She had faults in his eyes. And she liked that. It made her feel…
Real. Like my own person.
“I am glad you told me,” Amelia said, throat closing. “You deserve to be happy, Freddy.”
“And so do you.”
“Yes… I do.”
She took his hand when he offered it.
Which is why I must forge my own path forward in this life.
“How very strange to return here alone,” Amelia told her maid, Agnes. She stared at her reflection in the looking glass at her toilette table. Her maid smiled behind her, brushing out the waves of her long brown hair. “Has there been word from His Grace regarding his return?”
“None, Your Grace. But your correspondence has been delivered to your writing desk.” She gently brushed out the ends of Amelia’s hair, then lay the mass of diffused waves over her shoulder. “Is there anything more I can do for you tonight, Your Grace?”
Amelia sighed quietly, thumbing her perfume bottle. “No, thank you.”
Alone after her maid’s departure, she rose and crossed over to her writing desk, taking her correspondence and settling into bed. She climbed atop the coverlets and stroked the place they had lain together. The maids had changed the bedding. All traces of him were gone, and her heart panged painfully with how much she missed him.
Curling up against her pillows, she sorted through her letters. The note from Philippa she would read later. A letter from a women’s society in town came next.
And at the bottom of the pile lay a letter which was not addressed to her at all.
She frowned at Nicholas’s name and title scribbled in an elegant, looping script on the parchment. She turned it over. The seal, bright red wax, was unbroken. The sending note readLondon, 29thNovember.It had been sent three days prior.
Someone sorted this in my letters by mistake.
Amelia prepared to cast it aside, but something caught her attention. The letter was perfumed heavily. A woman’s perfume. Something heady and sweet, sugar and musk.
Fear curled in her stomach.
Who would perfume a letter for Nicholas?
He would be furious if he learned Amelia had read his correspondence. But maybe… No. The thought was too dark to entertain. He would not have dared.
And yet I cannot help but think about it. I could say that it was a mistake. I broke through the seal mechanically, assuming the letter was addressed to me. He would understand. He would—
A finger, acting of its own will, slid under the fold in the parchment and broke the seal. It cracked in the quiet air, and the letter sprang open.
The elegant script continued inside, beginning,Dear Nicholas…
Tears burned Amelia’s eyes. She wanted to look away, could not. The lines blurred, disjointed, as she read them with rapt attention.
How long must I endure this silence from you? I cannot feign indifference. Neither can you. Burying yourself in the quiet of the country… It’s not right. Come back, Nicholas, to London and to me. If you come, I will know you long for me still.
Devotedly, S.
Amelia dropped the letter as though it had burned her. She pushed herself out of the bed and stared at it in horror.
“London?”
Is that where he has gone? To see her? But why?
What else could it have been, but the dark face of Nicholas?
The one she had ignored, like a fool, because of love.
