AllFreeNovel
Share Us
{ Chapter 21 }
She sat on her front steps for fifteen minutes and not a second more.
Fifteen minutes was all she was going to allow herself to wallow.
Wallow in what she had just lost.
Wallow in her stupidity for what she’d thought she had.
A future. Love. Possibilities.
When it had all been lies. Every touch. Every kiss. Every last word.
Stupid.
Elle didn’t think her legs would hold her, but she pushed herself up onto her heels, standing and rocking for a moment before she felt she could take a step and at least stagger inside.
London. She needed to go to London. Get lost in what little fun was still to be had before the season ended.
Or better yet, make her way to her good friend, Lady Hewton’s country estate in Suffolk. Lady Hewton would already be entertaining there, if she wasn’t off visiting herself.
Her arms limp at her sides, Elle shuffled her feet around, facing her front door. Her driver had wisely not come out with her last bit of luggage. He must have seen Rune leave. Must have seen her collapse onto the stone steps.
Such discretion, all of them. It was why she’d hired them.
But at the moment, she’d rather like a shoulder to lean upon.
Elle inhaled a deep breath, steeling herself, ignoring the churning pit in her stomach, the cavernous hole in her chest. This wasn’t the first time she’d been alone and devastated.
She’d walked through that hell once. She could do it again.
Just keep walking.
“Eliana, thank goodness.” Lord Kallen’s gravelly voice cut through the air, wrapping her from behind. “I didn’t miss you, child.”
Wiping the tear stains on her cheeks as quickly as she could, Elle turned around. She hadn’t even heard his horse’s hooves on the gravel drive. “No, you didn’t miss me at all. But what are you doing here? You hate goodbyes.”
He shrugged and slid down from his saddle, pulling out his cane and moving toward her. “Sentimentality has sunk into these old bones. I may not be here when you return.”
“What?” She stepped to him, grabbing his arm as she kissed his cheek. “Don’t say such silly things, Lord Kallen. I rather need you keeping me dancing on my toes.”
“Not silly at all, child. Realistic.”
She wasn’t about to validate his words with a response and instead took a step backward, smoothing the front of her skirt as she set a smile on her face. “Well, as it turns, I will not be going anywhere at the moment, so you will be seeing so much of me in the next days you’ll be wishing I was off the island.”
“Flugbusters.” He waved his wrinkled hand in the air. “I would never wish to be rid of your smiling face. But that is not your smiling face, child. A smile is on your lips but not in your eyes. What is wrong? Where is that gentleman friend of yours?”
There was no softening the truth, nor making excuses for it. “Rune is gone.”
“He is?” Lord Kallen’s bushy grey eyebrows lifted, his head shaking. “I didn’t think that would happen.”
“No?”
“No. I rather liked this one.”
Her head snapped back. “You did? You hate every man I’ve ever even looked at with interest. Plus, what he did to your nephew.”
“Pisspant—Howard has had that coming for years—I never did like that he was near you. I thought you maybe saw something in the wretch that I couldn’t identify. So I’m rather delighted you came to your senses and that your friend took care of him as he did. It will ensure none of Howard’s despicable blood gets passed down to the next generation. He’ll have the title for a while, true, but then it will pass to his younger brother, Leroy. I’ve actually already willed everything that isn’t entailed to Leroy. That nephew is of good stock and has three boys of his own running about. In another generation Howard will be nothing more than a small scratch marring the title.”
