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Rather than clarifying anything, the statement only made her more confused. And what in the world was Harry doing with those two? “Alright, come in and dress me, please, and I’ll see what this whole fiasco is about.” After briskly dressing, Eliza left her room and made her way to the parlor. Somehow, the sight that greeted her was even more bizarre than she’d expected. Harry sat in a chair, his nose smeared with the remnants of blood and face mottled with swollen bruising. Someone had done a number on him, and she wondered if it had anything to do with the other men in the room. Ashford lounged casually on an adjacent sofa. Clifton stood behind Harry, the fingers of one hand drumming along the back of the chair. The bruises on his knuckles gave him away as the culprit of the beating. “What in the world is going on here?” she demanded.
“Apologies for the late call, My Lady.” Ashford said as he rose. “But something came up concerning this gentleman that needed sorting immediately. Clifton enlisted my aid in getting the chap here.”
“You’ve beat him,” she noted, wondering what on earth Harry could have done to illicit such ire.
“That’s what he gets for putting his hands on my wife in the middle of my club, but that isn’t why we’re here.” Clifton kicked the back of Harry’s chair. “Tell her what you did.”
“I lied,” Harry blurted with a terrified glance up at the irate earl. “About Dalton.”
“Dalton apparently showed up at The White Heather in the middle of the afternoon to drink himself into a weeping mess, and Aircourt came to gloat, which is how Clifton found out about it,” Ashford elaborated. Eliza barely heard the duke’s words, the shock of Harry’s confession being far too great. He’d been lying about the whole thing? But then, James’s debts were still real, and his mother’s scandal still occurring. Unless he’s been entirely truthful in his insistence that he would have told her about it before asking for her hand. Her heart thudded in her ears. Oh, God. She’d ruined everything.
“He had lots to say during our little chat in the office, didn’t you?” Clifton said with a sneer. “Wish I had been the one to break your nose instead of Dalton.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry croaked.
“I’ve heard enough,” Eliza said. She gave Harry her frostiest glare, all the better to ground herself against the entirely new kind of despair seeping into her. “Get out of my house and never come back.” The image of James’s face after her rejection, his wide, heartbroken eyes as she’d likely crushed his heart under her heel, was almost too much for her to bear. Even the pathetic scene of Harry scrambling out of his chair and all but sprinting from the room did nothing to ease her guilt. Surely James would never forgive her.
“How is he?” she said meekly into the now quiet room.
“A right mess last time I saw him,” Clifton bluntly replied. “Amberwood took him home earlier today. I assume he is now with his sister, trying to work out their mother’s scandal.”
“I see.” It was a relief to know that he wasn’t alone after her abandonment of him. It seemed the people around him had far more capacity for trust than she.
“So?” Ashford’s relaxed voice interrupted her pitiful thoughts.
“What?” she asked.
“What are you going to do now? We went through the trouble of bringing that sorry bastard here for a reason.”
Clifton scowled. “As entertaining as Dalton has been, I’d rather not deal with him having another drunken, maudlin episode at my club in the middle of the afternoon.”
Eliza smiled sadly. “You speak as if there is something to be done. I doubt he would want to see me. Besides, how could he ever trust me not to toss him out after the first rumor I hear again?” A rift had opened between them because of her actions, one that couldn’t be closed.
“Nonsense,” Ashford calmly replied, an assured certainty in his voice that could only come from one of his rank. Sadly, even a duke couldn’t magically fix her troubles.
“I wish I had such optimism, Your Grace.”
“It is not optimism, but reality,” he replied. “I wouldn’t be married right now if that weren’t true.”
“This idiot would know,” Clifton chimed in irreverently. “He believed some awful things about Her Grace and nearly bungled up the entire thing with his accusations.”
“Kitty was so angry with me that she tried to flee to the country before the wedding. Thankfully, I managed to convince her of my feelings after learning the truth. It took a fair amount of groveling, though.”
“But she took you back. I did the same with Francesca after she made her own mistakes regarding my character. Trust can be regained, you see.”
“But love, once given up on, cannot.” Ashford rose from his seat. “I think we’ve taken up enough of your time. I, for one, would like to return to my warm bed and the wife within it.” He finished the pronouncement with a languid stretch and one of the most graceful yawns she’d ever seen.
“And I’ve got a club to run. Good evening, My Lady.” Clifton bowed and followed Ashford as he left the parlor, neither man waiting for her reply. Not that she was capable of conversation at the moment. The men’s private admissions weighed heavily on her mind. Had their own relationships really recovered from a situation as awful as hers? If true, then perhaps there was some hope after all. She desperately wanted it to be so, for the only thing worse than the heartbreak of her and James’s separation was the new revelation that her actions had been the cause, that he was in as much, if not more, pain than she.
“Wallowing in self-pity will solve nothing, Eliza,” she scolded herself, harshly digging her palms into her watering eyes before squaring her shoulders with a loud exhale. The one to fix things had to be her, and an idea was already forming. James had been able to brave a redemption journey for the entire Ton to witness and pick apart.
It was only fair that she did the same.
