“And,” Phoebe interjected, too loudly to be ignored, “I willnotbe permitting you toget shot at.”
Aaron briefly ceased looking miserable long enough to spare his wife an offended glance.
“I wouldn’tlose,” he said, clearly hurt by the implication.
Phoebe was unmoved. “Yes, and duels are famously without accidents that leave people wounded or dead for the most foolish of reasons. What was I thinking? Surely, you should go.”
Her tone was so scathing that Aaron just dropped his head back down without a response.
There was a long moment of choking silence, during which Clio supposed she ought to offersomething… but she just couldn’t. She felt as though something had a grip on her throat, suffocating her.
Everything just … kept happening. The situation just kept spiraling. And yes, she was making decisions—she was affecting the situation, to a degree. But it still felt as though the doors were closing around her with startling speed.
“I keep failing you,” Aaron said to the floor eventually, his tone so wretched that Phoebe let out a distressed little squeak and crossed to his side. She put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“I keep doing the wrong thing,” Aaron went on. “I sent you away when I shouldn’t have. I made you come back when I knew you didn’t want to return. All I wanted for you … I just wanted you to be happy. Be safe. And now—and now …”
Clio knew she couldn’t keep silent, but her head felt as though it was stuffed full of cotton wool.
“I could still leave England,” she managed, her words sounding as though they were coming from very far away. “Let the gossip die down …”
“If you left now,” Phoebe said gently, “it wouldn’t just be traveling. It would be an exile. People would see that you are fleeing and take it as confirmation of their worst suspicions. You wouldn’t be able to come back.”
Clio hadn’t wanted to come back to England for this trip, and yet the idea that she would bebanishedfrom her home country made something in her chest go tight with panic.
Aaron, lost to his own panic, did not help.
“This kind of scandal will cross the ocean,” he muttered. “You willneverbe able to marry. You won’t have a husband. You won’t have a family. You’ll bealone.”
Clio only half stifled the whimper of distress that tried to claw its way from her throat. Everyone had been asking her if she truly wanted to travel, if she truly wanted to leave behind her nativeshores, and while she couldn’t yet say that she was prepared to cast that dream aside … she’d never wanted to bealonewhile she did so.
“Stop talking, Aaron,” Phoebe hissed out of the corner of her mouth.
It was too late, though. But then again,too latehad passed the moment that maid had walked into Hector’s bedchamber and seen Clio.
Clio looked up at her brother, who looked devastated, and at Phoebe, who seemed torn between comforting Clio and remaining beside her husband. As she watched, she felt a strange sense of detachment, as though she was an uninvolved observer. It clarified things and kept the emotions involved at bay.
She couldn’t allow her brother and Phoebe to suffer for what she’d done. It was as simple as that.
“I won’t let the two of you face consequences for what I’ve done,” she said. Her voice echoed in her own ears. “It’s time for me to take accountability for what I’ve done. It’s not a mere necessity any longer; it’s an obligation. I will marry Hector.” She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. “That is, if he will still have me.”
It was like magic; even though Hector should have still been in the countryside, he was suddenlythere, in the doorway ofAaron’s drawing room, looking like he’d ridden hard for hours to get there.
“Of course I will,” he said. “Of course I will marry you.”
Hector was braced for a punch. Surely Warson was going to punch him; he’d defiled the man’s sister, after all, at least according to the prudish rules of English Society. He’d spent the ride back from one of the dukedom’s minor country holdings—a pell-mell race in which he’d switched horses twice but hadn’t stopped for so much as a wink of sleep or a bite of food—reminding himself that, no matter what happened, he wasnotgoing to hit Warson back.
After all, the man was probably entitled to shoot him. A free punch was the least that Hector could grant him.
But he hadn’t been at all prepared for the emotional punch of hearing Clio call marriage to him anobligation.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Indeed, he supposed thatsurprisewasn’t truly what he felt. She hadn’t, after all, agreed to marry him. He’d told her he meant to ruin her for all other men, and she’d saidjust this once.
Well. Fate had intervened on his behalf, in the form of gossiping Society women. He was going to get to keep her.
Now all he had to do was figure out how to do so without clipping her wings in the process.
“Hector,” Clio breathed when he stepped into the room and reiterated his intentions to make her his bride. She looked pale and weary, and something protective and long-dormant within him wanted to cross to her, the way Warson’s wife was offering the other duke comfort.
