CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The beast inside Graham roared in victory, as if happy to win, while the man who had tried to survive within him since the duel that day sank to the steps of his aunt’s townhouse.
The carriage rode away, and he could see the barest outline of his wife as she disappeared around the corner, and the full weight of what he had snapped in anger hit him.
He had just lost something precious. Something truly worthy.
For the first time since the duel, Graham recognized loss, and it speared him right through.
“Amelia,” he whispered, knowing he was rooted in place by shame and fear, despite what his sister had told him.
How could he keep doubting Amelia? How could his own thoughts turn him from the one good thing he had?
He had pushed her away so thoroughly, using the weapon he knew he had against her.
Comparing her to the one woman who she had always compared herself to.
Retreating back into the townhouse, Graham stood just inside the drawing room, not bothering to take his place with his family again.
He was aware of the stares flickering his way but he did not care.
He did not see any of them; he did not hear the music that he now knew, in any other moment, Amelia would have loved.
He had not even been able to ask her who her favorite musician had been so far.
The melodies floated through the room but they no longer stirred him.
He only stared blankly, his expression enough to quell the rest of the gossip swirling through the room.
He spotted Percival in the corner, who watched him with a curious expression but the moment Graham’s eyes landed on him, he plastered on a wide grin that turned Graham’s stomach.
In another corner of the room, Lady Cassandra’s eyes were fixed on Graham, too.
She twirled a curl around her finger, her head cocked in a way she clearly thought made her pretty.
His stomach roiled when he thought of speaking her name against his wife.
Heavens how could he have been so foolish?
His own awfulness hit him, grounding him in the pain he had caused.
“My friend, your mood is filling up the room.” Owen’s voice startled him for a moment. Graham turned his head to look at his friend. “Will you tell me what happened, and why the Duchess has looked on the verge of tears all night and appears to be absent?”
After a moment, Graham nodded. “Come out here with me,” he said quietly.
He did not need further eyes on them. Out in the hallway, he pulled Owen aside.
“I have been the most terrible husband. I… I doubted Amelia, over and over. She has just angrily, and rightfully so, told me that she has believed me above everybody else but all I have done is cast doubt over her head. I feel wretched. She told me that I am fulfilling my dukedom duties but holding her at arms’ length. ”
Owen cringed. “I… I do not think she is wrong, Graham.”
Guilty and ashamed, Graham nodded. “I said something far worse, too. I told her that if I was only doing that then I would have chosen Lady Cassandra to marry.”
“Heavens,” Owen swore. “Graham, you simpleton. I am sorry but you truly are. How on Earth could you say something like that?”
“I do not know!” Graham insisted. “This is all too much, Owen. Sharing my life with her, the gossip, the never-ending eyes on us even now that we are married! I carry so much pain and I do not know how to keep it at bay most days. I lashed out, I was defensive. I cannot keep doing this. I cannot keep hurting her.”
“No, you cannot,” Owen told him. “She deserves better.”
“Which was why I was upset over the Lord Ambrose rumour.”
“You know yourself that rumours are mere speculation and cannot be further from the truth. Do you truly think your wife wished to be courted by Lord Ambrose?”
“I think she wished to be courted,” Graham said. “And to think she went into the hedge maze longing for that, only to emerge needing to be married to me… it was too much.”
“You can court her,” Owen argued. “We have spoken of this.”
“And I have tried but I only push her away. As she said, it is unfair to keep her in this punishing silence but to do anything else is not easy.”
“It is not supposed to be, for that is why, what makes us like that, hurts us so much, for if it was easy to go through then we would come out unscathed. Amelia is not a ghost from your past; she is your wife, and she is here now. You have something precious with her, Graham. Do not squander it with your own blindness, and that is a threat, for if you do not make amends then I shall drag you out to Hyde Park and duel with you myself for her honour. Not to win her heart, for I am intent on Lady Eleanor’s, but just for her happiness.
” Owen’s eyes were wide and intense, his threats clear.
Graham waited to flinch, for the threat of a duel to hit him, but it did not.
He only stared back at his friend before nodding.
***
Inside the drawing room, Cassandra giggled, and Beatrice could only watch on, guilt heavy in her heart.
