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With fortitude he didn’t think he possessed, he stepped around her and stalked down the corridor.
Every step a dagger to his soul.
Every step a door slamming shut upon the only good thing he’d ever had in his life.
The only thing that had ever been his. Just his.
He turned to the main staircase, descending, and then stalked out into the grey haze of the day.
He closed the front door to Culland Hall gently behind him, and with it every hope he’d never dared to dream.
~~~
His boots thudded along the hallway, fading down the stairs.
The front door opened and then closed with uncommon delicacy.
Silence.
Roe was gone, deserting her in a wasteland of suffocation without a backward glance.
It took her minutes to make her feet move from where she was rooted in the corridor. Without thought, she drifted to her room, only three doors away from Roe’s chamber.
She stood at the threshold of the room, staring at nothing on the floor, unable to focus on anything except standing upright, not crumpling into a heap.
He left her. Left her willingly.He was always going to leave her.
This time, she believed the words he said. There hadn’t been any doubt in his voice. Any questions in his dark grey eyes.
Her limbs numb, she shuffled into her room. If she was to collapse, at least let it be in private, not heaping upon her the humiliation of Roe’s brother or Sienna seeing her crumpled.
Her look moved upward from the pretty blue Axminster carpet on the floor of her room. Daylight hit her eyes, making her blink. The terrace.
She’d forgotten about the terrace leading off of the far wall of the room—it was just her luck. Just another laughable twist of fate. She’d noticed it before, knew that it faced out the front of Culland Hall, but she’d never thought to step out onto it.
Cruel.
Cruel that it existed. Cruel that it called to her, enticing her forward with inexplicable force.
Nothing but pain awaited her on that terrace, but still she crossed the room, opening the French door.
She stepped out onto the terrace, her hands wrapping along the smooth marble banister for support.
She found Roe immediately, several hundred paces away from the main entrance of Culland Hall where the path up from the stables met the main drive. Logan handed Roe the reins to a giant brown gelding and Roe swung himself up into the saddle.
Whatever the brothers said to each other, it was short.
Roe’s heels dug into the horse and he thundered down the gravel drive that led from the front of the hall.
Her eyes collapsed into a squint, watching him until the last hoof beats of his horse disappeared beyond the ridge at the end of the drive.
Sienna appeared by her side, floating in as quietly as a feather caught in the wind, and her fingers settled lightly onto the marble banister that lined the terrace. Her look stayed outward toward the last spot Roe was visible and she exhaled a long breath—not quite a sigh, not quite relief. “If it were Logan I wouldn’t let him go alone. Ever.”
Simple. Direct.
The esteem which Torrie already held for Sienna increased tenfold.
Torrie turned to her. “Logan’s not going to stop me? You have ideas for me?”
