His voice was so gentle. The same voice that had soothed her hurts and celebrated her successes over the years. The voice that always made her feel safe and loved. She leaned toward him and felt Aaron’s fingers dig hard into her arm. Hard enough to hurt. She stared down at his fingers and let out a shuddering sigh. She pulled from his grip and went to her brother. He took her hand and gently pulled her behind him. Her hands shook as she clung to his.
“She is sixteen,” Hugh said, his voice strained with upset.
Aaron arched a brow and shrugged one shoulder. “It hardly matters now.”
Lizzie cringed at the coldness of her intended’s tone. He was very angry, it seemed, at the interruption. And she supposed she ought to be upset, as well. Only she was so relieved to see her brother.
Hugh sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “Lizzie, go outside. I’ll join you in a moment.”
“No!” She tightened her grip on his hand as panic swelled in her. She needed to protect Aaron from Hugh’s outrage. To take responsibility for her own part in this terrible mistake. It was too late to go back on it, at any rate, considering what she’d already done. She had to do everything in her power to make peace between these two men who would soon be family. “Please, please, no, Hugh. Please don’t. We—we care for each other.”
Hugh jerked his gaze down at her and when he met her gaze, she saw home and peace. Tears gathered in her eyes, and one slid down her cheek.
He shook his head as he wiped it away gently. “He doesnotcare for you,” he whispered.
She flinched because when her brother said those words, they felt…true. Certainly when she glanced at Aaron, with his arms folded and a smirk on his handsome face, she didn’t feel that he cared for her. It was like some balloon had burst, or a mask had fallen and now she questioned herself and all she had believed.
“One way or another, I get what I wanted, don’t I?” Aaron said, his tone smug and mocking.
She stared at him, unblinking, trying to find the man she had told herself she loved. The man who had wooed her and convinced her to escape with him. He wasn’t there.
“What—what do you mean by that, Aaron?”
He looked past Hugh to her. “My dear, I would have married you, and engaged in all those pleasures you and I had just begun to explore.”
Heat flooded her cheeks at his crude revelation of their wicked activities. Hugh was a smart man, he had to have guessed what she’d done, but there was no need to flaunt it in his face.
And it generated a reaction. Hugh let out a grunt and lunged for Aaron. Lizzie clung to his arm with all her might, digging in her heels to keep him from pummeling Aaron to a pulp.
“But as you can see, Brighthollow will never allow it,” Aaron continued with a shrug.
“I will not,” Hugh said through clenched teeth.
Aaron tilted his head and held her stare. “So you remember that when you look at him.Hetook your future from you, not me.”
Lizzie recoiled. Aaron wasn’t trying to reason with her brother, or declare his devotion. He was just trying to hurt Hugh. Worse, he was trying to make her hate her brother. Not that she ever could or would.
“Don’t youdareact like a gentleman thwarted by my cruelty. You are only interested in my sister’s inheritance,” Hugh spat.
Those words landed in the room with a resounding thud. She stared at Aaron, waiting for him to deny the charge. Waiting for him to say anything that told her he truly cared for her. But he didn’t, and the truth of everything began to rot its way into her chest, throughout her body, into every bit of her. She found herself curling inward, trying to make herself smaller, trying to escape what now felt so obvious.
“Itisa very nice inheritance,” Aaron said at last. “But I won’t need it now.”
“A-Aaron,” Lizzie whispered and wished her tone weren’t so broken, so vulnerable.
“What do you mean you won’t need it?” Hugh asked, his voice shaking, this time with more than just anger. He sounded…afraid.
“My driver, the woman who owns this home, my friends…everyone knows that we snuck away under your very nose.” Aaron sneered at Hugh. “And that we have been alone for several nights.”
“But—” Lizzie began as nausea rose up inside of her, threatening to deposit onto the cheap carpet what little she’d eaten that day.
“Hush now, Lizzie, your brother and I are negotiating,” Aaron said, never looking at her, never seeing how the sharpness and dismissiveness of his actions and words cut to her very spirit. Not looking because it was becoming evident he didn’tcare. “You don’t want all this to be unleashed into Society, do you? This thing that will ruin all her chances at a future?”
Hugh released Lizzie’s hand. He did not move forward, he didn’t move at all. He just held the stare of a man she’d thoughtwasher future and said, “I will kill you.”
Aaron seemed unmoved by the threat. He just smiled. “Do it, go ahead. If you do, it will only make this scandal all the larger and drag down your entire legacy…along with her.”
Lizzie lifted her hands to cover her mouth. God, Aaron was right. If what she’d done came out, if her ruin was public knowledge, itwouldaffect Hugh’s future as well. Her beloved brother, who had spent years carefully building his reputation, would lose it all because she had been such a little fool.
