Sibyl was back on her feet, snatching the letter when she recognized Gabriel’s script. She hated how her heart fluttered.
“Dear Sibyl,I have fought the urge to write to you a thousand times out of respect, but I can no longer do it. Preston was the culprit I was looking for all along. You have no reason to fear for your safety anymore. He has been apprehended and will be tried soon. You are no longer in any danger.”
Sibyl blinked, her eyes scanning for more words, more lines—justmore. She turned the note over, finding it blank.
“That is all he has said?” Isabella demanded. “Nothing else? No apology, no plea for you to return to him?”
“That is all,” Sibyl whispered. Hermia guided her back to the armchair as the letter fell from her hands. “That… That is all he wishes to say to me after spending two weeks apart? After how I left?”
The formality of his words shattered the numbness in her chest, and she clamped a hand over her mouth to hold back a sob.
It was truly over. He had pushed her away, and she had fought back, and now he had made it clear that there was nothing between them anymore.
“Excuse me,” she gasped, fleeing the parlor, sobbing into her hand.
Chapter Twenty-Four
She deserves far better than you.
Gabriel’s mouth twisted into a snarl as he punched his opponent.
In a lowly, run-down pub in London, the crowd cheered the Helm’s return to the boxing ring, as they had done for the past week ever since he had sent that letter to Sibyl.
She deserved better from him, but he had not known what to say. How could he have poured his heart out to her in a meager note?
He should have begged her to come home. He should have apologized. He should have been her husband, not a cold, distant informant.
Now, he did not care that he staggered back beneath the blows of his third opponent that night. The pain was better than thehollowness; it was the punishment he deserved for hurting and losing his wife.
His Sibyl.
“You are not so arrogant now, Helm,” his opponent jeered, but Gabriel did not care. “What? Has the news of your cousin’s arrest softened you? You are weak.” He made his point with another hard punch.
“You are a weak, weak man, Gabriel. You could not control your whore of a sister, and could not turn away from a used woman.”
Gabriel snarled as he punched back.
He was weak, but not for those reasons. He was weak because he was a coward, and he had lost the most precious thing in the world and could not find the courage to get it back.
Sibyl deserved better. She deserved to remain as far away from him as possible.
Now that she was into her third week of doing so, he knew that he would never see her again, even if they remained married. He had lost his Duchess, the woman who had given him life again, the woman who had danced around the lake, laughing with him.
The woman who had made himliverather than justsurvive.
She had slipped through his fingers because he could not shake the need for vengeance when he had to.
He groaned as he staggered backward again, his knees buckling. He needed to fight, to win, but victory tasted like ash.
Nothing satisfied him. Nothing filled the gaping hole in his chest, clawed into him by heartbreak. He was nothing without Sibyl, a useless, weak man who deserved to suffer for hurting her.
A hard kick landed on his ribs, and he fell to his knees.
He was declared the loser, yet when his opponent ducked out of the ring, he stayed. He snatched a drink right out of an onlooker’s hand and downed it.
“Come on!” he roared. “Who is next?”
The onlookers quietened a little, exchanging confused looks. He had lost, yet he refused to leave the ring.
