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Her name isn’t Hannah. Her name is Lady Belle Sinclair. Lady Belle...
The piece of paper fell from his hand. Stephen lifted his hand to his hair as realization dawned on him.She lied to me.
“I will not stand for this, Stephen,” his mother was saying. “You have a duty to his family and marrying the Dowager Duchess is the best thing for you.”
“How did you find out about this?” he asked her.Could this be...someone else? Perhaps she has a sister, a twin she never told me about.
“I had you followed,” his mother said confidently. “And before you decide to be upset with me, you should know that I only did it because I was worried about you. You were spending all your time outside the manor and you seemed completely disinterested in the Season. I feared the worst and so I thought I should try to find out what was wrong.”
“And you thought having me followed was the best way of doing such a thing?”
“Perhaps I overstepped my boundaries. I do have a tendency to do that. Your Father said that to me all the time.”
The late Duke was the last person he wanted to hear about right now. “What else do you know?” he demanded. “How do you even know that it this is her? This could be—”
“You tell me, Stephen. Are you certain this woman has been telling you the truth all this time? I may have had you followed and learned about who she was, but I believe what I did was right in the end. How else would I have found out that she is set to marr—”
“Mother...” he turned to face her, swallowing, “I will speak with you later.”
Stephen looked down at the piece of paper by his feet. Lady Belle’s smiling face stared up at him. Even now, in this gut-wrenching betrayal, she was a beauty.
“Stephen!”
But he was already walking away, the floor the only the thing he was focusing on. Though he knew his mother continued her rant behind him, Stephen heard none of it. He only focused on the floor, on putting one foot before the other until he made it to his office. He closed the door behind him and, like a man in a daze, walked over to his desk, sinking down into the chair.
After a moment, he buried his face into his hands.I did it again.
After everything he’d been through, after the pain he’d felt from Serena’s betrayal, Stephen should have known better. He should have had a better control over his heart. He should have asked more questions at least.
Hannah...no, Lady Belle...she lied to him. She had been lying to him all this time. She pretended she was a common woman, pretended she had been running from a terrible employer. Since the moment they met, she’d never spoke a word of truth.
How do I know if anything else she’d told me was true?Stephen clutched his hair, pulling at the strands as if that would bring him the answers he needed. He wanted to go back to her, wanted to demand the truth.
But at the same time, he no longer wanted anything to do with her.
And then the pain came. Hard and fast, it slammed into him like a large rock, knocking the breath out his lungs. He rested his head on the cool wood as he struggled to breathe, tears squeezing past his eyes.
So many questions bombarded him at once. Stephen wished he had the answers to them all, but his mother had been well equipped when she’d decided to confront him. At least it would have saved him from wishing it wasn’t true, from trying his best to sort through all the possible reasons why what he’d just learned was false.
The truth is so clear to me now. How could I have been so stupid?
The heartbreak he felt was far stronger than anything he’d felt before. But as he blinked the tears away, Stephen decided to focus on the anger instead. At least that way, he felt he might be able to survive.
