“I was not going to come. I thought it was not my place. But the children heard about the wedding, and Toby begged me. He said, ‘Mrs. Neal, please tell Lucien. He will know what to do.’ And Billy drew this for you.”
Lucien took the drawing. He unfolded it.
Three figures stood in front of a building withLyrawritten above the door. A tall man. A woman with spectacles. A small cat between them. Above their heads, Billy had drawn a sky full of stars, each one a careful circle with lines radiating outward, the way Elinor had taught them.
At the bottom, in uneven letters.
Pleas come back.
The misspelling undid him.
He set the drawing on his desk beside Georgie’s. Two drawings. Two versions of the same truth, rendered by children who understood what the adults in their lives could not.
He looked at Annabelle. She stood with her hand pressed to her mouth, tears on her cheeks.
He looked at Mrs. Neal, who watched him with the quiet hope of a woman who had come a long way on a child’s faith.
Something broke open in his chest. Not the cold, shattering break of eleven years ago. This was warmth, filling a space he had believed was hollow.
He crossed the study in three strides, pulled paper from his desk drawer, uncapped the ink, and wrote. The words came fast, his hand sure despite the brandy, because they had been living inside him for weeks and they knew their way out.
He folded the letter, sealed it, and pressed it into Annabelle’s hands.
“Send this now. Immediately. Do not wait.”
Annabelle looked at the letter. She looked at his face. Whatever she saw there made her grip tighten on the paper.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
Lucien was already pulling on his coat. He paused at the door and looked back at the two drawings on his desk, at Mrs. Neal’s hopeful face, at his sister who had spent years waiting for him to stop being afraid.
“To stop a wedding,” he said.
And he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Where is she?”
The Morland House butler stood in the doorway, clearly under orders to refuse callers and faced with a duke who would not be refused.
“The family has gone to the church, Your Grace. For the wedding.”
The word struck Lucien like a musket ball. He was already turning.
“Which church?”
“St. George’s, Hanover Square.”
Lucien ran. Not the measured stride of a duke, but through the streets of Mayfair, coat unbuttoned, cravat loose, boots strikingthe cobblestones. Those who turned to stare were not wrong. He ran like a man whose life depended on it.
“We are gathered here today …”
The vicar’s voice filled the nave of St. George’s, measured and solemn, and Elinor stood before the altar in a dress she had not chosen, beside a man she did not love, and felt nothing.
Not nothing. Worse than nothing. A numbness so complete it had its own weight, pressing her into the floor of the church, holding her in place. Lord Bramwell stood to her left, his posture rigid, his expression carrying the satisfied calm of a man completing a business transaction. He had not looked at her since they arrived.
Rebecca sat in the front pew with Belinda, both wearing expressions of composed satisfaction. Gilbert lounged beside them, his attention elsewhere. Joanna was absent. Rebecca had forbidden her from attending.
