Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
He had not seen it coming, and that was his worst mistake.
Evander had been standing at the window looking at the grounds, wondering whether Poole had managed to locate Frederick and get him to ride with him, when Seraphina had come in and closed the door.
At first he had thought it was Aurelia and smiled.
But the air turned different around Seraphina, heavy and sickly sweet.
He turned to ask her what she wanted. She came around him, so close that he was momentarily stunned and couldn’t move. She said something – what the devil had it even been? It didn’t matter. Within minutes, without preamble, she leaned forward and tried to kiss him.
He managed, “What?” just before her lips could meet his.
Before he knew what he was doing, on instinct, he pushed her back violently.
The motion was too hard. She hit the window frame and cried out, one hand going to her shoulder where she had caught the wood.
He stood with his hand pressed over his mouth in disgust and watched her recover herself against the glass.
“I'm sorry,” she said immediately. “I'm sorry, that was–”
“What… in God's name… did you do?” He said it quietly, which was worse than if he had shouted it.
“I don't know.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I don't know. I'm sorry.”
“You… What did you do? You walked in here and–”
“Evander–”
“In my house…” He turned away from her, put both hands on the table behind him and stared at the grain of the wood. “With my wife, thirty feet away…” He breathed for a moment. “You are my brother’s wife…”
The silence behind him was horror. He turned back just enough to look at her.
She was motionless against the window frame, one hand at her shoulder, her eyes wet, victimising herself as though she hadn’t just committed an atrocity.
The crying had started before she came in.
He could see that now. She had come in here already close to it, which meant this had not been a moment of madness.
It had been a decision she had made. But for what?
His thoughts raced wildly, trying to make sense of the moment, putting things together that had happened so they could make sense.
He wiped his mouth again with the back of his hand.
Two years ago in the gallery he had felt nothing.
Just the base confirmation of mutual indifference, two people making an error in silence.
This was more than that. This was wrath, clean and cold, moving through him in a way that required considerable effort to contain it so he didn’t… so he did not…
“Sit down,” he said through gritted teeth.
She looked at him, eyes wide. He couldn’t read the expression in them even now to tell whether this was all a game.
“Sit down, Seraphina. And tell me what is happening.”
She moved to the nearest chair and sat. It was the least composed thing he had ever seen her do, like her legs had stopped cooperating. Underneath the composure she looked younger than twenty-three and considerably more frightened than a child.
He stayed standing. “Why did you come here?”
She stared at her hands for a long moment. He half-expected her to make a run for the door. But she stayed where she was and wept. “I made a mistake,” she said. “Running away with Frederick was a mistake.”
Evander felt the blood drain from his face. Hearing this was the worst of his worst nightmares. He pressed his eyes shut, hands flexing so hard he thought his knuckles could erupt from his skin any moment.
“I don't mean Frederick himself. Frederick… Oh, poor Fred. He has been… he has been more than I deserved. He is kind, and he is warm, and he tries very hard, and I know that… But I knew almost immediately, after we left, that I had made a mistake.”
“Immediately? No.”
“I don’t know why. And by that point, it was too late. What would I have said? We were in Scotland. We had just been married. What exactly was I supposed to say to him after I had ruined both our lives?” She looked up briefly and then back at her trembling hands. “There was nothing to say.”
“And so you came here instead.” Evander reeled back. “Were you the one who told him to come here?”
She shook her head. “We came here because we had nowhere else to go. The Suffolk house was gone, and Frederick wanted to see you, and I thought– I thought perhaps, if I could just get through the first weeks things would settle. That I was being irrational. That it was the newness of everything and it would pass. My parents… Lord knows my parents would not harbour me. I have only you and him in the whole world. And isn’t that the cruelest thing, after…
?” She stopped and pressed her fingers together. “But those feelings have not passed.”
Evander felt sick to his stomach. With as much control as he could muster, he pulled the chair from behind the desk and sat down opposite her. Standing was starting to feel like theatre. This was all a play.
“Why?” he repeated. “Not why you made a mistake. I mean why here? Why this?” He gestured between them, and even that felt like a betrayal of Aurelia. “What did you think was going to happen?”
She was quiet for a long time. “I couldn't stand it,” she said finally. “Watching you with her. Watching you be the way you are with her, and knowing that you were never that way with me.” She looked at him. “It is all such a mess. I didn’t expect to feel this way. This terrible gnawing feeling… Do you know what it is like to spend your whole life telling yourself that a man is simply cold, simply incapable of affection, and then watch him fall irrevocably in love with someone else?”
He was not going to dignify that question with an answer, not for her.
“I told myself for two years that you were deficient.
That you were a cruel man who couldn't feel things properly and that was simply your nature, and my job was to accept it. It was easier that way. It made the whole arrangement feel less like something I had failed at.” She paused.
“And then we arrived at Carrstone, and I watched you with her every moment since, and… I thought I had been wrong about which one of us was the deficiency. It has always been me.”
He was quiet. It was honest, at least. He could see it costing her, and even though he did not want to feel sympathy for her right now, her confession and their shared history had a weight that was hard to ignore.
“And you thought,” he said slowly, “that if you kissed me, and if I kissed you back… then what? That would tell you something useful?”
