“The fact that you believe that only proves how convincing he was in his deception.” Ollie leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I knew you were spending time together, but after everything he’d done to torture you as a girl, I thought you were immune to hischarms.” He sneered. “I had no idea how deeply he’d sunk his claws into you. How he’d used my blindness and your sadness to his advantage. I will never forgive him.” Ollie clenched his jaw. “But I hate myself too. If I hadn’t been so caught up in securing an advantageous life, if I hadn’t been so blind, you never would have had to enter into a ruse.”
“Please don’t blame yourself, and you mustn’t hate Damon either. He—” What could I say about his situation that would not betray Damon’s trust? “He is trapped in an impossible position.”
“Oh yes, being a lord of a grand estate is quite impossible,” he muttered.
“Don’t be petulant.”
“I am sorry, but my whole life I have come second to Damon. Second born, second son, second in line. I never thought I would be second in your heart too,” he said on a heavy breath.
“It is not a competition, Ollie.”
He huffed a laugh. “Everythingis a competition when a future earl is your brother.”
“It didn’t used to be,” I said. “What happened between you two? You used to be so close.”
A wistful look clouded Ollie’s expression. “He was my best friend before he went away to Eton,” he admitted.
“And after he returned?”
“He was different. Contemptuous, superior. For years, I wondered what I had done to make him hate me, but I didn’t learn the answer until I attended school myself: I was inferior. I would never be titled, nor wealthy. I was beneath him.” His voice grew small, childlike.
What injuries had he endured as a boy at the hands of his classmates to make him shrink this way? My heart ached for little Ollie, remembering the homesick letters he’d sent me from Eton. I touched his shoulder, wishing to comfort him.
Ollie laid his hand atop mine and gave me a feeble smile before resting his hand back on his knees. “Have you noticed how Damon struts around now like everything is below him? He won’t even step into a ballroom unless someone of elevated station is in attendance. He merely hides away in the card room, spending his future fortune.”
The truth pressed against my lips, and I wished I could speak for Damon and make Ollie understand that Damon was not the scoundrel Ollie thought him to be. But I couldn’t say anything without revealingeverything. And I could not do that to Damon. He had disclosed his father’s failing health and Summerhaven’s dire situation to me in confidence, and I would not betray his trust. All I could do was listen to Ollie and try to explain what little I could.
“I do not mean to be childish,” Ollie continued. “But you cannot know what it is like for me to walk daily among the peerage and to have to live with the knowledge that I will never be one of them. Even within my own family, I am nothing more than a spare.”
“Your family loves you,” I said.
“Yes, but my life will never hold the value that Damon’s does, and I confess, that truth has driven me a little mad.” Ollie let out a heavy breath. “From my time at Cambridge forward, everything I did, everything I said, was done to impress and improve my standing in Society . . . including courting Miss Digby.” He glanced at me. “I have been so blinded by my desire to make more of myself that I did not even realize how selfish I was being . . . until your confession.” His eyes softened on me.
I clutched Damon’s book in my lap, bracing myself for whatever Ollie meant to say next.
“Hannah, when you ran from me that day in the morning room and got into the curricle with Damon, I have never felt more heartbroken.” He pressed his eyes closed like the memory brought him fresh pain, and when he looked at me again, his gaze was earnest. “And during the torturous days that you lay in your sickbed, I was in agony. I remembered how we used to make fun of theton, and I realized that I’d become everything we’d sworn we wouldn’t. And worse, I wasn’t even happy. I tried to remember the last time I’d been happy. And do you know when it was?”
I shook my head. “When?”
“It was the last summer we spent together. The summer before I went off to Eton. Hannah, I don’t want to be one of those people we made fun of . . . I want—I want—” He paused, swallowed hard, and then looked me in the eye. “I want to be a man worthy of you. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” I said, meaning to reassure him that we would always be friends.
“I’m worried I already have.” He gave me a sad expression, then rose from his perch at the window seat and walked to the armchair where I sat. He knelt in front of me, bringing us at eye level.
I sucked in a breath.
“I made a mistake, Hannah. A grave one. My behavior toward you this summer was unforgivable. I was an imbecile,” he continued, “a complete and utter cad.”
I smiled a little. “Don’t forget fool.”
“Thebiggestof fools. You should never, ever forgive me.”
“Perhaps I should not,” I teased, but when he looked at the ground in shame, I knew I’d taken it too far. “But I, too, did many things I am not proud of, and I should hate to allow one summer to tarnish a lifetime of memories.”
“I want to be a man worthy of your affection. If you would allow me to court you as I should have from the beginning, I promise you will not regret it.”
“Ollie, I—I am glad you feel you are on a better path now, but what I thought I wanted . . .” My sentence trailed off, and I gave him a sad smile. “Our conversation in the morning room made me realize some things too. We were only meant to be friends. I should have known that years ago when you stopped writing to me, but it took you rejecting me for me to finally understand.”
