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Why couldn’t logic rule her heart like it ruled her mind?
“You will be better off with Mr. Worthington,” Caroline said, trying to stay calm. “You told me when I inherited that you could not imagine someone unexpectedly giving you everything you wanted. Now you have exactly that. You would have independence and artistic fame. How can you turn away from it?”
Arabella drew in a breath. “You weren’t so pleased about it whenyouinherited.”
“I would suggest that you do not make a hash out of your dreams coming true, the way my family has made a hash of ours.”
“I don’t want Mr. Worthington,” Arabella said with quiet dignity.
Don’t say it, Caroline pleaded with her silently.My heart can’t bear it.
“I wantyou. I loveyou.”
The knowledge of her love flooded her with warmth for an instant, until cold reality washed back over her.
This was the moment Caroline had been dreading. She had hoped to reason Arabella into accepting her dreams.
“I don’t want the same thing,” Caroline lied, as gently as she could. She knew she had a better face for falsehoods than Arabella did, but it was the struggle of a lifetime to keep the agony from her face.
Especially as she watched Arabella’s crumple.
Along with Caroline’s heart.
Arabella took a shaky breath, her face wet with tears. “Then we are friends no longer. You are as overbearing as Mr. Worthington is, telling me how my life should be! However you define ‘friendship,’ I want no more part of it.”
After Arabella fled, Caroline sat with her list for a long time. She stared down at the pen and paper and wished more than anything to turn back time to when she had first written it months ago.
But she was used to denying herself for the greater good of her family, and although she had told Arabella that they were no more than friends, she knew the truth. Arabella was far more than a friend, and more even than family. She was in a category all her own, encompassing all the best parts of Caroline’s past and present.
Her future yawned ahead of her, bleak and boring, without Arabella’s sunny face and Wednesday novels and ginger comfits.
* * *
Arabella pushed her way out of Caroline’s townhouse, tears blurring her vision. She didn’t notice if anyone saw her rushing down the street, but she didn’t much care. She had left her bonnet in Caroline’s parlor, she realized as the sun hit her eyes. She must have dropped it—though she couldn’t remember anything she had done while her heart was breaking. Whether she had been sitting or standing. Whether she had been at the far end of the room or near the window.
None of those details had mattered when it felt like a cannonball was ripping through her chest.
Even now, she didn’t feel like she had control over her limbs. She had no sense of where she was going, just that she had to get away from the row of townhouses that had always been a good seller in her paintings.
She was never going to paint them again. Not after today.
In a daze, she passed through town and up the cliff and stood at the top of the bluffs. The sea sparkled, glittering and majestic, heaving and churning like it was a living being itself. Like herself. She must have raced up the hill because she was gasping for breath, her chest aching. Her brow was sweaty without her bonnet to protect her face.
There was a group of visitors traversing a narrow path nearby, and she was close enough that she could hear their laughter before they wandered out of view. Oh, how she envied them. They were happy and carefree, enjoying their holiday away from all their everyday troubles.
Not that a broken heart was an everyday trouble. If this was what if felt like for everyone, then she fervently wished it to be uncommon indeed.
Arabella sank to the ground, exhausted. The grass was warm against her back, and the sun was hot on her skin. It was a relief to grieve in private. There was no one here to ask questions or pass judgment, or to force her down a path that she didn’t want.
Her chest tightened. She hadn’t thought that Caroline would ever be adamant to see her marry, let alone to someone that she must know would take her away from Inverley.
There was only so much crying one could do in one bout, and her chest finally eased and her tears stopped flowing. She was sure that she looked a fright in her grass-stained dress with her hair mussed, puffy-eyed from sobbing, and was grateful that she met no one as she walked back down the bluffs to Belvoir Lane.
Arabella spent the rest of the day in bed. She was miserable enough that sleep evaded her. Time passed in a hazy blur with Byron purring against her chest and a novel from the lending library in her hand with the pages unturned. Lethargic, she spent the next day in her shift with her hair unbrushed. Although she was still too upset to come down for a meal, Rachel brought her tea and blancmange at luncheon. Matthew, knowing her rather better, dropped a basket of iced buns on her dresser after he came home from work.
By the third day, Arabella felt a good deal improved.
She had the energy now to be angry.
