Page 69 of A Wallflower for the Disguised Earl

The silence she left behind was suffocating.

Edmund stood frozen, staring at the empty doorway. He felt as though the walls of the room were physically closing in, crushing his ribs, squeezing the life out of him. The scent of her floral perfume lingered in the air, a cloying reminder of the prison sentence he had just been handed.

A shadow shifted in the hallway.

Julian stepped slowly into the doorway, standing exactly where Vivienne had been a moment before. He was not wearing a fine velvet coat. He wore a simple white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, his dark hair a messy, disheveled halo around his exhausted face.

Julian looked at Edmund. His dark eyes were filled with profound sorrow.

Arabella looked at Edmund, her hands twisting nervously in the fabric of her skirt, tears welling in her gentle brown eyes.

Edmund turned his head slowly. He looked at the high-backed damask chair by the fire.

It was empty.

Lady Margaret had slipped out of the room during Vivienne’s speech, moving as silently as a ghost. She had left no parting words, no final reprimand. She had given him her answer, laid out his duty, and she expected him to give his. The empty chair was a monument to his failure.

“Edmund,” Julian said softly, breaking the heavy, ringing silence. He stepped into the study, his voice raw and entirely stripped of its usual bravado. “I am so sorry. For all of this. For everything I have done to complicate it.”

Edmund looked at his best friend, the anger that had burned between them earlier completely extinguished, replaced by a shared exhaustion.

“You have been the best friend a man could ever ask for,” Julian continued, crossing the room until he stood a few feet away. “You saved my life in Naples. You brought me into your home. You gave me a purpose when I had absolutely nothing. I will support you, Edmund. Whatever you have to do, whatever this marriage costs you, I will stand by you.”

Julian paused, swallowing hard, his gaze shifting from Edmund to Arabella.

“But I cannot keep lying,” Julian whispered, his voice trembling as he looked at the younger girl. “I cannot pretend anymore. Arabella, I am in love with you. I have loved you since the moment you looked at me and refused to tolerate my nonsense. I know I have no title, no wealth, and a past that is entirely unworthy of you, but I love you.”

Arabella let out a soft, broken sob. She did not hesitate. She did not look to Edmund for permission. She crossed the room in three rapid steps and threw her arms around Julian’s neck, burying her face in his shoulder.

Julian caught her, his arms wrapping tightly around her waist, burying his face in her soft brown hair as if she were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

Edmund watched them. He saw the desperate, fierce grip they had on one another, the absolute, undeniable truth of their connection cutting through the toxic wreckage of his own life. He watched his sister, the quiet, grieving girl who had held their family together, finally reach for something she actually wanted.

An unexpected pressure built in Edmund’s chest. The suffocating weight of Vivienne’s demands, the cold judgment of his mother, the absolute loss of Corinna—it all pressed down on him. But looking at Julian and Arabella, the pressure cracked.

Edmund smiled.

It was a small, fragile, entirely genuine smile. It was the first time he had smiled in days.

He stepped forward, crossing the short distance between them. He wrapped his large arms around both of them, pulling his best friend and his sister into a fierce, desperate embrace.

“We will find a way out of this,” Edmund whispered fiercely into the quiet room, holding them tight against the collapsing world. “I do not know how, and I do not know when, but I promise you both. We will find a way out of this together.”

Chapter 26

The morning fog clung to the tall windowpanes of the Mayfair townhouse like a damp, suffocating shroud. Corinna stood in the center of her bedchamber, her hands buried deep in the pockets of her dark woolen skirt.

The fire in the grate crackled, but it offered absolutely no warmth to the freezing dread settling deep within her bones. She had not slept. She had spent the dark, agonizing hours pacing the floorboards, trying to untangle the impossible knots of Edmund’s deception.

The memory of his hands, large and warm, reaching for her in the garden played on a mocking loop inside her exhausted mind. She remembered the desperate heat in his blue eyes, the way his breath had hitched when he looked at her mouth.

She remembered the magnetic pull between them, a physical tension that had felt so incredibly real, so thick she could have cut it with a knife. He had looked at her as if she were the only anchor holding him to the earth. And yet, every whispered word, every charged silence, was built upon a foundation of shifting, treacherous sand.

A soft knock at the door broke her spiraling thoughts.

Before she could answer, the brass latch clicked open. Aunt Phoebe stepped into the room. She was not holding her usual cup of morning tea, nor did she carry her painting palette.

Phoebe held a single, folded sheet of cheap, coarse paper.