Chapter Thirty #2
“And our love grew. Slowly at first. Then all at once.” Her chin trembled, just once. “He made me feel young. Alive. Free in a way I had never allowed myself to be. Not as an heiress. Not as a daughter expected to marry well. But as myself.”
I felt Noah exhale beside me, painfully, as though he could see his grandfather in every word.
“And he loved you?” I asked, enraptured.
Lady Beaumont nodded, eyes shining.
“He did. And I loved him. He gave me this brooch as a symbol of our love. He had our initials engraved on the reverse side, E and T.”
A shadow of memory crossed her face.
“He said it was so that even if the world separated us, we would still be linked in some way.”
Noah swallowed hard.
“But your parents interfered?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said, her mouth tightening, the years folding over her like shadow. “They considered him unsuitable. He was Australian. Young. From a farm, no less. A man with soil under his fingernails and ambition in his heart, two things my parents could not forgive.”
She paused, drawing a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed carefully at one eye.
“They forbade me from seeing him again. They confined me to the house for a time. I was only allowed outside with a chaperone. I tried to write to him, but my letters were intercepted. My mother burned them.”
Noah winced.
“After a while,” Lady Beaumont whispered, “my parents announced my engagement. My future was decided without a single word from me. And by the time I found the courage to rebel, it was too late. Edward had returned home, thinking… believing… that I no longer wanted him.”
Her voice broke on the last word.
And in that moment, she wasn’t Lady Victoria Beaumont, formidable, elegant, untouchable.
She was Tori again.
A girl in love.
“And then, very quickly, I was someone else’s wife.”
I felt my eyes widen.
“Duke Beaumont.” Lady Beaumont nodded. “Edward didn’t understand at the time why I had to stop seeing him. He didn’t know the truth.”
I exhaled shakily. “So when you found out that the wedding was to be here?”
“When I found out I panicked. I thought… if he left anything behind, letters, tokens, objects, someone might find them. Someone might realise who Tori was.”
“And link it to you,” Noah murmured.
“Yes,” she said. “And drag our family name into scandal.”
“But it wouldn’t be your fault,” I protested. “You were in love. It was real.”
“Real things,” Lady Beaumont said briskly, “can ruin reputations just as swiftly as false ones.”
She continued, voice steadying with resolve. “So I travelled here a few days early. I asked my driver to keep an eye on things for me before I came. I searched the east wing. Edward always hid sentimental items in places he thought no one would look.”
She turned to me. “Benson saw you taking the brooch to your room, and I asked him to take it. I thought… perhaps selling the brooch would destroy the evidence, should anything surface. A decoy of sorts. But when I reached the antique shop, I couldn’t do it.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Her hands tightened together in her lap.
“Because I loved him. And selling the brooch felt like erasing him. Instead I bought a locket, a small, harmless thing. I intended to replace the brooch with something that wouldn’t draw attention…
something Margaret would accept without question as a family heirloom. ”
Noah’s eyes narrowed as a realisation dawned on him.
“Benson? As in Benson C? It was Cooper who signed in on the delivery form and gained access to the house?”
“Yes.” A shadow crossed her face. “I am ashamed to say I asked him to assist me. He should not be in any trouble for it, he was only following my instructions.”
A memory flashed through my mind, Lucas casually mentioning that Cooper had driven him to the café one early morning.
He’d been here the whole time.
Right under our noses.
Lady Beaumont’s voice frayed slightly. “I was also searching the house,” she admitted, “for my letters.”
She paused, eyes lowering briefly. “I wrote things I had never dared say aloud. If those letters still exist, they contain parts of me I buried fifty years ago.”
She turned her head away.
“I don’t even know if he received them,” she whispered.
“My mother intercepted every letter she found after that. Burned them. But I was young and foolish and desperate, I posted a few before she caught me.” Her voice trembled.
“Those letters… they held pieces of me I cannot bear for anyone to read.”
My throat squeezed as she continued.
“I thought if any of them had somehow survived… if Edward kept them… and if they were hidden somewhere in this house… someone might find them. Someone might learn the truth long before I was ready, or able, to face it.”
Her eyes finally lifted to Noah, full of apology and something like old, fragile love.
Lady Beaumont’s voice wavered, but she didn’t look away from Noah.
“That is why I came early,” she explained. “Why I searched rooms I had no business entering. I wanted to destroy those letters before they changed everything.”
The confession drifted into the stillness, settling like dust over old memories.
Her face lifted, as though preparing to reveal something she had carried alone for far too long.
“There is something else,” she whispered. “Something I can no longer hide.”
She stood slowly, smoothing her skirt with trembling hands, her composure slipping just enough to reveal the woman beneath the armour.
Her eyes met Noah’s, apology and courage woven together.
“Come,” she murmured. “It’s time.”