At the sinking loss of her leaving, he realized he hadn’t been protecting her—he’d been protecting himself. Scarred with so much betrayal, pain, and loss, he’d been afraid of opening hisheart completely, to give anyone the chance to hurt him worse than he’d experienced before.
Now she was gone, and he damn well deserved it.
CHAPTER 28
“Evelina, dear, please come home,” her aunt tried to coax her. “You know you will always have your home with us. We can begin the annulment process with this Duke of yours, and you will be free from his grasping clutches.”
Setting her cup down in Victoria’s tearoom, Ellie considered the best way to address her aunt. Somehow, her aunt had caught wind of her and Dorian’s rift a week ago and was now trying to persuade her back to her prison.
“Aunt Constance,” Ellie began. “I cannot do that. No, I willnotdo that, and I suspect you know why.”
Nervously, her aunt fixed her turban. “I—I am afraid I don’t.”
Not bothering to beat around the bush, she continued, “You and Uncle Patrick lied to me, kept me in willful ignorance about my father… to steal the inheritance he’d left behind for me. Youmade me believe he’d died a pauper and that I was indebted to you for the rest of my life.
“You made sure to train me in every discipline so I was prime attraction to wealthy suitors who would not mind co-conspiring in your plan and splitting it,” she said. “I know about how Papa and Grandpapa did not give you the money you wanted from them. You and Uncle will not get it from me either.”
Her aunt paled. “E-Ellie, you must understand, we did not do anything to hurt you, we only felt a good sum was owed to us be-because we raised you...”
“All of five hundred thousand?” Ellie asked flatly. “No, Aunt. That is not owed to you. But I was not raised to be heartless either.” She slid a stack of notes to the Langford matriarch. “That is five thousand pounds. It should be more than enough to placate you and have it be so I never have to see you .”
The unholy delight that lit up her aunt’s face told her Dorian was right about her relatives being fortune hunters. “I shall be staying at Victoria’s for a while, and Harriet will be with me as well. Victoria is going to use her social cache to introduce her to the ton, as you have long so hoped.”
“Evelina—”
“Please stop, Aunt,” she sighed heavily. “There will not be any annulment on my part. I am not separating from my husband either, as when I said my vows, I meant them.”
She held back the tremble in her words as she did not know if she believed that truth anymore. Still, she had to not crack under the pressure her aunt was putting on her.
“You may leave now,” Ellie finished coolly.
The wrinkles in her aunt's face deepened as her lips ticked down. “Evelina, please understand that I never meant to hurt you. I only wanted to prepare you for the world you would eventually enter.”
And bless yourself along the way.
“That may be so, Aunt Constance. But you went about it in the worst way.”
When her aunt finally took her leave, Ellie refilled her tea and waited until Victoria entered the room. Her friend took one look at her, pouted, and then made her cup to join Ellie.
“How bad did it go?”
“As bad as cutting off a gangrenous limb,” Ellie sighed. “It did not feel good to look into the eyes of a woman I trusted all my life, knowing that there was only ever to be a single outcome in our relationship.”
“I can only imagine,” Victoria commiserated. “Aside from your aunt, what are you planning to do about your husband?”
“My aunt was pushing me for an annulment,” she began, “but I am not sure if that is how I want it to go. I still love him… but the confusion and deceit, I—I feel it might be hard to trust him at all after this. The marriage was built on lies, how can it possibly recover from there?”
“Do you think he wants to let you go?” Victoria asked.
“I… I don’t know.” She reached for a sugar square and added it to her tea. “I feel like his silence means he does.”
“And if he sends you the papers?”
“I—” she swallowed, “I may just sign them.”
Huddled into a dark corner of White’s, Dorian traced his forefinger over the rim of his glass. He was not sure how long he had been in the club—or how many glasses of brandy he’d drunk—as all he could do was think back to the night at the teahouse.
Evelina’s pained face still stayed with him during his waking hours and haunted him in his dreams. He’d seen some pretty horrible things in the streets, death and pain and poverty, but the hurt she had felt that night scarred his heart.
