Page 56 of How Not to Marry a Duke

"Good day, Miss Ashbourne. Lady Raventhorn." A curt nod toward the doorway where Margot stood frozen, her embroidery abandoned. "I wish you well."

The front door closed behind him with a finality that echoed through the house. Florinda stood in the centre of the drawing room, her hands trembling, her heart pounding, the pink orchids wilting on the table beside her.

She had refused him.

She had actually refused him.

The enormity of what she had done crashed over her like a wave, and she did not know whether to laugh or weep.

* * *

"What," Margot said, advancing into the room with the deliberate tread of a woman struggling to contain herself, "in God's name was that?"

"I refused him."

"I witnessed you refusing him." Margot's voice shook—not with anger, Florinda realised, but with fear. Real fear. "What I am asking is why. He was perfect for you. Kind. Steady. Respectable. He would have given you everything⁠—"

"I do not love him."

"You might have learnt!"

"I would not have." Florinda turned to face her stepmother, her hands clenched at her sides. The fire had burnt lower; the room was cooling, the orchid sweetness fading. "I know, because I tried. Every carriage ride, every conversation about hornbeams, every time he took my hand—I tried to feel what I ought to feel. I tried to want what I ought to want." Her voice dropped. "And I felt nothing. Nothing, Margot. Only the absence of what I cannot have."

The words hung between them, heavy with implication.

Margot's face changed. The anger drained away, replaced by a terrible understanding. "Florinda." Her voice was barely above a breath. "Tell me this is not about⁠—"

"Do not say his name." Florinda's voice cracked like ice giving way. "Please. Do not make me speak of it."

"He is engaged. He is marrying Penelope Ashworth in six weeks. Whatever you feel⁠—"

"I know what he is. I know what I am." The words tore from her throat, ragged and raw. "I am a fool who fell in love with a man who cannot love her back, and I cannot—" She pressed her hand to her mouth, as though she could hold the confession inside. "I cannot marry someone else just to prove I am fixed. I am not fixed, Margot. I am broken. And broken things do not become whole simply because someone offers to put them on a shelf."

Margot reached for her, but Florinda stepped back.

If Margot touched her now—if anyone touched her now—she would shatter into pieces too small to find.

"I need to be alone. Please."

"Florinda—"

"Please."

She did not wait for permission. She turned and walked—limped, truly, her leg screaming with every step—toward the stairs that led to the tower.

* * *

The tower room was cold.

Florinda climbed the narrow stairs one at a time, her leg protesting each one—fourteen, her mind counted without permission, just like the stairs to my room at Carthedge—and pushed open the heavy oak door at the top.

The room had been her refuge since childhood. Round and grey and isolated, with windows on three sides facing east toward Carthedge land. Her mother had kept sewing supplies here. Her father had stored old books. But for Florinda, it had always been the place she went when the world became too much—when Edwin's betrayal had shattered her, when Edward had announced she was to be sent away, when the endless cycle of being managed and pitied and carefully handled had grown unbearable.

Dust lay thick on every surface now. Cobwebs laced the corners. But the old settee was still there, and the view from the windows was still the same—rolling hills and distant hedgerows and the edge of Carthedge land visible on the horizon if one knew where to look.

She looked.

She could not help herself.