“Oh, did you hear?” Cassandra asked one of her ladies. “The Duchess of Blackthorn has fled the townhouse. I wonder if it was guilt that drove her out. Perhaps she is meeting yet another secret lover.”
Beatrice’s eyes lifted to the anguished Duke of Blackthorn, and she rather despised herself for her part in the schemes.
At his side, Lord Owen looked pained as he tried to comfort him.
The joy she had once felt for her part in meddling in Amelia’s life was gone, and she only sat heavily with the weight of what she had helped to cause.
“The Duke looks terribly upset,” she murmured to Cassandra.
Cassandra laughed. “And you care, why? Soon, you shall have Lord Owen, and I shall be the new duchess.”
Beatrice fell silent, biting her lip. Her loyalty to Cassandra battled relentlessly against the guilty conscience she found herself with. Lord Owen would never forgive her if he found out about her role in the whole situation.
Another, louder voice worked its way around the drawing room.
Percival was speaking his own rumors, targeting the Duke of Blackthorn, stating how they were both as terrible as one another.
He used his charm to sway loyalty, and Beatrice felt ill as the weight of it all hit her.
She stood up, thinking that she might tell the Duke of Blackthorn what had happened, and her part in it all, and Cassandra’s organizing of the ladies that day in her garden party, when a messenger burst into the room.
“It is the Duchess of Blackthorn!” the messenger cried, his eyes wide. Suddenly, the music ground to a halt. “There has been an accident!”
***
“Duke of Blackthorn, you must come quickly!”
A messenger boy had burst in through the door, taking in the room with wide eyes. Graham had already begun moving at the mention of his wife’s title, pushing through the crowd with urgency.
He rushed to the messenger. “What has happened?”
The boy’s face was white as he caught his breath. Dread pooled in Graham as he resisted the urge to shake the words out of him.
“Tell me!” he shouted.
“Graham!” Felicity admonished.
“What has happened to my wife?” he growled, unable to calm himself.
“It—the carriage—they say she was in there!” the messenger gasped, trying to form the words coherently. “The carriage has overturned, Your Grace. It lies at the bottom of the hill, just beyond these streets, near the corner of the Golden Hand inn.”
Graham’s vision shrank, the room getting smaller and smaller.
His breath escaped as an image of a broken carriage filled his head.
Terror filled him—terror, and dread, and everything awful in between.
Shoving the boy aside, he raced out of the townhouse.
Rain lashed his face as he bolted down the streets, his boots slipping on the wet cobbles.
He did not care—his wife, his Amelia. Heavens, no. She could not be hurt—she could not.
He ran and ran, the rain blinding him and soaking him through.
Blood on his hands. A friend’s life slipping through his arms.
No. He could not lose someone else. He could not lose her.
Footsteps behind him gained, and he only spared a look long enough to know it was Owen and Lady Eleanor as they ran with him. Graham wound through the streets, his awful last words to her replaying in his head. Heavens, how could he have been so blinded?
As he skidded around the corner of the Golden Hand, he stopped, and an anguished cry tore from him as he fell to his knees.
The carriage had turned over and over, crashed into a heap.
One wheel had come complete off, leaving a snapped spoke in its wake.
The body of the carriage was crumpled beyond repair, and there…
“Oh, Heavens—” Lady Eleanor’s curses filled his ears.
Graham snapped back into action, on his feet in a moment.
A pale hand among the debris. A pale hand reaching outward as if begging to be saved, asking for a chance to survive such a crash.
Tears streamed down Graham’s eyes as he launched himself against the side of the carriage, his hands already reaching to wrench parts of the carriage away.
Polished wood came off in chunks and splinters, and he did not even care when wood pieces dug into his skin.
He could only cry out Amelia’s name, beg her forgiveness, uncaring of the rain or the mud.
The only thing he cared about was finding her and gathering her in his arms.
“Amelia,” he panted, tearing apart more of the carriage as more hands came to help. “Amelia, forgive me. A thousand times, I will beg your forgiveness. Oh, Heavens, Amelia, I am sorry. I am sorry, do you hear me?”
He choked on another sob as he ripped a larger part of the carriage away. If he hadn’t been so terrible. If he had finally realized his own awful behavior and been able to change it sooner.
Now he was on the brink of losing the best thing in his life, and he could not endure anything happening to her.