Chapter Thirteen
Amelia was convinced a woman’s life could fall apart only so many times, and she was certain to hold a record for it.
Her day had gone from terrible to tragic in the matter of a conversation no more than five minutes in length.
She’d lost Faye and now…now she felt so foolish and so stupid for ever believing Dorian could forget the past.
She was sickened by the words and the promises she’d so naively accepted and spread her legs for.
She should have known—dammit! She should have known better.
Now, Dorian had gotten his revenge, and she was left humiliated.
Perhaps what stung the most was the malicious nature of the revenge. He’d made her love him all over again.
He’d clearly wanted to wound her so deeply that she would bleed as Brinley said Dorian had bled.
An eye for an eye…
Amelia flew through the halls of the castle, deaf to Clara’s cries and pleas behind her every step of the way.
She was a panting, disheveled mess by the time she discovered Dorian in her study—the place she cursed herself for not checking first. Her eyes were still puffy from crying over Faye, but Dorian’s keen gaze did not miss the pain—a new kind—radiating from them.
His warm smile in greeting quickly dissolved into confusion.
“What is the matter, sweeting?” he asked softly, abandoning the man to whom he’d been speaking.
Clara caught herself on the doorframe behind Amelia. She was gasping for air, her breath hindered by her exertion and her stays. Her cheeks were damp with salty tears.
“Leave,” Amelia commanded icily. The man behind Dorian was momentarily frozen in shock and then quickly dashed away without another word. Amelia could not find it in herself at that moment to regret her horrendous manners; she was in too much pain.
Clara clutched at her arm, but Amelia kept shaking her off.
“How could you?” Amelia cried, her tears flowing freely now. “How could you do such a thing?”
His brow knitted together. “What are you saying? What did I do?”
“You know bloody well what you did!”
“No, I do not!” he stepped toward her, his voice growing louder.
Amelia chose her words carefully, not chancing another misunderstanding.
She decided bluntness was the best course of action.
“Did you or did you not accompany Clara here to my home with the intention of revenge by way of using me and then discarding me? To hurt me as you were hurt? Have all your actions been with that goal in mind?”
At first, Dorian could not believe what was happening—again! He felt like the ground was giving way beneath his feet, crumbling right alongside the hopes for the future he’d been building.
He did not immediately answer, briefly considering lying, but he couldn’t do it. The woman he loved deserved better than that. Instead, he told her the truth, though he knew it meant he would never see her again.
“Yes. I came here with the intention of finding a way to move past whatever lingering attachment I felt, but you must know that everything changed when I saw you again.” He could tell she’d stopped listening after the first word. Her eyes tipped toward the ceiling as if searching for strength.
“Get out,” she said, dangerously calm as she swiped tears from her cheeks.
“Stay away from me. Stay away from my son. If you ever set foot on our land again, I will have you shot like the vermin you are.” She coolly turned and left the room.
Dorian stared, incredulous, at the space she’d once occupied, feeling as if all the air had been torn from his lungs.
There was a loud sniff, and he turned to his sister.
She watched him, furious and accusatory.
“How could you?” Clara sobbed. “I do not know you at all.” She fled from the room as well, leaving Dorian to feel as if he were drowning in silence, suffocating in grief, dying from the pain that was gradually shredding his vital organs.
Clearly, fate did not want him to be with Amelia, or else why would this sort of thing keep happening? Love and happiness were not supposed to be so difficult, and perhaps it was time he realized they’d never been meant to be. No matter how much he loved Amelia, it was never going to work.
Resigned and broken, knowing there was nothing else left to do, he went to speak to his valet to have his things packed up for his retreat from Scotland.
Amelia watched the loading of the Brinley carriage from the height of a tower.
It took a few hours, but true to her command, Dorian left.
He surged forward on Maximus at a breakneck pace even before the door to the Brinley carriage was closed.
Unable to watch as he flew away from the castle walls, she turned her attention to Brinley as he climbed aboard the conveyance.
Though she’d never considered him a friend, she felt an odd sense of gratitude for his arrival and blunt speech.
She supposed it had saved her from a more public form of humiliation that she now felt certain Dorian had planned for her.
