Page 73 of A Wallflower for the Disguised Earl

They retrieved their hats and walking sticks from the porter and stepped out into the freezing damp of the London morning. The cold air hit Edmund’s face like a physical blow, but it did nothing to clear the suffocating fog in his chest. They walked down the pavement side by side, their boots striking the wet cobblestones in a grim, synchronized march.

“Three more men offered me their congratulations before you came downstairs this morning,” Julian said quietly, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead. “I smiled. I shook their hands. I thanked them for their good wishes toward my employer.”

Edmund closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, the guilt twisting the knife deeper into his ribs. “I am sorry, Julian.”

“Do not apologize to me,” Julian replied, his voice rough. “I am not the one paying the price for this. You are.”

Edmund stopped walking. The street around them was bustling with carriages and vendors, but they stood in a pocket of absolute, freezing isolation. He looked at his best friend, the man who had risked prison and ruin just to help him observe a family.

“I need to speak to her,” Edmund said. The words tore out of his throat, raw and desperate.

Julian turned, his dark eyes searching Edmund’s face. “Edmund, the announcement is printed. The special license is signed. There is nothing you can do.”

“I am not trying to undo it,” Edmund insisted, gripping the silver handle of his walking stick so tightly his leather gloves creaked. “I know the board is locked. I know I have to marry Vivienne to save their family from the scandal I created. I am not going to ask Corinna to run away, or make promises I cannot keep.”

“Then what is the point?” Julian asked, his brow furrowing with deep concern. “You will only hurt her more.”

“I have to say what is true,” Edmund said, his voice dropping into a ragged whisper. “I have to tell her the truth, just once, before it becomes permanently unsayable. I cannot let her spend the rest of her life believing that she was nothing more than a pawn in a game I was playing. She has to know.”

Julian looked at him for a long, heavy moment. He saw the absolute, unyielding desperation in Edmund’s eyes, the fractured remnants of the open-hearted, impulsive man he had met in Italy years ago.

Slowly, Julian nodded. “Very well. I will arrange it.”

That evening, the air in Mayfair was bitter and biting, smelling of coal smoke and impending frost.

Edmund stood in the shadows of the street, directly across from Aunt Phoebe’s yellow-painted door. The collar of his wool coat was turned up against the wind, but he could not feel the cold. His entire body was numb, vibrating with a frantic, terrifying adrenaline.

He watched as Julian ascended the stone steps and struck the brass knocker.

The door opened. Aunt Phoebe stood in the threshold, illuminated by the warm, golden light of the foyer. From his vantage point in the shadows, Edmund could not hear the words being exchanged, but he could see the tension in the lines of Julian’s posture.

Julian was asking for a favor he had absolutely no right to ask. One conversation. In the garden. Properly chaperoned, with Phoebe herself present if she chose, simply to allow a condemned man his final words.

Phoebe stood in the doorway for a long moment. She looked at Julian, her intelligent face completely unreadable. Then she looked past Julian’s shoulder, her gaze piercing the darkness across the street, finding Edmund exactly where he stood in the shadows.

She stared at him, weighing the damage he had done against the raw, desperate grief radiating from his rigid posture.

Slowly, Phoebe stepped aside.

Julian turned and gave a sharp nod into the dark.

Edmund crossed the street, his heart hammering violently against his ribs. He bypassed the front door entirely, walking down the narrow side alley that led to the townhouse’s walled garden. He unlatched the wrought-iron gate and stepped inside.

The garden was quiet and fading, its summer blooms long gone, the climbing roses thinning to bare, tangled canes against the brick walls. The only light came from the sliver of a crescent moon overhead and the yellow glow spilling from the ground-floor windows of the house.

Edmund stood near the stone bench, waiting. Every second stretched into a lifetime.

Then the door at the back of the house clicked open, and Corinna stepped out into the freezing night.

She was a young lady, slight in frame, who had always been easy to overlook in a crowded room. But to Edmund, she possessed a quiet, striking beauty that commanded the entire space. She wore a woolen shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders over a dark dress. Her dark hair was pinned back, and her pale skin caught the moonlight, making her look almost ethereal.

She walked down the stone steps. Her expression was completely, terrifyingly blank.

She stopped three feet away from him. The physical distance felt like an impassable ocean.

“Miss Ashwell,” Edmund managed to say, his voice cracking on the first syllable.

“My lord,” Corinna replied.