He'd been so consumed with avoiding Estella, with maintaining his careful distance, that he'd let his mother's machinations proceed unchecked.
Clarissa's eyes glistened. "Thank you, Lord Blackwood. Truly. I cannot?—"
"There's no need." He cleared his throat. "I hope your clergyman deserves you."
She smiled then, and left the anteroom with a lighter step than she'd entered it. Sebastian stood alone and tried to identify the feeling expanding in his chest.
It was not relief.
Relief implied the removal of a burden, and the burden he carried had nothing to do with Lady Clarissa Whitfield.
He supposed it was recognition.
He'd watched a woman beg for the freedom to love the man she'd chosen, and it had cracked something open.
Clarissa had chosen love. She'd walked into a room full of strangers and fought for it.
And Estella had done the same. On the terrace. At Vauxhall. On the dance floor tonight when she'd marched up to him and demanded a waltz with the same courage she brought to everything.
She'd chosen him. In fact, she'd been choosing him for weeks. And he'd told her, over and over, that he wasn't a choice she was allowed to make.
He rushed toward the door and went to find her.
He searched the ballroom again. Then the terrace and then the ladies' retiring room entrance, where he loomed awkwardly until a startled maid informed him that no, Miss Hale was not inside.
He found Thea Evermore in a corner. She looked up from her book with an expression that suggested she'd been expecting him.
"Where is she?" he asked without preamble.
"She left." Thea's voice was carefully neutral. "Some time ago."
"Left?" His voice came out sharper than he'd intended. "Left where? Is she all right?"
Thea's expression hardened. "She was unwell, I'm told."
Unwell… His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Miss Evermore. Where did she go?"
Thea studied him for a long moment. Her spectacles glinted, and behind them her dark eyes were sharp and assessing and…not entirely friendly. "She went home, I believe."
Something was wrong. Estella didn't leave events early. Not to mention, she’d set a rendezvous.
"Did something happen?" he demanded. "Did someone?—"
"That young lady you were just with." She said the words simply, but there was a downward pull to her lips that made it clear she was utterly annoyed with him.
"Pardon?"
She gestured toward the room where he’d met with Lady Clarissa. "I saw Estella speaking with that same young lady a little while ago. And when they parted, Estella looked…unwell. She left shortly after."
A sharp exhale left him as he made the connection. She’d spoken to Lady Clarissa. Lady Clarissa, who was under the impression that they had an agreement in place…to be married.
His gut heaved.
I think about you. Every minute of every day.
He'd said that to her. Less than an hour before she'd learned he was engaged to someone else.
The guilt that crashed through him was different from the guilt he carried about Andrew. That was old and heavy, a burden he'd learned to bear. This guilt was sharp and new and entirely his fault—not a tragic accident, but a catastrophe of his own cowardly making.
