“I just… please,” Matilda tried again, her hand trembling now. “I’ve written. I’ve tried?—”
“I burned your letters,” Evelyn snapped, her chin lifting. “Unopened.”
Matilda flinched. “I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, but I’ve missed you every day.”
Evelyn’s throat burned, and her eyes stung suddenly, traitorously.
Shehadmissed her. Desperately so. And not just the way one missed a childhood companion but with that deep, ragged ache that came from being betrayed by the one person she’d trusted without question.
“You don’t get to say that,” Evelyn said, her voice barely steady. “You lost the right to miss me the day you ran off to Gretna Green withhim. You knew how I felt. Youknew.”
Matilda’s eyes filled with tears. “He chose me. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never?—”
“But you did.” Evelyn’s voice cracked, but she didn’t let it show. “You destroyed what we had of our sisterhood. And now, you think you can come back and simply explain it all away?”
She turned, stiffening her spine like steel.
“You should consider yourselves fortunate,” she said coldly, her voice rising to the precise tone of a lady hosting guests she despised, “that His Grace and I have permitted your presence here for the ceremony. But once it concludes, you and Lord Ashworth are no longer welcome in this house.”
“Evelyn, please?—”
But Evelyn was already gone, storming down the corridor with a forced calmness that shattered the moment she reached her chamber. She shoved the door closed behind herself and bolted it fast, pressing her back to the wood as if expecting Matilda, or worse yet, her own feelings, to come bursting through.
She stood there, trembling, jaw clenched, the pain she’d swallowed for two years threatening to rise up and drown her.
What hurt the most wasn’t just the betrayal. It was that after all this time, there was a part of her still wanting to forgive.
And she didn’t know if that made her foolish… or simply still human.
About an hour later, Evelyn sat before her vanity, not touching the tea or the lemon biscuits Cordelia had tried to tempt her with. Hazel stood near the fireplace with her arms crossed in that calm but ever-watchful manner of hers. Cordelia paced, nervously twisting her fingers in the silk ribbon of her sleeve.
“We shouldn’t have said anything,” Cordelia finally burst out, her voice thick with remorse. “We only meant to help him understand. You were so angry, Evelyn, and he looked… well, like a man who didn’t know which way was up.”
Hazel didn’t speak right away. She just watched Evelyn with that quiet, measured gaze of hers, the kind that always saw more than it should.
“We were wrong to speak on your behalf,” Hazel said at last. “Even if we meant well. I am sorry.”
Evelyn blinked then looked up at them both in the mirror. Her eyes, though tired, were clear.
“I’m not angry with you,” she said simply.
Cordelia blinked. “You’re not?”
“No.” Evelyn turned on the cushioned stool to face them directly. “You acted out of loyalty. That much I know. And truthfully, there’s little you said that he could not have eventually discovered for himself.”
Cordelia’s brows knit. “Then whoareyou angry with?”
Evelyn’s gaze darkened, her lips pressing into a thin line.
“My mother.”
The words came out with a weight that seemed to fill the room. She stood, walking slowly to the window, her hands brushing the delicate curtain aside as she looked down at the side gardens. Her voice was even but cold.
“She knew. She’s always known. And instead of standing with me, she begged him to invitethem. Invited them under the pretense that I missed them.” Her fingers curled into the drapery. “As if she could rewrite the past by shoving it back into my face and calling it reconciliation.”
“She always cared about appearances more than people,” Hazel said quietly.
Cordelia looked stricken. “What will you do?”