What else could have driven him to such a scheme?
Unable to stomach continuing her vigil as the carriage began to lumber away, she turned from the window.
When she would have expected pain or anger or sadness, she felt numbness.
It was an aching hollowness experienced by those who’d suffered repeated betrayal.
She was embarrassed for having allowed herself to be led on—she should have stuck to her initial reaction to Dorian’s appearance and kept as far away as possible.
And now, she didn’t have James to help her pick up the pieces of her life and start fresh; she didn’t even have Faye’s thick, scruffy neck to cry into.
The last clogged her throat with tears, but she held them back. She could not fall apart, not when Archie needed her. She had to be her own strongest support.
When her hunger finally won out over her nausea, Amelia took supper alone in her chambers, not wanting to sit in the cavernous dining room or bother dressing the part.
She choked down what she could of the lovely spread her cook had sent up and then tried settling in to read, but she wound up only staring out through the rapidly darkening window instead.
She berated herself for her self-pitying mood, then determined that the past twenty-four hours had been hellish enough that she deserved a bit of wallowing. All her tears had dried, so she could only sit in the quiet tragedy of the turn of events and watch as the night drew ever closer.
Amelia did not know how long she sat there in pensive, miserable silence, but she was startled when there was a small scratch at the door.
It cautiously swung inward to reveal Clara, hands crossed before her, looking younger than her years and so very small.
Her lovely features were mottled, and her eyes, too, were puffy from crying.
“Clara! I thought you’d left with your brother.
” It felt silly now, but she’d simply assumed that Dorian would take her with him—that she’d departed in the Kempton carriage shortly after Dorian and Brinley had taken their leave.
However, she now realized she’d neither seen nor heard the preparations being made for the Kempton carriage and team to depart. Her mind had been in such a fog…
Clara shook her head, looking as haggard as Amelia felt.
“I waited for him to summon me, but word never came. I heard the carriage departing, so I went to the great hall. Your butler handed me a note. Dori—” Her breath caught.
“Dori left without me and instructed me to stay for as long as I like and as long as I am welcome. He left our carriage behind for my use.” Clara looked slightly terrified as she met Amelia’s eyes and asked, “Is that alright with you?”
“Of course,” Amelia whispered, taken aback by Dorian’s decision. It was so different from how Clara’s holiday had begun.
Suddenly, Clara’s chin wavered and her eyes filled with tears. “I am so, so sorry, Amelia. I had no idea—”
“I know,” Amelia choked out and set her book aside before opening her arms to Clara. The girl rushed over, and they held one another, sharing their grief and confusion.
Clara took a shaky breath. “I had no idea what he’d planned. I feel like I do not know my brother at all.”
Amelia stroked her hair, but said nothing—what was there for her to say?
They held one another and, through mute agreement, spoke of anything and everything except for the events of that day. When it was time to sleep, they changed, and Clara eventually returned to Amelia’s chamber, climbing in beside her without needing to ask permission.
Exhausted from her grief, Amelia began to drift off to sleep more quickly than she’d anticipated; however, it was there beneath the shield of darkness that Clara admitted something. “Brinley kissed me today.”
Amelia shot up into an upright position. “When did that occur?”
There were a few heartbeats of silence. “Today. Just before he told me…everything.” Clara went on to describe how it had transpired, her tone too even for Amelia to judge how Clara wished for her to react.
“And…how do you feel about it?”
“The man is infuriating. He is nothing but condescending to me; he teases me mercilessly. I do not understand why in the world he would do such a thing! I…I am unsure how I feel about it.”
Amelia knew Clara had been kissed before—though probably no more than chaste, stolen pecks behind her brother’s back, so she tried another angle.
“How was it?” she asked, grinning wickedly and feeling a bit better about her sorry situation with the distraction of Clara’s unexpected drama.
Clara was at a loss for words, stammering for an explanation.
From what Amelia was able to glean, this was no little kiss, it was far from proper or unintentional.
It had been a man kissing a woman he desired, even if it took a few drinks to bolster him enough to act upon those desires.
Wouldn’t Dorian be thrilled when he found out…