For a moment, she could not breathe. The room seemed to recede, edges blurring as the meaning settled with crushing clarity. He was releasing her. Dismissing her. Sending her away from Julian — from the only place that had begun to feel like shelter.
“Yes, Your Grace,” she managed, her voice barely more than breath.
He did not raise his voice. He did not soften his tone. He simply spoke—as a man delivering an inevitable truth, one he believed necessary regardless of cost.
When he turned and left, the door closing with finality behind him, Charlotte folded inward on herself, the sound echoing like a verdict through her chest.
She loved them.
Julian, with his fierce heart and clumsy hope. Edward, with his restraint, grief, and the dangerous kindness he wielded as carefully as a blade.
And now she was losing them both.
And now William had returned. Disappearance beckoned like refuge.
But she had promised.
Charlotte dressed with shaking hands.
Each pin felt too heavy. Each fold of fabric too deliberate. Her reflection wavered in the glass—eyes swollen, mouth set too carefully, grief and fear stitched together beneath composure she barely trusted to hold. She told herself she could endure one more hour. One more appearance. Then she would be gone.
She descended to the gardens on unsteady legs.
Laughter drifted across the clipped hedges, polite and refined, the sound of people at ease in a world that had never once considered whether she belonged.
Julian was there, bright-faced despite the morning’s strain, trailing after Lady Pennington with the distracted affection of a child too tired to protest. Edward stood apart, a book in hand, posture composed to the point of distance. He did not look at her.
Relief and ache tangled painfully in her chest.
Then she heard it.
“Lady Pennington,” William said easily, stepping forward. “I was hoping I might catch my cousin before he departs.”
Charlotte stopped short.
The voice reached her before she could turn—smooth now, confident, stripped of the drunken haze she had prayed was the only reason she had recognized it the night before. Her breath caught painfully as she pivoted toward the sound.
William Armitage stood with Lady Pennington, one hand already extended in greeting, his posture relaxed, his smile fixedand assured. He looked entirely at ease, as though he belonged there. As though he always had.
“I live nearby,” he was saying pleasantly. “And when I heard you were hosting old friends, I thought it only right to pay my respects.”
Charlotte could barely hear him.
Her gaze slid, unbidden, to Edward.
Cousin.
The word rearranged everything. The resemblance she had never questioned. The shared bearing. The quiet familiarity in William’s claim to the space, to the moment.
William’s eyes found her at once.
“Miss Westbrook,” he said, softly—and with unmistakable satisfaction.
The sound of her name, spoken so easily, so publicly, sealed it. Whatever doubts might have lingered among the gathered guests dissolved in that instant.
She was known. She was exposed.
And Edward—Duke of Averleigh, her employer, the man she loved—was bound to William Armitage by blood.
