Page 60 of A Wallflower for the Disguised Earl

“Corinna, wait!” Edmund shouted, the paralysis finally breaking.

He lunged forward to follow her.

Cecily stepped directly into his path, placing a hand firmly against his chest. It was not a forceful touch, but it was anchored and deliberate, completely blocking his forward momentum.

“Let her go, Edmund,” Cecily said, her voice dropping its playful edge, turning sharp and pragmatic.

“Get out of my way,” Edmund snarled, trying to push past her without using physical violence against a woman.

“She will never understand what you are,” Cecily insisted, keeping her hand pressed against his chest. Her dark eyes were entirely serious. “Look at her. She is a country mouse. This whole Season has been a ridiculous performance, and you know it. Corinna Ashwell is not equipped for the real version of you. She is not equipped for the life you actually lead.”

Edmund stopped fighting her hold. He went perfectly still. He looked down at Cecily Vane, seeing the ruthless, mercenary calculation in her eyes, and he felt a profound sense of absolute clarity.

He reached up and wrapped his large hand around Cecily’s wrist. He did not hurt her, but his grip was unyielding. He slowly removed her hand from his chest, letting her arm drop to her side.

“I am in love with Corinna Ashwell,” Edmund said.

Cecily looked at him. The arrogant, knowing confidence finally fractured. She stared into his face for a long, heavy moment, searching his blue eyes for the boy who had read poetry in Rome. She found only the hardened, resolute man he had become.

Slowly, a laugh slipped past her lips. It was not her usual mocking, brittle sound. It was strangely quiet, tinged with something that looked almost like genuine, sorrowful feeling.

“You are a doomed man, Edmund,” Cecily said softly.

She did not argue further. She turned around, picked up her leather gloves from the sofa, and walked toward the door.

Edmund stood in the silence for exactly two seconds. Then, he bolted for the front door, desperate to catch Corinna before the carriage pulled away.

Chapter 22

Corinna did not take off her walking coat. She sat on the very edge of her mattress, her hands folded rigidly in her lap, staring at the floral pattern of the wallpaper until the pale yellow roses blurred into indistinguishable smears of color. The cold street air still clung to the heavy wool of her sleeves even as a stifling heat suddenly seized her chest.

She heard him before she saw anything else.

The heavy brass knocker of the townhouse sounded a frantic, singular strike, followed immediately by the door shuddering open.

“I must speak with her.”

His voice drifted up the sweeping staircase, pitched low but vibrating with a desperate, ragged urgency that tore right through the floorboards. It was not the measured, deferential tone of Mr. Marsh, the quiet secretary. It was a voice accustomed to commanding rooms, currently stripped of all its armor.

“You will do no such thing.” Aunt Phoebe’s response was quieter, but it possessed the unyielding density of a brick wall.

“Mrs. Cavendish, please. You do not understand what just happened in that drawing room. Cecily…”

“I understand perfectly well what is happening,” Phoebe interrupted, her voice slicing cleanly through his plea. “I understand that my niece just returned to this house looking as though she had been struck by a carriage. I understand that you have brought a tempest to our doorstep, and I will not allow you to drag her into the center of it.”

“I am trying to pull her out of it!” he argued, his boots shifting heavily against the marble tiles of the foyer. “I just need five minutes. Just let me look at her. Let me explain.”

“There is nothing you can explain in five minutes that will undo the damage of an entire Season,” Phoebe said firmly. “You had your day, sir. The day is done. Now, you will leave this house, or I will have the footmen throw you into the street.”

An agonizing silence stretched across the ground floor. Corinna held her breath, her fingernails biting half-moons into the palms of her hands. A treacherous, foolish part of her wanted to run out to the landing, to lean over the banister and demand he speak the truth he had promised in his note. But the image of Cecily Vane’s hand hovering intimately over his shoulder remained burned into the back of her eyelids, branding her to the mattress.

Then, the front door closed with a final, echoing thud.

Nothing. He was gone.

Corinna remained on the edge of the bed. She listened to the rhythm of Phoebe’s footsteps ascending the stairs. The stairs creaked in familiar places, measuring out the seconds before the inevitable reckoning.

The bedroom door clicked open. Phoebe stepped inside; she looked older, the lines around her mouth drawn tight with sorrow. Phoebe crossed the room and sat down softly on the mattress beside Corinna.