So instead he inclined his head. “I’ll have my carriage take you home.”
Her lips pinched. “Thank you. Good day.”
Then she pivoted and left him in the parlor without a caress or another word. And when she was gone, what he realized was that everything felt terrible again in a way it hadn’t since her arrival in his life.
* * *
Arabella and Julia would still be at Julia’s new home, Evelina was certain of it. She worried her handkerchief in her hand as Vaughn’s carriage turned into the drive and kept working to remove her emotions from her face.
They would see them, of course. Both of them knew her too well. But she wasn’t going to blubber and make this more than it was. It couldn’t be more than it was.
She smiled at the footman who helped her down and thanked Vaughn’s driver before he departed the house, back to his master. She shivered as she was welcomed into the home by Julia’s new butler and taken through the bright and pretty halls into an equally lovely, if small, parlor.
Arabella and Julia were there, sitting before the fire, talking softly. When she was announced, they both looked up in surprise and then their smiles were instant as they came across the room to her.
“Gracious, I thought you weren’t coming!” Julia said as she embraced her.
“My—my schedule changed,” Evelina said.
Arabella also hugged her, but when she drew back there was a knowing expression. “What happened?”
That question broke through every barrier Evelina had fruitlessly tried to create and she leaned forward and rested her head on her sister’s shoulder. “I don’t even know.”
She was guided to the settee and there she told them everything that had happened that day, from seeing Simone, to hearing about the refusal of Southwater, to the fact that Vaughn would see his wife and how she’d told him she no longer wanted to use their affair as a weapon.
“And then…then I left,” she whispered. “And he didn’t stop me. So I suppose it is over now. Which makes sense, as it was only ever about revenge, wasn’t it?”
“Was it?” To her surprise, it was Julia who asked, not Arabella.
Evelina shrugged in response. “Sometimes it didn’t feel like it.”
“After you brought sex into the equation, you mean?” Arabella pressed lightly.
Evelina shifted. That would be the easy answer, wouldn’t it? Passion had clouded judgment and that was the depth of it. Only it wasn’t true. She knew it.
“It was the first change,” she murmured. “But it was more than that. It was the times when we simply…existed together. Read books or talked or shared secrets.” She shivered. “It changed when I realized how much I wanted to protect him.”
She thought of Matilda’s rumor about Lady Blackburn’s pregnancy once more.
“Protect him?” Arabella repeated. “Oh, Evie.”
“Don’t say my name like that.” Evelina got up and strode away from her sisters, trying to get enough breath in her lungs and feeling like it failed.
“It’s obvious you have feelings, true feelings, for this man,” Julia said. “It was patently clear the night we all had supper together and this only verifies that observation.”
“No.” Evelina clenched her fists in and out at her sides but the tingling anxiety ripping through her didn’t ease. “I’m not that foolish to do such a thing twice.”
“It’s not the same,” Arabella snapped, and got to her feet. “He isn’t the same.”
“Oh, you’re no judge, not anymore!” Evelina said. “You fell in love and it worked for you.”
“Love,” Arabella repeated. “Are we comparinglove?”
Evelina tried to open her mouth and refute that charge. Only when it was said out loud, when the question hung in the air before her, the answer felt too clear. But she didn’t want to love again. She certainly didn’t want to love Vaughn. He was so caught up in the betrayals that had been performed against him, there was no doubt in her mind that he still cared for his wife. Even if he didn’t, he had made Evie no promises. He wouldn’t want her love.
And it would only crush her in the long term, wouldn’t it? Tear her apart, only on a much grander scheme than she had experienced so recently with Harry because Vaughn felt…different.
“I cannot discuss this,” she finally whispered. “Please don’t make me discuss this. None of it matters. He let me walk away.”
