The gardens below were cloaked in shadow, the light from the ballroom throwing soft gold onto the stones, and casting long shadows from the balustrade’s columns.
Inside, the world was still spinning.
She could hear it.
The music had resumed. As if nothing had happened. As if she had never mattered at all.
A laugh—sharp and bitter—escaped her lips. The sound startled her. It didn’t belong in her throat. It wasn’t hers. She sounded like a mad woman.
She leaned her head back against the stone, pressing her hands to her face, trying to steady her breathing, to gather the shattered pieces of her composure.
The chill crept in.
A breeze stirred the ivy clinging to the terrace walls. Somewhere beyond the gardens, a carriage rumbled past in the street, oblivious to the small collapse that had occurred inside and out.
The pain in her ankle flared again as she shifted, and she let out another small, strangled sound—this time not just from the pain, but from the mental anguish of everything she had tried so hard to bear but could no longer contain.
She had come here tonight with only one plan in mind. She had hoped to understand exactly what was growing between Arthur and her. To gather the courage to confront it. Perhaps even to invite something more.
Instead, she had been publicly exposed, humiliated, and abandoned. And the worst of it—theworst—was that a part of her still wanted him to come. The humiliation was bad enough, but now she had been left to rot in her own shame. Not a single person felt it worth their while to question Edward’s claims or check on her.
She still hoped the French doors behind her would open.
She still longed to hear the sound of his voice calling her name.
But the door remained shut.
The night closed in on her. She couldn’t run away—couldn’t run or walk anywhere—and she was completely alone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The ballroom had never felt so suffocating.
The music had ceased, the melody dying on a final discordant note, and in its place a heavy silence descended—broken only by the low murmur of astonishment that rippled through the assembled guests like the tremble of porcelain teacups on a rattled tray. Faces turned, expressions shifting between curiosity and gleeful outrage, and in the centre of it all stood Arthur—motionless, breath caught somewhere in his chest.
He could not move.
Could not speak.
He saw her retreat—Abigail—head lowered, shoulders tight with humiliation, her gown a trailing whisper of pale green silk vanishing through the French doors. The crowd shifted to accommodate her passage, and still, Arthur stood. He saw the look in her eyes before she turned away—the devastation, the betrayal, the unbearable hurt—and something within him fractured.
You have failed her.
Failed to protect her from Edward’s cruelty. Failed to speak the truth when it mattered. Failed to see the moment for what it was until it had already passed him by. The weight of guilt pressed down on him, hot and sharp, cleaving through the remains of the emotional armor he had so carefully cultivated over the years.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you please—the music will resume. Let us not allow one unfortunate disruption to mar an otherwise delightful evening,” Lady Worthington declared, clapping her hands together as if in instruction.
Moments later, the musicians obeyed. The strains of a familiar quadrille wafted through the doors as though summoned from another world. Light and lilting, it floated into the air like a denial of reality.
Arthur’s jaw clenched. The melody was refined, pleasant, utterly inappropriate. It danced mockingly around the edges of his fury, a glittering reminder of how swiftly the ton returned to its comforts, to its waltzes and refreshments, to its rituals of social pageantry. As though none of this mattered. As thoughshedid not matter.
As though she could be humiliated, cast down like a character in a Greek tragedy—and the orchestra would simply pick up the next measure without pause.
“You must go to her,” came Eliza’s voice at his side, soft yet urgent.
Arthur turned, barely able to meet his sister’s eyes. She looked up at him, her expression firm, her gaze brimming with something fierce and unyielding.
“Eliza…” he began, but his voice sounded wrong. Hushed. Hollow.
