Page 53 of The Duke and His Jilted Bride

“What is he like?” Aurelia asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “When it is just the two of you.”

Seraphina looked at her, a little surprised by the question. Then something genuinely warm came into her expression. “Frederick, you mean?”

Aurelia nodded.

“He’s funny,” she said. “And sometimes he is completely ridiculous. He’s a romantic at heart though, not a jester. It can be hard sometimes to accept all his love and affection.” She paused, something dark passing across her face before it disappeared. “But he is still young. My mother says men change terribly over time… He pays me proper attention, the kind where you feel like the thing you've just said is the most interesting thing anyone has said to him ever. I've never felt overlooked by him. I hope that part doesn’t change.”

“I did feel overlooked by him,,” Aurelia admitted. “With him, all the time.”

“I know,” Seraphina said. “I suspected as much when I saw you together.”

“When we were engaged he was charming and agreeable, but he asked me very few questions about myself. I thought that was simply how he was. Now I think he was somewhere else the entire time.”

“He was,” Seraphina said. “Not deliberately, but yes.”

Aurelia turned her cup in her hands. The condensation was making them wet. She stopped to wipe them on her lap, feeling that Seraphina would never be caught doing something so improper. Maybe that was why Frederick had preferred her.

“I didn't love him,” Aurelia said. “It wasn't that kind of loss, when he disappeared with you. It was the humiliation of it, and the waste of it, with everyone watching.” She paused. “That is what I am still angry about.”

“You should be,” Seraphina said simply. “I would be angry if I were you… Especially if I was forced to marry Sandacre under the same conditions. He is confusing at the best of times. And he will be more loyal to this house than he will ever be to a woman. But I am not telling you anything you don’t already know, since you are the one who ended up marrying him.”

She had said it casually, like they were just two women gossiping about things that were common knowledge. But Aurelia had never felt like that. It was an unfair assessment.

“That’s not true,” she argued weakly.

“Oh.” Seraphina had the decency to look abashed. “Yes, well, you would know him better than I would, I suppose.”

Maybe not, Aurelia thought, if Seraphina had known him her entire life. She felt something catch in her chest and coughed lightly. Seraphina's eyes moved to her face. Her smile didn't change.

The garden was almost unbearably warm for early May. Aurelia had taken off her coat the moment she had gone out through the back doors, without much of a plan. The house had too many people in it, and she needed space to think – especially from Seraphina.

She took the path that cut through the lawn. The gardens descended in levels, and between the first and the third there was a stone garden she liked. To her surprise, Nike materialised from somewhere and fell into step beside her, which helped to dull the ache in her chest.

She had not gone far when she heard footsteps behind her on the gravel and turned. It was Frederick. Coat on, hands in his pockets, looking like he had half a mind to turn back around before he asked, “May I join you?”

Aurelia nodded and waited for him. Nike ranged ahead and doubled back by the time he reached her. It was so strange, seeing him like this, after a month of feeling like everything they had shared had been a lie.

“You look well,” he said first. “It was hard to tell last night, once we arrived. I could barely keep my eyes open from lack of sleep and… I feared looking at you, quite honestly.” He scrunched his face and looked at the horizon. “I spoke to my brother this morning.”

“I heard there was talk.”

“My wife found you?” He smiled ruefully. “Did she tell you what we discussed? No?” He sighed. “The long and short of it… I asked for his forgiveness, and asked whether he was happy. He didn’t answer much, which is its own answer, I suppose, knowing him.”

Aurelia could barely think about Evander without considering Seraphina, so she simply smiled and nodded.

Frederick ran a hand over his face. She had never seen him do that before, and it struck her how much he had been pretending when he had been with her, all those weeks, just pretending.

“I have been trying to find the right way to speak to you since we arrived last night, and I keep putting it off because I cannot work out how to begin. So I am just going to begin and hope that the rest is fine. Is that all right?” he asked.

She called Nike to her side again. “We will soon find you, won’t we?”

“I am sorry, but you know that,” he said. “But specifically… to you. You were exceedingly kind to me for the two months we were betrothed. You were patient and gracious and you were willing to make the best of something that was never going to be what either of us really wanted. You deserved to be treated with honesty, and I treated you with the exact opposite. All this…” He gestured vaguely around them. “I let it go on far longer than it should have done.”

Aurelia listened. She had been preparing for this conversation, or some similarity of it, since she had seen him standing in the entrance hall last night, and now that it was happening she found it was simpler than she had expected.

“You could have just told me,” she said. “Before the wedding. Even a week before. Even the day before. Why did it have to be the morning itself?”

“Because I was a coward. I knew that if I came to you and told you the truth you would have been hurt, and frankly I didn’t want to see that. Seraphina thinks I am incapable of facing a direct consequence, and she is probably not wrong. And my brother… God knows I could never have told my brother back then.”