugged and refilled his glass. “Because I am not drawn to her. I have no romantic interest in her, regardless of the ‘logic’ of public opinion.” He paused, the cogs in his mind turning rather slowly thanks to the brandy.
“It took two outings to know that she was just a beautiful woman that I could never marry.”
“And how many encounters did it take before you knew your heart had already been stolen by someone else?” Octavia asked with a sympathetic smile.
His heart did twinge in response, as he frowned at the fireplace and willed the flames to make his thoughts simpler.
I knew at the opera that she was… different. Was it in the woods where I began to feel more? Was it earlier than that? The card game? The walk through the gardens, when all I wanted to hear was what she was saying?
He tipped forward in the chair, hunching over, resting his weary head in his hands as memories weaved together in his mind, creating a tapestry of his affection for the woman he had barely noticed upon their first meeting.
The woman he now could not stop thinking about.
The woman who was, at this minute, wearing his necklace and the gown he could never forget, at a dinner party with another gentleman.
“I love her,” he whispered, as if it were a fragile thing that might break if he admitted it too loudly, too confidently.
“Which one?” Octavia pressed.
He raised his head and stared at his sister. “Evelyn.” His breath caught in his throat. “I love Evelyn… but it is too late.”
“She is to be married in under a month, not by noon tomorrow,” Octavia pointed out with a raised eyebrow. “I would not call that ‘too late,’ brother.”
He shook his head. “She is engaged to her father’s choice. Her family loathes me… and probably loathes me even more at present. She was the one who told me to leave her home. She does not want to see me again. That is why it is too late.”
“Nonsense, it just means you have to work harder to win her favor,” Octavia said with a shrug, as if that were the simplest task in the world.
“Her home will be a fortress now. How would I even find the opportunity to see her, speak to her?” Hugo urged, needing his sister’s wisdom. “I should have said something sooner!”
Leaning forward in her chair, Octavia took his hand and gripped it tightly.
“Do not think about what you should have done or what cannot be changed. Concentrate on what you can do now. Put that occasionally intellectual mind to good use and figure out how to woo her, so that you do not live your life in regret, and she is not forced into a miserable future with the baron.”
“But I should have told her,” Hugo insisted, thinking of that night in his bedchamber. “I have had so many opportunities to be honest with her, to confess to her, and I have not.”
“I suspect you did not know how you felt, not truly,” Octavia said, as wise as ever. “You have never been in love before, brother.”
He tilted his head, squinting at her. “How do you know?”
“Because I know you,” she replied, chuckling. “I am aware that you are very popular with the ton’s ladies and that you have no lack of charm and flirtation, but that is not love. That is a charade. That is amusement. Entertainment. This is real.”
He held onto her hands as tightly as she held his. “What do I do?”
Octavia hesitated, a small line appearing between her eyebrows.
“Well, first of all, I suggest you inform Miss Parsons of your feelings for her friend, or that shall not end pleasantly.” She pulled a face.
“After that, you shall have to think of a way to begin your suit. I am afraid I cannot help you there.”
“But she does not respond to my usual manner of attracting a lady,” he said, furrowing his brow.
“Which is precisely why you must be honest with her. Authentic,” Octavia urged. “You cannot hide behind your charm this time.”
Hugo drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled, overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead of him. What was more; he had no idea if Evelyn felt the same. All he had to encourage him was the fact that she had been wearing his necklace. Surely, that had to mean something?
“Why do I feel like this is about to be the hardest thing I have ever done?” he said with a nervous smile.
Octavia grinned back at him. “Because this is love, brother. No one ever said it was easy.”
There was no word in the English language, as far as Evelyn knew, that would ever be able to encompass the squirming discomfort that plagued her as she sat at the dining table in Miles’ apartments.
Aside from her family, the guests were all strangers, and all seemed to have been told to interrogate her thoroughly, lest she dare to enjoy a single mouthful of her food in peace.
The worst culprit, however, was the asthmatic, rotund, sharp-tongued woman who sat beside her, chewing her food so loudly and with such enthusiastic lip smacks that Evelyn could no longer bear it. One more wet, unpleasant sound and she would explode.
“Why are you not eating?” the old woman, Miles’ mother, asked with a mouthful of white fish.
Evelyn’s stomach lurched. “I have a small appetite.”
“That will not do. We eat heartily in the country. Perhaps once you are situated, the fresh air will encourage you to eat more,” the dowager baroness said, swallowing. “You must be in good health if you are to carry my son’s heirs.”