She pivoted away. “Please!” she repeated. “Just let me have a moment.”
She was going to walk to the fire, but he caught her upper arm gently and tugged her back. Toward his warmth. Toward his gentle support. Toward everything she wanted and was trying to remind herself she couldn’t have. And it made all her dark feelings worse, not better.
She stared up into his face and saw the future she wouldn’t be allowed. It all hurt more. She almost hated him for it.
“Elizabeth,” he whispered, and then he bent his head and his lips brushed hers.
Dark thoughts filtered away, dissipating in the air as she leaned into the thing she wanted and couldn’t have. Leaned into his embrace and let herself have his comfort, if only for a moment. And it was only a moment, because he parted from her and moved away a long step.
“Morgan,” she whispered. “This is not your burden. Just go back to the celebration and let me have a moment.”
“It may not be my burden, but I see it,” he said. “I see what you feel, Elizabeth. As plain as if your heart were mine.”
She flinched at his choice of words. As if his heart were hers? He wouldn’t let it be. “You don’t know,” she snapped, a little harsher than she had intended as she walked away from him.
He sighed. “Your closest friend and companion has been your brother for as long as you can recall,” he said softly. His words were gentle but still pointed blades against her heart. “When he married Amelia, you thought things might change. They did, but you adore her like a sister and you settled into your new life. But now…a baby is coming. Their family will change. There won’t be as much space in it, you know that. Where will your place be?”
She was taken off guard by how succinctly he had laid out her feelings. Hearing them out loud made them feel even worse. “I know how much they want this. I’ve wanted it for them. I’m horrible to feel even an inkling of something that isn’t joy.”
His brow wrinkled. “You aren’t. You’re just…changing. You want to find a place in this world and this makes you realize that it isn’t in these walls, not forever. How could you not feel conflicted about that?”
She stared at him, loving him and wanting him to love her back. “If my place isn’t here, then where is it, Morgan?”
“Elizabeth.” His expression shifted, turned pained as he glanced away from her. And her heart broke.
“Not with you,” she whispered. “You are too cowardly to say it. You hide from me so you won’t have to say it, but you want me to understand that my future could never be with you.”
His lips parted. “You already know it can’t. I don’t have to tell you, do I?”
She folded her arms, trying to raise a shield even though he’d already vaulted over her walls and pillaged everything of value inside of her. “How long have you known about Amelia?”
His jaw set and he shrugged one shoulder. “Since Brighthollow took me aside the afternoon after the attack. A couple of days.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t even think to tell me. To warn me so I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“It…it wasn’t my place,” he insisted. “We aren’t—”
“We aren’t what?” she interrupted, moving toward him, her chin lifted in defiance she wished she felt in her heart. “Say to me what we aren’t.”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m—I’m going to fight a duel, Elizabeth.”
She caught her breath and staggered backward, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as his words sank in. “What are you saying? What do you mean?”
“I know I did the wrong thing when it came to Gareth,” he said softly. “He wanted to settle it in one way a year ago, but he was denied that. It’s made him dangerous. So, I’ve reached out to him and he has agreed to meet me on the field…tomorrow at dawn.”
Lizzie blinked up at him, willing this to be a dream. A nightmare. A fuzzy, nasty hallucination brought on by something she ate. But it wasn’t. Morgan was standing in front of her. And he was saying he would die for honor, that he refused to live for himself. For her.
She wanted to find the words to stop this. To fight him. But before she could put them together, Robert’s voice came from the doorway behind them.
“What the hell are you saying, Morgan? What the hell do you mean that you will meet someone on the field at dawn?”
Morgan turned away from Lizzie’s pale and horrified face and found himself staring at Robert’s equally sick expression. His brother was red as a tomato, his hands shaking at his sides as he plowed into the room.
“Explain yourself!” Robert shouted as he caught Morgan’s arm and shook it.
Morgan yanked it away as he glared at him. “Why are you here?”
Robert’s eyes went wide. “Because I watched you sneak out of the room, following Lizzie, and I’m trying to keep you out of trouble. It seems like a foolish occupation, though, considering that you keep finding it over and over again. You keep digging yourself into holes like you enjoy being buried. Well, Idon’tenjoy finding a way to get you out of them, Morgan!”
