Felicity shrugged. “As you like.”
“Before you go, may I speak to you a moment, Lucien?” their mother asked.
Felicity exchanged a look with him, then said, “I’ll meet you down the hall.”
She left, and their mother turned into him, searching his face with worry. “Are you well, darling?”
He wrinkled his brow. He loved his mother dearly, but no one could say she was the most observant woman in the world. She had once been described as flighty, and that was certainly true.
“I’m fine, Mama. I assure you,” he said. Lied, actually, for he didn’t feel fine.
“I-I saw the Duchess of Kirkford at the ball last night,” she continued. “I supposeeveryonesaw her.”
Stenfax stiffened. “Yes, there was quite the stir regarding her.”
She squeezed his arm. “I hope that doesn’t pain you.”
He considered the question. Pain him? To see Elise? Hell yes, it pained him. But surprisingly it wasn’t because of the betrayal or the lies or the abandonment.
It hurt to see her because he couldn’t touch her freely. He couldn’t stop her from talking to men like Winstead and planning a future that would include him no more than her past had.
“No,” he said softly. “Whatever was between us is in the past, isn’t it? I can’tallowit to hurt me.”
His mother took his words at face value and nodded before she said, “Best go talk to Felicity, then. Good afternoon, Lucien.”
He smiled at her before he left the room. It was easy to get her to believe him. Felicity would be harder. No one would dare callherflighty.
He walked down the hall and into the music room. Felicity stood at the window, overlooking the garden behind the house. When he entered the room and closed the door, she turned on him, her face taut with the same powerful emotions she had displayed the night before.
“I couldn’t leave things as they were,” he said. “I wanted to discuss what happened last night.”
She shrugged, and he could tell this would not be easy. “I’m not sure there’s anything to discuss. After all, you seem to have made up your mind, despite the past. Despite what that past nearly drove you to do.”
He flinched. She was referencing that night on the terrace. That night he’d nearly taken his own life. Of course she knew about that night—Gray had told her. Stenfax had always known that.
“Please,” he said softly, moving toward her. “Let’s not discuss that.”
She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Of course. We never discussthat. Even though it’s the most horrible thing that nearly happened to us. Even though it changed Gray forever, changed you forever, and changedmeforever.”
“You weren’t there, Felicity,” he said, trying to be calm when this topic made him anything but.
“I think that made it worse,” Felicity said, stepping toward him. “I think it was worse to know you nearly killed yourself and that I wasn’t there to try to stop you. Do you know how many times I went over the last thing I’d said to you before that night? Do you know what my last words to you would have been had you succeeded in ending yourself?”
“What were they?” Stenfax asked.
She blinked at tears. He was shocked to see them a second time, for Felicity had hardly ever cried after her husband’s death. She’d become stronger than iron after that night.
“I said, ‘will you hand me the salt’.”
He wrinkled his brow. “What?”
“The last time I saw you before you climbed a terrace wall was at supper the night before. I asked you to pass me the salt but we didn’t talk again. I had a headache and I snuck out. So the last thing I would have said to my eldest brother, who I adore beyond measure, was something aboutsalt.”
He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Felicity. Just as I’m sorry that this thing with Elise stirs such painful memories for you.”
“It does,” she admitted. “Andregrets. I have also often thought of what I would have said to you had I faced you in your grief on the terrace that night. Would you like to know what I decided those words would have been?”
He slowly nodded, though this entire conversation was an exercise in intense pain.
