“I did,” Arthur said, his voice hushed, every syllable reverent. “Every word.”
She gave a small, shaking breath, as though she were exhaling weeks—perhaps months—of pent-up doubt and fear. Then, with more steadiness, she went on.
“I thought… I thought I could manage it. Keep the charade intact. Keep my heart from becoming entangled.” Her eyes dropped briefly to their hands—still joined, fingers curled around each other as if by instinct. “But I failed. Somewhere along the way, between pretending and pretence, something real crept in. And once you kissed me…”
Her voice faltered, the memory overtaking her.
Arthur leaned closer, one hand rising almost without thought to cup her cheek. Her skin, despite the night’s chill, was warm beneath his palm, and her breath caught audibly as his thumb brushed gently across her cheekbone.
“Once you kissed me,” she continued, this time with conviction, “I could no longer pretend.”
The look she gave him then was unlike any she had bestowed upon him before—not wary, not guarded, but open, unshielded, filled with something achingly tender. There was no trace of artifice in it. No hint of polite reserve or practiced grace. She was, in that moment, wholly herself.
“And you forgive me?” Arthur asked softly, “For my cowardice? For my silence?”
“I understand your reasons,” she said. “All too well. I, too, was afraid. I, too, hid behind the safety of pretence. We thought ourselves clever, didn’t we? Building walls of artifice to protect ourselves from feeling too deeply. But love,” she whispered, “has a way of slipping through the smallest cracks.”
He could not speak, not yet. Something swelled within him—too vast for words.
“I love you, Arthur Beaumont,” she said at last, with sudden, crystalline clarity. “I love you. I have for some time now, though I tried to deny it, to convince myself it was nothing more than admiration or fondness born of circumstance. But it was always more.”
The confession struck him like a bell tolling at midnight—sacred, solemn, irreversible. He felt it reverberate through every guarded recess of his being, banishing the long-held belief that he was immune to such attachments, that love was a folly he had long outgrown.
His lips parted to respond—but the moment was pierced, most rudely, by a voice shrill with horror and disbelief.
“Abigail!”
Lady Harriet’s figure burst into view, emerging from the French doors like a storm blowing in from the sea. Her bonnet was askew, her cheeks flushed with a mixture of exertion and outrage, her gloved hand trembling as it lifted a fan in front of her chest as though it were a shield.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Arthur rose slowly, positioning himself slightly in front of Abigail without conscious thought. He could feel the tremble in her fingers where they still touched his coat.
“Lady Harriet,” he said, his tone even but laced with steel, “I can assure you, your daughter is unharmed—at least, no more than society’s cruelty has permitted.”
“Unharmed?” Lady Harriet cried, as though the word itself were an insult. “She is sprawled like a tragic heroine at the feet of the Viscount of Westbrook, in full view of half the ton. You have compromised her in the most public manner imaginable!”
“I intend to marry her,” Arthur said, without hesitation.
That gave the woman pause. Her mouth opened, but nothing emerged save a strangled sound of shock. She whirled to her daughter.
“Is this what you’ve done? Ruined yourself for a man who refused to even announce a betrothal before dragging your name through the mud?”
Abigail lifted her chin.
“No, Mama. I fell in love with him.”
Lady Harriet’s expression twisted, poised to unleash a fresh volley of maternal indignation—but another voice, cooler, more composed, interrupted the scene.
“Enough, Harriet,” came the clipped but commanding voice of Lady Gillian Beaumont.
She stepped forward, flanked by a sea of hushed onlookers. Unlike Harriet’s frenzied entrance, Gillian moved with unhurried poise, her chin high, her eyes assessing the tableau before her with the cold discernment of a general surveying a battlefield.
“Lady Harriet,” she said again, her voice unwavering, “if I might suggest… now is not the moment for reprimand. What has occurred is already done. What remains is how we respond to it.”
“And what, pray, do you suggest I do?” Harriet snapped. “Applaud? Congratulate them on a viable match and a job well done?”
“No,” Gillian said, and to Arthur’s astonishment, her gaze softened. “But perhaps it would serve us better all to recall that scandals, much like fires, burn brightest in the absence of composure. This is not the moment to panic. It is the moment to act with purpose.”
