"She fell in love with you that night," Liz said simply. "Or perhaps she had already fallen in love with the beautiful stranger across the ballroom, and your kindness merely confirmed what her heart already knew. Either way, she loved you from that moment forward."
"No." The word escaped as his heart grew heavy. He didn’t want it to be true. That would make his abandonment even more cruel. "That's impossible."
She leaned back in her chair, her eyes never leaving Aubrey's face.
"She wrote to me constantly that first year after her coming out. Every letter mentioned you. 'I saw Lord Madeley at the Avon musicale. He did not notice me, but he looked so handsome.' 'I heard Lord Madeley speaking about agricultural reform at a dinner party. He is so intelligent, Liz. So thoughtful.' 'Lord Madeley danced with Miss Holmes tonight. She is very beautiful. I suppose that is the sort of woman he would admire.'"
Each sentence felt like a blade. Every statement made his actions more detestable.
"She never thought about approaching you again," Liz continued. "Never tried to speak to you. She was convinced that the kindness you had shown was just that—kindness, not recognition."
Aubrey nodded, his way of admission, his mouth tasting like ash.
Liz's voice was gentle now, devastatingly so. "She told herself it was foolish to love you. Told herself to move on, to accept the attentions of other men. But she couldn't. Her heart was already yours, even though you never knew she existed."
Aubrey pressed his hands to his face. "God."
"And then, one day, our father announced her betrothal. To you." Liz's voice softened further. "Our father, in his constant inebriated state, still managed to be aware of his younger daughter's heart. His final act of love before sinking into an abyss was to arrange her marriage to you in exchange for a plot of land the developers were coveting to build a bridge. You should have seen her face when he told her. She wept. Not from grief or fear, but from joy. From overwhelming, impossible joy."
The knife twisted deeper.
"She thought it was a miracle," Liz said. "That somehow, impossibly, fate had given her the one thing she had never dared to hope for. A chance to marry the man she had loved from afar. A chance to know him, to be known by him. To build the life together that she had dreamed of in secret."
Aubrey's hands were shaking now. He could see it so clearly. Eleanor receiving the news of their betrothal. Her face lighting up with hope and happiness. Her heart full of love for a man who would never return it.
"She prepared so carefully," Liz continued. "Learned everything she could about you. Your books, your interests, your habits. She wanted to be the perfect wife. Wanted to make you happy. Wanted to earn the love she had already given you so freely."
Then Liz laughed, a sound of bitterness and disgust.
"You abandoned her twenty minutes into your wedding breakfast." Her voice hardened, rage building slowly. "You left her sitting aloneat the head table while guests whispered and pitied her. And then you left for London and did not return until your horse showed sense and threw you off its back."
Aubrey squirmed under her gaze, her fury burning his skin. But in the next moment, she regarded him cooly.
"Why her?" Liz's voice cut through the silence like a whip. "Why her lady's maid? You knew their association. You must have seen them together that summer when Rose delivered correspondence. Why pursue the one person Eleanor trusted most?"
Her words caused dread to pool deep in his stomach.The one person Eleanor trusted most…
Aubrey forced himself to speak despite his stomach churning with mixed emotions. "Rose always said she worked for a relative. She never said anything about being a lady’s maid."
Liz stared at him with something like disbelief.
"You are claiming you didn't know," she said finally.
"No," Aubrey whispered. "I truly did not."
"Rose knew," Liz said coldly. "She knew exactly what she was doing."
"How long had Rose been her lady's maid?"
Liz's expression hardened. "Since Eleanor was seventeen. I had just married and moved to my husband's estate. Eleanor needed someone. Not just a servant, but a companion. Someone to help her navigate society, to be there when I couldn't be." Her voice dropped, laden with bitterness. "Rose was nineteen. They became more friends than mistress and maid. They did everything together for eight years. Eight years, Lord Madeley. They shared confidences, secrets, dreams. Rose knew every hope Eleanor harboured about you. Every fear. Every tender feeling."
The full scope of the betrayal settled over Aubrey like a shroud. Rose had not simply lied about Eleanor threatening her. She had betrayed a friendship of eight years. Had listened to Eleanor's confessions of love while secretly pursuing the object of that love.
It was atrocious. And he had been the willing instrument of that atrocity.
The silence that followed was crushing, and it became unbearable with each passing second.
Aubrey could not speak, could not move, could barely breathe.
