Page 65 of The Duke and His Jilted Bride

“Sit down, Seraphina. And tell me what is happening.”

She moved to the nearest chair and sat. It was the least composed thing he had ever seen her do, like her legs had stopped cooperating. Underneath the composure she looked younger than twenty-three and considerably more frightened than a child.

He stayed standing. “Why did you come here?”

She stared at her hands for a long moment. He half-expected her to make a run for the door. But she stayed where she was and wept. “I made a mistake,” she said. “Running away with Frederick was a mistake.”

Evander felt the blood drain from his face. Hearing this was the worst of his worst nightmares. He pressed his eyes shut, hands flexing so hard he thought his knuckles could erupt from his skin any moment.

“I don't mean Frederick himself. Frederick… Oh, poor Fred. He has been… he has been more than I deserved. He is kind, and he is warm, and he tries very hard, and I know that… But I knew almost immediately, after we left, that I had made a mistake.”

“Immediately? No.”

“I don’t know why. And by that point, it was too late. What would I have said? We were in Scotland. We had just been married. What exactly was I supposed to say to him after I had ruined both our lives?” She looked up briefly and then back at her trembling hands. “There was nothing to say.”

“And so you came here instead.” Evander reeled back. “Were you the one who told him to come here?”

She shook her head. “We came here because we had nowhere else to go. The Suffolk house was gone, and Frederick wanted to see you, and I thought– I thought perhaps, if I could just get through the first weeks things would settle. That I was being irrational. That it was the newness of everything and it would pass. My parents… Lord knows my parents would not harbour me. I have only you and him in the whole world. And isn’t that the cruelest thing, after…?” She stopped and pressed her fingers together. “But those feelings have not passed.”

Evander felt sick to his stomach. With as much control as he could muster, he pulled the chair from behind the desk and sat down opposite her. Standing was starting to feel like theatre. This was all a play.

“Why?” he repeated. “Not why you made a mistake. I mean why here? Why this?” He gestured between them, and even that felt like a betrayal of Aurelia. “What did you think was going to happen?”

She was quiet for a long time. “I couldn't stand it,” she said finally. “Watching you with her. Watching you be the way you are with her, and knowing that you were never that way with me.” She looked at him. “It is all such a mess. I didn’t expect to feel this way. This terrible gnawing feeling… Do you know what it is like to spend your whole life telling yourself that a man is simply cold, simply incapable of affection, and then watch him fall irrevocably in love with someone else?”

He was not going to dignify that question with an answer, not for her.

“I told myself for two years that you were deficient. That you were a cruel man who couldn't feel things properly and that was simply your nature, and my job was to accept it. It was easier that way. It made the whole arrangement feel less like something I had failed at.” She paused. “And then we arrived at Carrstone, and I watched you with her every moment since, and… I thought I had been wrong about which one of us was the deficiency. It has always been me.”

He was quiet. It was honest, at least. He could see it costing her, and even though he did not want to feel sympathy for her right now, her confession and their shared history had a weight that was hard to ignore.

“And you thought,” he said slowly, “that if you kissed me, and if I kissed you back… then what? That would tell you something useful?”

“I thought it would prove that you wanted me. That there had simply been bad timing. That it wasn't me all along.” She looked at her hands. “I am aware of how that sounds. I am awful. I deserve nothing. Less than nothing.”

“It sounds like you were not thinking about Frederick at all.”

“You’re wrong. I think about Frederick constantly.”

“Then you were not thinking about what this would do to him.” He leaned forward. “He left everything for you. He caused harm to people who trusted him because he believed you wanted the life he was offering. He believed you. I know this when I look at him. It has pained him, shamed him, what he has done. But he defends it to himself because he has saved you from me.” He paused. “Was he wrong to try and save you?”

“No.” Her voice was very small. “He was not wrong.”

“Then what are you telling me?”

“I think I love him… but I don't know how to be the woman he needs me to be.” She looked up, and her eyes were wet again. “He is so young, Evander. He is so certain about everything. He wakes up every morning certain that the day is going to be good, that I am wonderful, life is going to be exactly what he imagines, and I…” She stopped. “I can't always match it. I can't always be what he sees when he looks at me. And I am afraid of the day he looks at me and sees something different. I don’t want to risk that happening.”

“Then it won’t happen”

“You don't know that.”

“I know my brother.” He looked at her steadily. “Frederick has been in love with you for years. That is not a feeling that turns overnight. So do not blame him if you do not want him. He deserves better than that still, despite everything he has wrought upon us.”

She put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she cried. Evander thought briefly of her when she had been a child. She had been a simple girl, he remembered, dutiful and polite. How had she managed to hide these feelings all her life?

“I envy her everything,” she said through her hands. “I know I have no right to feel that way. I know that. But I look at her and she has everything I thought I was going to have, and it wasn't even supposed to be hers. And you look at her as though…” She took a breath. “I want to die from it sometimes. I sit at your dinner table, and I watch you, and I want to die.”

He waited until she looked up to speak, his jaw set to stone. “You have a husband who loves you. Whatever else is true, that is true. And you are sitting in this room telling me you are jealous of my wife instead of sitting with him and letting him love you, which is what you wanted, a man to love you.” He stood slowly so as not to scare her. “We are not friends. I know you want me to say we are, but we have never been friends. We were arranged, and we went along with it, and then it ended. That is the whole of our history. I cannot be what you are looking for here.”