"That is who Eleanor was before your marriage," Liz said, standing. "A girl who believed you were worth loving because of one moment of kindness you showed her. The love you were unworthy of."
She moved toward the door, then paused.
"She's leaving, but she still loves you. Because she cannot live with a reminder that you are choosing to hurt her every single day."
As Aubrey's conscience bled, Liz left, closing the door softly behind her.
He sat in the silence, Liz's words echoing in his mind.
She still loves you.
...you are choosing to hurt her…
And he had taken that precious, fragile love and crushed it beneath his resentment and his pride and his devotion to a woman unworthy.
Aubrey reached for paper with trembling hands and began to write.
Not to his mother this time. Not to Steven Kedleston.
To Eleanor.
The words came haltingly at first, then faster, until he was pouring everything onto the page. Every regret, every apology, every desperate hope that somehow, impossibly, she might give him anotherchance.
When he finished, his hand was cramping and his eyes burned with tears he refused to let fall.
He sealed the letter and set it aside.
Then Aubrey closed his eyes and tried to remember that night at the Haversham ball. He couldn't. The memory was too fragmented, too distant.
But he could imagine her now. Loving him for three years from a distance.
And then loving him still after all he’d done or has neglected to do.
Aubrey pressed his hands to his face and finally let the tears fall.
For the girl who had loved him.
For the woman he had destroyed.
For the wife he had only now, far too late, begun to understand.
Chapter sixteen
The Art of Wooing One’s Wife
Aubrey sat in the wreckage of Liz's words, his face still red and eyes moist from crying when the door opened.
Eleanor entered with her usual brisk efficiency, carrying fresh linens. She took three steps into the room and froze.
"My lord?" Her voice was uncertain, startled. "What is the matter?"
Aubrey tried to compose himself, but his hands were trembling too badly.
Eleanor set down the linens and moved closer, her eyes wide with concern. "Have you been crying?" She reached the bedside, studying his face with growing alarm. "Are you in pain? Should I send for the doctor?"
"No." The word came out hoarse. "No, I am not in pain. Not that kind of pain."
Eleanor's brow furrowed. She reached for his forehead, checking for fever. Her touch was gentle, and it nearly undid him completely.
