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Now she truly believed that her mother had wished for a torn heart for her daughter.
Better to have a broken heart than a broken soul from loving someone who could not love her in return.
If she didn’t turn her back on him in that instant, she would not have the strength to do it at all. She turned. She could not look at his face.
She left him behind.
Rushing up the stairs, she went to her sister’s chamber, not knocking but running inside. Melina sat in there, her son’s toy soldiers arranged on the table, and Willa stood at the side, moving the toy men into rows. A governess sat in a corner chair.
When Melina looked up, Willa ran to her aunt and wedged herself against Bellona. For a second, the hug erased the pain deep inside her, but then when she looked at the little girl’s tousled curls and cherub cheeks, she realised she had given up her chance to have a child by the one man she loved. Sharp spasms of pain hit her body and she forced herself immobile to let the hurt pass.
Melina looked at her sister’s face. ‘Take Willa to play in the nursery,’ she said to the governess.
‘Warrington told me about Rhys.’ Melina stood as the governess and Willa left. ‘When you moved to Harling House to be a companion to the duchess, I knew you were taking a risk, but how could I warn you?’
‘You could not have. I already knew. When I met Rhys in the forest, I knew. No one had ever unsettled me the same way he did.’ She’d pointed the arrow tip at him to keep herself safe, but not in the way he’d thought at the time.
She couldn’t stay at her sister’s house. Rhys had even taken that from her. To see the children grow and watch her sister’s family flourish while she stood on the outside looking in would wither her spirit. She had to leave.
‘You will survive,’ Melina said, walking to put an arm around her sister’s shoulder.
‘How would you know?’
‘You have no other choice.’ Melina reached out as if to pat Bellona, but instead pinched her sister’s arm.
‘Stop it.’ Bellona pulled away.
Melina reached out, fingers poised to nip Bellona again.
Bellona took a step away. ‘You had better not.’
‘It is only because I care for you.’
‘Do not let us get in a competition to see who loves the other the most. Your children do not need to see such behaviour.’
‘If you do not want me to hurt you, then you must remember that you would not want a husband who does the same.’
‘I know. My mind knows that.’ She put her hands to her head, pushing back the hair that had fallen at her brow. ‘But my head cannot find a way to tell my heart. I do not understand why it will not listen.’
* * *
The man of affairs still sat in front of him, patiently awaiting the return to his duties. Rhys didn’t know how a man could smell of roses and be content in life, but Simpson seemed to have mastered that. Rhys felt he could kick the chair legs from under the man and he would receive only an apology from Simpson for having placed his chair in the wrong path.
Rhys’s jaw hurt from keeping his words careful and precise and all emotion banked.
He began looking over the ledgers again. He spotted an error. One he’d made. He crossed it out, irritated. He couldn’t have been paying attention to have made such an obvious mistake.
Voice ever so solicitous, the man of affairs said, ‘I wish to speak with you about a private matter, concerning a bit of rubbish currently being batted about.’
Rhys nodded. Apparently the man of affairs had heard the on dits. Rhys could sense a change in the man—an awareness of unsaid things.
‘So—’ Rhys relaxed his body in the chair, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and fixed his eyes on Simpson ‘—what is the talk?’ Might as well get the words on the table, so to speak, and then get on with things.
‘Talk?’ The voice was just a tiny amount too shrill. ‘I would not call it that. Only small minds repeating things heard. Embellished, I’m sure.’
Rhys didn’t speak, but let his eyes pull out the words. He waited. And in the same manner of a gust of air blowing over his body, he viewed his physical self. He’d never sat in a chair in such an informal way. Rhys put his feet flat on the floor, hands on the desk, straightened his back and leaned forward.
‘It’s said the dark-eyed foreign woman had wild ways, and you, well—’ his head swiveled sideways ‘—did as a normal man would and partook of her favours.’
‘That’s all?’
‘It’s said she’s even claimed to be that Lord Hawkins’s daughter—the one who paints. Trying to disgrace him—though you know how he’s viewed by the ton as full of himself and rather like a belch that’s gone on too long.’
