“Lucien, this is madness!” His wife cried. “This isn’t your fault! You should have been able to rely on Henry. He is a grown man.”
“One minute he’s a boy and the next he’s a grown man? Which is it, Emery?”
“Stop trying to twist my words,” she said coolly. “My point is that if he let you down, that is his fault, not yours. All you were doing was what any married member of thetonshould be able to do--have a moment alone with his wife. You cannot tell me that is such an awful thing!”
“But it is!” Lucien thundered. “It wasn’t what any married member of thetonwould do! It was illicit! I took you to a place I knew was famous for its illicit liaisons because I knew you would like it; you who have been denied all the adventures that most young ladies get during their Seasons. I wanted to be the one to show you such a place and to kiss you in it. And so you see, I put my romantic notions above my family duty.”
“So you’re saying it’s my fault?” Emery asked, blinking slowly as she stared at him. “That because of me, and the feelings for me that you possessed, your brother nearly ruined our family?”
“Of course it’s not your fault,” Lucien said curtly. “I am the one who is responsible for my actions.”
“Well, what I’m hearing is that you blame me. Or at least, that you blame the feelings you had for me.”
“I blame myself!” Lucien shouted, his frustration getting the better of him. “I blame love! It clouds men’s judgements and makes them simpletons. And it nearly ruined everything I have worked so hard for these past thirteen years!”
“Nothing happened!” All at once, Emery was on her feet, glaring at him furiously as she shouted. “Nothing bad happened and yet you are punishing me with this ridiculous idea that our feelings for one another are to blame!”
“Something could have happened!” Lucien shouted back. “You have no idea how close we were to complete and utter ruin!”
“Then we would have been ruined!” She waved a hand through the air, and he blinked, taken aback by the boldness of this statement. “But I personally would rather be ruined with you by my side than pretend to be the perfect family but be without you.”
Lucien took a deep breath, and for a moment, his resolution wavered. She looked so beautiful when she was passionate like this, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright and intelligent, and her hair beginning to come down from her coiffure.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s better to admit our feelings for each other and let love turn us into fools, even if it does ruin the family.
But every instinct he had spent the last thirteen years cultivating rebelled against the idea. He couldn’t let himself feel this love; he couldn’t let himself lose his sense of duty; he couldn’t fail now,when he was so close to fixing everything his parents had nearly ruined.
“I’m sorry, Emery,” he murmured, and his words felt like the final nail in the coffin. “But I cannot allow our marriage to be anything other than a contractual affair. I have sacrificed too much over the years and worked too hard to make my family respectable and prosperous again. I cannot give that up for anything.”
Emery stared at him for a long moment, breathing hard. There was a strange look in her eyes as she gazed at him, and when she spoke again, it was in a tone as if she had just realized something very important.
“You’re not worried about your family’s reputation or that you will do something to ruin them if you let yourself love me,” she said slowly and deliberately. “You’re just afraid.”
“What are you talking about?” he spat, as a strange sensation seized him; like someone had reached inside his chest and grabbed his heart. “I am the Duke of Dredford! There is nothing I’m afraid of.”
“Oh, but there is,” she murmured. “You’re afraid of letting yourself love me. Because if you do--if you really let me in--then there is a chance that I will reject you. You’ve spent so many years insulating yourself from any feelings, that now you’re terrified of what might happen if you let anyone in.”
“That isn’t--you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucien blustered, but he had a terrible feeling that Emery might be exactly right.
She straightened up and stared down at him with a cold, removed look that chilled him to the bone. “Maybe not. But either way, it isn’t what I want. I have always yearned for love, Lucien; true love. Maybe it doesn’t exist, or maybe it’s the kind of love that has always existed in books, but for a moment, I thought you and I might actually have it. But I need someone who is brave enough to see that love when it happens and to seize it. Because it is scary, and it’s hard, and it’s worth fighting for. If you don’t want to fight for our love, then I will be better off being your wife only in name.”
Lucien’s throat was so tight he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to speak. Instead, he nodded, and Emery’s jaw began to twitch. However, she held it together a little longer.
“Very well,” she murmured. “Then I will speak to the butler about finding me a different room in which to sleep. On the opposite side of the house. And when this Season is over, I will be moving into a different house right away.”
“Good,” Lucien said, unsticking his throat. “I think that is best for all of us.”
Emery gave him one last, long look, and then turned and left the studio. Lucien did nothing to stop her. He simply let her walk away and out of his life.
She is right, he told himself as the door slammed shut.She deserves someone strong enough for her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“He did what? Because of what happened with Henry?” Georgina stared at Emery with a mixture of horror and guilt as she sat across from her in the drawing room of her father’s house. It had been a day since Emery had spoken to the duke and he’d ended the romance in their marriage, and Emery had needed to talk to her friend. Although she knew Lucien would probably be furious if he knew where she was, she hadn’t cared. This was an emergency.
“Yes,” she said heavily, reaching for the cakes that were sitting between them on a small tray and selecting the richest and most decadent-looking. “And now it feels as if it never even happened. It was just a week, Georgina! A week of him making me feel as if I was the most wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, and interesting person in the world. And now it’s all over, and I feel as if I dreamt it.”
“You didn’t dream it,” Georgina said, reaching across the table and laying a hand on Emery’s knee. “It was real. And I know he still feels those things for you.”
