She shook her head, a tight, sharp movement. “Please don’t. It... It is over.”
Richard frowned in bemusement. She could see it in the glass, hear it in his voice. “Do not lose hope. The young man does care for her?—”
Evangeline made herself turn to face him. “I don’t mean Joan.” She waved her hand toward herself, toward him, then curled her fingers into a fist. “Us.”
Richard jerked backward. “What?”
“It is over,” she said again, her breath coming faster. God, she wanted him to leave. She wanted to hide from everyone she had disappointed and betrayed. First George and Marion, then Joan, now Richard. Everyone she cared about. The expression on his face would kill her. “We both agreed—it would end when either of us wanted it to end. I am ending it, now.”
He looked astonished—and horrified. “What? But—no, you do not mean it!”
“I do!” She lurched backward as he took a step toward her. “I do mean it,” she insisted. Her heart was pounding so painfully, she thought she might faint. Her vision was blurry around the edges, and she couldn’t stop her hands shaking. If he touched her, she might go mad. “It’s over. You agreed! You promised! No reproaches,you promised me!”
His face was stark white. “Please,” he begged. “Please don’t say that now. I will go—leave you time to think. Wait a few days, see how it ends?—”
Her laughter was wild with hysteria. “Wait, to see if someone else can repair the damage I caused! Wait, to see if I haven’t wrecked an innocent girl’s life! No! No, I will not wait, I will take responsibility for what I’ve done!”
“And this is how you choose to punish yourself?” He advanced on her—foolishly, because she couldn’t bear the sight of him at that moment. “And how you will punish me?”
“It was because of you I left her unsupervised,” Evangeline lashed out. “I only left the ballroom at your instigation!”
He stopped, stricken. “I love you,” he said quietly. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
She shook her head as self-loathing and agony roared inside her like a hurricane. She had been selfish, going off with him in total dereliction of her responsibility and in blatant violation of her promise to George. She did not deserve the happiness thatRichard offered her; she had been right to wall herself off from that, and because of her momentary weakness, daring to think she might have it after all, she had hurt an innocent girl.Till death do you part,intoned the vicar in her memory, the weak sunshine shining on Cunningham’s bare pate, almost blinding her. It had felt like a form of death, standing there, feeling herself vanishing into the legal void of matrimony. She had ceased to be a person in her own right. Would Joan feel the same panic? The same sense of despair?
Even Richard didn’t know how terrible it had been. Those early months, when Cunningham had directed every aspect of her life, trying to train her into his idea of a wife, trying to snuff out all traces of her rebellious nature. The furious helplessness she had felt, knowing no one would stop him or save her. The rage that had built inside her, until it fermented into bitter scorn for her husband, followed by the reckless disregard for propriety that led her into a miserable marriage with Court, then the disrepute of his unfaithfulness and the blazing scandal of his death, and finally near-banishment from society as she willfully thumbed her nose at society’s strictures.
And she hadn’t learned one bloody lesson from it. Not when she needed it most.
“You don’t,” she said numbly. No one could love her. No one should.
His brows lowered, and the color came back into his cheeks. “I know what I feel,” he said tersely. “You must not castigate yourself?—”
“I deserve it!” she screamed.
The words seemed to expand and ricochet around the room until they pressed in on her, acrid and sour. They scorched her lungs, her throat, her lips until she thought she might choke on the bitter taste.
She had wrecked everything. She had long thought Joan a girl after her own heart, and now she had sentenced Joan to the same terrible fate that had brought her so much misery for so many years.
Richard said nothing. The silence was terrible. But what was there to say?
Evangeline couldn’t even see him through the tears in her eyes. “Go,” she said thickly. “Pleasego. Good-bye, Richard.”
He stared at her for a long, long time, saying nothing. Evangeline turned her back on him, unable to bear that gaze.
And several painful heartbeats later, the door opened, then closed.
He was gone, and with him her stupid, dangerous dreams of happiness.
Chapter 33
When Richard was ten and Gerhard nine, they had discovered a cavern in the mountains near their home.
They had never seen such a thing, although they had heard of it, and there was no question but that they would explore it. They collected a lantern, a torch, a sack of food and drink, some rope, and a pickaxe, which Gerhard had stolen from his older brother’s climbing kit.
“What if we should discover a vein of gold in there?” he’d said, when Richard asked why they needed it. Which had sounded like a sensible idea at the time.
So they wriggled down the narrow opening into the cavern, lit their lantern and torch, and set out into the bowels of the earth. They used the rope to descend several sharp inclines, but never once thought of unspooling it behind them.