“I thought it would prove that you wanted me. That there had simply been bad timing. That it wasn't me all along.” She looked at her hands. “I am aware of how that sounds. I am awful. I deserve nothing. Less than nothing.”
“It sounds like you were not thinking about Frederick at all.”
“You’re wrong. I think about Frederick constantly.”
“Then you were not thinking about what this would do to him.” He leaned forward.
“He left everything for you. He caused harm to people who trusted him because he believed you wanted the life he was offering. He believed you. I know this when I look at him. It has pained him, shamed him, what he has done. But he defends it to himself because he has saved you from me.” He paused. “Was he wrong to try and save you?”
“No.” Her voice was very small. “He was not wrong.”
“Then what are you telling me?”
“I think I love him… but I don't know how to be the woman he needs me to be.” She looked up, and her eyes were wet again.
“He is so young, Evander. He is so certain about everything. He wakes up every morning certain that the day is going to be good, that I am wonderful, life is going to be exactly what he imagines, and I…” She stopped.
“I can't always match it. I can't always be what he sees when he looks at me. And I am afraid of the day he looks at me and sees something different. I don’t want to risk that happening.”
“Then it won’t happen”
“You don't know that.”
“I know my brother.” He looked at her steadily. “Frederick has been in love with you for years. That is not a feeling that turns overnight. So do not blame him if you do not want him. He deserves better than that still, despite everything he has wrought upon us.”
She put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she cried. Evander thought briefly of her when she had been a child. She had been a simple girl, he remembered, dutiful and polite. How had she managed to hide these feelings all her life?
“I envy her everything,” she said through her hands.
“I know I have no right to feel that way.
I know that. But I look at her and she has everything I thought I was going to have, and it wasn't even supposed to be hers. And you look at her as though…” She took a breath.
“I want to die from it sometimes. I sit at your dinner table, and I watch you, and I want to die.”
He waited until she looked up to speak, his jaw set to stone.
“You have a husband who loves you. Whatever else is true, that is true. And you are sitting in this room telling me you are jealous of my wife instead of sitting with him and letting him love you, which is what you wanted, a man to love you.” He stood slowly so as not to scare her.
“We are not friends. I know you want me to say we are, but we have never been friends. We were arranged, and we went along with it, and then it ended. That is the whole of our history. I cannot be what you are looking for here.”
“Obviously not,” she said. “I only…” She stopped. “Did you ever feel anything for me, in all that time, anything at all?”
He suppressed a sigh, wondering why she would even ask. Men had fallen at her feet for years, even knowing she was promised to him. And then there was Frederick. What did Evander’s opinion of her matter?
Unless, he thought, it is because he was the only one who did not fall for her, and she couldn’t accept that. She had to be wanted by them all. That was not something he could fix, and Frederick couldn’t either.
“I felt that you were a sensible person placed in a sensible situation,” he said. “And I felt, when it ended, primarily relieved for both of us.”
She nodded. She looked, oddly, slightly better for hearing it.
“My brother is trying very hard to deserve you. You will honour that, or so help me…” He moved toward the door. “My duty is to my wife alone. I will not be in a room alone with you again while you are in this house.”
He could not make himself go any further than the corridor.
He stood outside the library door for a moment, and considered his next steps with care, because the alternative was finding Aurelia.
He didn’t know what he could tell her. But he would need to be honest, wouldn’t he?
No more secrets between them, especially where Seraphina was concerned.
What she had attempted to do sickened him. He felt unsteady on his feet. Everything he had told himself since Frederick’s disappearance had been a fantasy. Theirs was not a perfect, rebellious, foolish love. Frederick was the fool. Seraphina had used him just to prove to herself she was wanted.
He moved to the room where he thought Aurelia had been. Nike was under the table. Evander crouched on the floor beside her, which was not a dignified position for a duke, and put his hand on the dog's side to feel her breathe.
Later, he vowed, he would find Aurelia. He would tell her everything, and then he would tell her the other things properly – like the reason why Seraphina’s revelation felt more like a threat to their happiness than anything else.
He found the brandy at some point. He was not sure how long he sat listening to Nike snore. Long enough for a few fingers of brandy to become ten, and for the afternoon light through the windows to shift from one wall to another.
Then suddenly, there was movement in the drive. He looked up, shielding his eyes from the light and glancing through the glass.
It looked like Poole was coming up the drive at a pace he had never ridden. His coat was open and his face was red and open – wrong. Evander was at the window in seconds. Nike started barking.
Below her, he could hear it now, through the glass, Poole's voice already going before the horse had stopped. He was calling for help.
Evander was out of the drawing room and through the hall in seconds, then through the front door and down the steps before Poole had pulled the horse to a full stop on the gravel.
Poole looked down at him from the saddle with an expression Evander had never seen on Poole's face.
It was fear, plain and unconcealed. And it made Evander reel back in horror.
“The woods.” Poole was breathing in gasps, his chest heaving.
“His horse came down on the low path. He's underneath it, Your Grace.
I couldn't– I tried to move it alone and I couldn't.” He stopped.
He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth for a moment.
“Lord Canterbury… I called out to him, and he did not answer.”