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“I’m sure we needn’t wonder what it was about,” Marcelline said. “Longmore avenging his sister’s honor, or some such.”
“Why should he need to?” Sophy said. “Everyone thought Lady Clara avenged her own honor very well. Anything Longmore did would be anticlimactic, don’t you think?”
“Then what provoked fisticuffs in St. James’s Street?” Leonie said.
“Don’t be thick,” Sophy said. “It’s not as though men need a sane reason. They were both in a bad mood. One of them picked a fight. And I’ll wager anything that now it’s over, they’ll be getting drunk together.”
“Why was Longmore in a bad mood, Sophy?” Marcelline said. “You said he’d been here, after Clevedon left.”
“He came to plague me about the ball and call me a traitor for spying for Tom Foxe on his sister and friend. I pretended not to know what he was talking about. Oh, Lord.” Her pretty countenance turned repentant. “Oh, Marcelline, what horrid sisters we are. We hear of a fight, and off we go, little bloodthirsty cats, and there you are, your heart breaking—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Marcelline said. “Save the drama for the newspapers.”
“But what happened, dearest?” Sophy set down her glass and knelt by Marcelline and took her hand. “What did Clevedon say and what did you say—and why are you pretending your heart isn’t broken?”
Clevedon House
Sunday 10 May, three o’clock in the morning
The house was dark, everyone abed but one. In the library, a single candle flickered over a solitary figure in a dressing gown whose pen scratched rapidly across the paper.
The Duke of Clevedon had done his best to beat Longmore to a bloody pulp. Afterward they’d emptied one bottle after another. Yet he’d come home all too sober. It seemed there wasn’t enough drink in all the world to dull the ache in his heart or quiet his conscience and let him sleep.
Nothing to be done about the heartache but endure.
His conscience was another matter.
It drove him to the library. Then, even before he took up his pen to write to Clara, he knew how it must begin:
Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you.
It was the start of Mr. Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, Clara’s favorite novel. He could easily imagine her reluctant smile when she read it. He continued in his own words:
I was wrong to make an offer, and you were right in all you said, but you said not half enough. Our listeners should have heard the thousand ways I’ve taken you for granted and tried your good nature and the ways I’ve thought only of myself and never of you. You’ve been true to me for all the time I’ve known you, and for all that time I, too, have been true only to me. When you were grieving for the grandmother I knew you dearly loved, I abandoned you to jaunt about the Continent. I expected you to wait for me, and you did. How, then, did I return your patience and loyalty? I was neglectful, insensitive, and false.
He wrote on, of the many ways he’d wronged her. She’d brought joy and light into his life when he was a lonely, heartbroken boy. Her letters had brightened his days. She was dear to him, and always would be, but they were friends and no more. Surely he’d known in his heart this wasn’t enough for marriage, but it was the easy way and he took it. He’d been false to her and false to himself, because he’d been a coward, afraid to risk his heart.
He acknowledged all his thoughtless and unkind acts, and concluded:
I’m sorry, my dear, so deeply sorry. I hope in time you’ll forgive me—though I can’t at the moment suggest a reason to do so. With all my heart I wish you the happiness I ought to have been able to give you and a hundred times more.
He wrote his usual affectionate closing, and signed with his initial, as he always did.
He folded up the letter, addressed it, and left it in the tray for the servant to take out with the morning mail.
Then, only the heartache remained.
