“You would have been angry,” she whispered. “You would have frightened me with that awful silence of yours. But you would not have dragged me to the altar. I know that now. I think I knew it even then, and I was too cowardly to admit it.”
His fingers tightened around the edge of the desk.
“I made you crueler in my mind than you had ever been to me,” Juliet said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “And then I let you suffer for it. I let Aaron suffer for it. I dragged your best friend into my mess. I let Emmeline be caught between us… All because I was afraid to face what I had done.”
“Juliet.”
“No, please. Let me say it.” Her breath broke. “I wronged you, Rowan. I was frightened, but fear does not excuse everything. I am sorry. I am so terribly sorry. And whether you forgive me or not, I needed you to know that I do not blame you for what I chose.”
For a moment, the room was silent.
“Do not ask me to comfort you through the consequences.”
Pain crossed her face, quick and raw.
For one moment, Emmeline’s face rose before him instead, eyes lowered. Her voice breaking as she said she had thought it was not her secret to tell. He saw her soft mouth trembling again. He remembered the taste of her, the heat of her body arching beneath his.
Desire struck so suddenly that anger had to rise to cover it.
“Leave, Juliet.”
Her eyes filled. “Rowan, please.”
“Not now.”
She stood there for another breath, waiting for another word from him. He did not give her that mercy. At last, she turned and left, closing the door softly behind her.
The silence afterward was worse.
By the afternoon, he went to the club because the house had become unbearable.
Frederick found him within ten minutes. “Rowan.”
“No.”
Frederick stopped beside his chair. “You have not even heard what I mean to say.”
“I have heard enough from you.”
Frederick’s jaw tightened. His usual smile was nowhere to be found. “Then hear this. Be angry with me. I earned it. But do not make everyone else bleed because you cannot bear the sight of your own wound.”
Rowan looked up slowly. The room around them seemed to quiet, though no one had stopped speaking.
“Walk away,” Rowan said, voice low and lethal. “Before I forget we were ever friends.”
Frederick absorbed that as if it had struck him in the chest. Then he gave one short nod and stepped back.
“Do you think Father likes ships?”
Emmeline looked up from the window seat, where she had been pretending to read the same page for the better part of half an hour.
Aaron stood in the doorway with Biscuit tucked awkwardly beneath one arm and a rolled sheet of paper clutched in the other.
“I believe most gentlemen like ships,” she said gently. “Why?”
Aaron stepped inside with solemn purpose. “I drew one for him.”
Emotion moved first, quick and aching beneath her ribs, before she managed to smile. “Did you?”
