“You will.”
“Or what? Philip, you and I both know that, if push came to shove, she would choose me over you. You have the title, yes, but can you tell me one single other thing that a lady in her position would want that you can offer her?”
“Get out.”
He had said it quietly, frighteningly so. He was trembling, not with anger but with restraint, and he took a step away from Lucien.
“Philip, you are being ridiculous. We can talk about this, just as you wanted.”
“I do not wish to talk to you. I do not wish to see you. I will only ask you one more time. Leave.”
“Jealousy has made you ugly,” Lucien snarled. “You cannot accept that I would make a better match for her than you, can you?”
“Why, because you know she likes green and spring?”
“Because what the ton likes to see is a beautiful couple with their beautiful children, and that is something that you could never be a part of no matter how much money you have.”
Philip punched him.
He was not a violent man, and he never had been, but he had tried everything in his power to control himself and Lucien had continued to push. He did not know where all of the hatred was coming from, but in that moment it did not matter. Lucien was the last person that he wanted to see again.
He did not need to tell him to leave a third time. Lucien scurried off down the hall, and Philip tried to regain his composure. After everything that he had been through, Lucien had stayed by his side only to leave him when the opportunity to steal a lady from him came. Such years of friendship did not matter to Lucienwhen he made advancements on Jackie, and so those same years of friendship could no longer matter to Philip either.
It was the end of it.
Philip went to the window to see if Jackie had returned, only to see his mother and Lady Elizabeth sitting in the sun without her. He wondered where she had gone, and whether or not she would want him to find her, but he had to take her at her word.
She wanted to be alone, no matter how much he wanted the opposite.
Chapter 24
The servants said the duke and his best friend had argued.
Unfortunately, Jackie sighed, nobody else knew anything further. All that she knew was that Lord Montague was no longer coming to see them, and that the household had not been quite the same since the picnic.
“It’s strange, is it not?” Elizabeth asked, as Jackie tried to listen. “Tense, even. I am not saying that I wish it were not just the two of us in here, but it certainly is different to how it was before.”
“Yes, even the dowager duchess has been spending less time with us.”
“Perhaps she feels disloyal to her son. After all, she may like us a good deal, but she is the duke’s mother in the end, and if she had to pick sides…”
“Oh, I certainly do not blame her, I only miss how it was.”
She missed the duke. She scolded herself for doing so, because there was no need to; he was in the same household, and if she truly wanted to speak to him that much she could do so easily. However, knowing that she could do something and finding the courage to do so were two very different things.
Philip had been the best company that she had ever had, with the exception of Elizabeth of course, and that was what she missed, but each time she tried to think back to those moments in order to push herself to talk to him, she remembered him carrying Ophelia away.
He was protective, instinctive when it came to her in a way that he had never shown Jackie. She wanted to understand it, to put it all down to the fact they shared history, but if anything that only made it worse.
Ophelia would always have known him for longer than Jackie would.
“I need to not be in this household right now,” she said suddenly, and Elizabeth looked at her with a furrowed brow.
“Do you mean you wish to leave? That seems rather extreme for what I would call a misunderstanding.”
“Not permanently. I do not think so, at least. No, I wish to spend some time in the village.”
Fortunately, Elizabeth did not resist any further, and the two of them left for town under the guise of making a few purchases for the ball. It was an easy lie to tell, but Jackie had Elizabeth tell it so as not to alert any suspicions.
