Why are we even here? What is the point of it all!She knew that answer, too. Appearances only, an invitation they could not turn down, another chance to fool the ton into thinking this marriage was a happy one.
Margot was at her wits’ end. And not just with Sebastian, but herself also. She was sick of feeling this way. She was sick of wondering, hoping, trying to figure out the truth of it. And such was her state of being that the chance to complain to her cousins was a chance she decided she could not miss.
They cannot help me. But as Elizabeth has said, sometimes having a person to complain to is helpful enough.
“What happened at the garden party was…” She clicked her tongue with annoyance, hating that this was what she’d been reduced to. “It was an apparition. Theatre. Not real,” she confirmed.
Elizabeth frowned. “I don’t understand. The two of you looked –”
“I know how we looked,” she snapped before she could help herself. Elizabeth reared back in surprise, and Margot’s tone softened with guilt. “I am sorry. It is not your fault. Or anyone’s fault for that matter.”
“I still don’t understand,” Arabella said.
Margot sighed. “I know how things looked between us. And for a moment I thought…” Her insides squirmed. “It does not matter what I thought. Since then, Sebastian has done everything to remind me that our marriage is circumstantial at best. One of convenience, as promised.”
“What did he say?” Elizabeth asked. “What were his words?”
Margot laughed bitterly. “He did not say anything. But that is the point. For the entire week now, he has ignored me as if I do not exist. He barely talks to me. He does not look at me when we are in the same room. We are strangers, living together, bound by a signature on a piece of paper and nothing more.”
“Oh, Margot…”
“It is fine,” Margot assured them both. “Truly,” she then emphasized because she thought she must. “To be honest, I am more angry with myself than anything.”
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked.
Margot looked at Sebastian again. Still, she could not escape the attraction she felt for him. And still, she could not scrub that single evening from her mind, a few hours in time where things had felt so perfect.But it was all a lie…
“That I let myself believe he was different. Although truth be told, he is even more different than I thought. When we first wed, he was…” She laughed and shook her head at the memory. “He was as you would expect. Forward. Flirtatious. I had to warn him off and put him in his place several times. And I assumed that was how things would continue, more so after the garden party. But now…” Her lip curled, and she looked away from him. “Now he is the opposite of that.”
“And you… How do you feel about that?” Elizabeth pressed. “I do not want to upset you, but the two of you looked happy. Truly, I thought…” Her smile was soft and filled with concern. “I thought maybe there was hope for your marriage.”
“We both did,” Arabella confirmed.
How do I feel? I wish I knew. I wish I could go back to that evening and stop myself from hoping. I wish I could reckon with why I am finding it so hard to admit the truth of what this marriage has become.
“I am fine,” she lied. “Truly, I am,” she said as she looked between her cousins. “After all, this is what I wanted – what was promised. This marriage was only ever meant to be convenient, and I find it hard to blame the duke for giving me exactly what I asked for.” A bitter chuckle. “There is an irony there, I am sure.”
Her two cousins looked at each other with concern. None seemed to know what to say, aware they would only make things worse. And now that Margot had gotten it all off her chest, shedidn’t much feel like being coddled. Best to move on and hope for a better day tomorrow.
Having said that… sometimes getting what one wished for wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. A point proven when Elizabeth looked past her, through the crowd that gathered in the garden, and widened her eyes with surprise. And fear. “Oh no,” she said.
“What?” Margot perked up and followed her cousin’s gaze, seeing immediately what it was that she had found, wishing now that she was anywhere but here.
“Oh no…” she echoed as her stomach flipped.
He was crossing the garden, thankfully looking in the opposite direction to where Margot was sitting. And where she could not see his face fully, there could be no doubt who it was. Lord Julian Ashcombe.
What is he doing here? And not just at this party, but in London? I thought he had left – I had assumed he’d fled in shame, never to return. But no, of course he didn’t. As far as everyone is concerned, I am the one who wronged him, not the other way around.
Lord Ashcombe was the man who, for a brief period, had been engaged to Margot. She had been just eighteen at the time, desperate to meet a lord above her station and wed. She had wanted an escape from her life; she had wanted what she felt that she deserved – what she had been told all her life that she did. And Lord Ashcombe had offered her that.
Margot had not loved Lord Ashcombe, but she had liked him well enough. He had appeared kind and caring and besotted with her, enough that she’d trusted him. Only when he learned that her family was poor did it also come to her attention that he was not the man he’d said.He was even more destitute than I was. But in his eyes, my lie was the one that broke the camel’s back.
She supposed it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Were all men not liars? Putting on a face that was not their own? She had been more innocent back then… apparently, she still was.
“He hasn’t seen you,” Elizabeth said. “Should we…” She indicated toward the other side of the garden.
Margot was still watching him, feelings coming to the fore that she had not expected. Not love. Not even regret. Simply a reminder of her doomed life, as if she needed to be told again that she was forever cursed with meeting men who saw only to use her. It made what was happening with Sebastian feel worse somehow, and she thought she might well be sick right here at the table.
