“Fine.” He stepped aside. “Run away. Drink yourself into a stupor. Fight until you cannot stand. But when you wake up tomorrow, bruised and alone and miserable, remember that you chose this. You had a chance at happiness, and you threw it away because you were too afraid to hold onto it.”
Edward pushed past him without a word. He climbed the stairs, burst into the chilly night air, and stood in the alley, breathing hard.
Hugo’s words echoed in his ears. Coward. Running away. Too afraid to hold onto happiness.
He leaned against the brick wall and pressed his palms to his eyes. His head throbbed. His hands shook. The ale churned in his stomach, mixing with guilt and grief and something that felt horribly like despair.
He thought of Sophia. Of the way she had cared for Oliver in the days since their fight, filling the void Edward had left. Of the way she had reached for him in the study, trying to bridge the distance, and how he had recoiled from her touch.
Of the footsteps that paused outside her door each night, and the silence that answered.
He was destroying everything. Systematically, methodically, with the same cold efficiency his father had employed. And he did not know how to stop.
The hackney was waiting where he had left it. Edward climbed inside and gave the driver the address. The carriage lurched into motion, carrying him back to the house where his wife slept in a bed he had abandoned, where his nephew asked why his uncle no longer visited, where everything he wanted was just out of reach.
He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.
Morning arrived with the subtlety of a cannon blast.
Edward groaned and pressed his face deeper into the pillow. His head pounded. His mouth tasted of stale ale and regret. Every muscle in his body ached, the accumulated punishment of four nights of fighting making itself known with brutal clarity.
A soft knock at the door. He ignored it.
The knock came again, followed by the quiet click of the latch.
“Your Grace.” Hartley’s voice was pitched low, mercifully. “I have brought tea and toast.”
Edward cracked one eye open. The butler stood beside the bed, a silver tray balanced in his hands, his expression carefully neutral. The curtains remained drawn, blocking the worst of the daylight, a small mercy Edward appreciated more than he could express.
“I do not want tea.” His voice emerged as a rasp.
“With respect, Your Grace, you need tea.” Hartley set the tray on the bedside table. “And toast. And perhaps a bath. You smell of tavern.”
Edward would have laughed if it would not have split his skull in two. Hartley had been with the family since Edward was a boy. Had seen him through childhood illnesses, adolescent foolishness, and the dark days after his father’s death. If anyone had earned the right to speak plainly, it was him.
“The duchess?” The question escaped before he could stop it.
“Breakfasted in her chambers, as she has done these past days.” Hartley’s tone remained neutral, but something flickered in his eyes. “Master Oliver is with her now. He has been asking for you.”
The words settled over Edward like stones. Oliver. Asking for him. While he lay here, hungover and battered, hiding from the consequences of his own cowardice.
“Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”
Edward pushed himself upright, wincing at the protest of his bruised ribs. “No. Thank you, Hartley.”
The butler bowed and withdrew, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Edward stared at the tea cooling on the tray. At the toast he had no appetite for. At the space beside him in the bed, where Sophia should have been, would have been, if he had not driven her away.
Hugo’s voice echoed in his memory.When you wake up tomorrow, bruised and alone and miserable, remember that you chose this.
He had chosen this. And he had no idea how to choose differently.
CHAPTER 37
“Iam a dragon, and I am going to eat you!”
Oliver chased Rosie and Nancy across the Guildthorpes’ drawing room, his arms spread wide, his face contorted into what he clearly believed was a fearsome expression. The twins shrieked with delight and scattered in opposite directions, their matching ribbons flying behind them.
