“Charlotte.” A quiet command.
The truth will out. Here, and now.
She drew a quick, hard breath. “I didn’t tell you everything about what happened at Hadley House, after Hadley died.”
His shoulders relaxed. “I know that, love, but Lady Chase told me already.”
Charlotte froze, all except her foolish heart, which leapt into a single beat of wild hope before it plummeted into despair again. Lady Chase couldn’t have told Julian the whole of it, because she didn’t know. No one but the staff at Hadley House knew, not even Ellie and Cam, because Charlotte had never breathed a word of the truth to any of them. Whatever Julian thought he knew, he didn’t know the worst of it.
If he did, he’d already despise her.
She twisted her fingers together until her knuckles ached. “What did Lady Chase tell you?”
“That you stayed with the dowager until she died, despite how difficult it must have been for you, and you were ill for several months before you came to London. Exhaustion, she said.” He took her hand. “Whatever it was it doesn’t matter, Charlotte—”
“It does matter.” She withdrew her hand, because if he touched her, she’d never be able to force the words out, and it had to be now, before she found another excuse to keep the truth from him forever. “I wasn’t ill, Julian.”
“What, then? It’s all right, Charlotte. Just say it.”
“I wasn’t ill. I was…carrying a child, and I—I—”
Oh God, she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t tell him.
But of course he knew. He went motionless against the pillows. “You lost the child.”
“Yes.” She gulped in air to push the rest of the words out. “I lost her, and there was a great deal of blood, and the doctor said I may never be able to—”
“Don’t say it,” he whispered. “You don’t have to say it.”
But she did, and now she’d begun she was desperate to get it out, the worst of it, and there was no way to warn him, to make it easier, to make it hurt him less. “The child, Julian. I was carrying her when I married Hadley.”
For a single moment he looked perplexed, but then in the next breath the truth crashed over him, and she knew the exact moment when he understood, because it was the same moment her heart shriveled in her chest. He would hate her now, he’d blame her, just as she blamed herself—
“My child? A daughter. Oh, no. Oh, Charlotte, no. No, sweetheart.” He slid his arms around her and his warm palm cupped the back of her head to press her face against his chest. She let him hold her, but her body was taut against his as she waited for the moment—as inevitable as the rise and set of the sun—when he’d push her away.
She felt it seconds later, the slight stiffening of his arms, a catch of breath in his lungs, and then his hands were on her shoulders, gentle still, but inexorable, pushing her away so he could look into her eyes. “Did you… Did you know you were going to have my child when you married Hadley?”
She heard the pleading note under the forced calm of his voice, and for one wild moment she nearly denied it, but she couldn’t bear to carry such an awful lie with her for the rest of her life, and she wouldn’t deceive him into carrying it, either. Her eyes closed and she bowed her head. “Yes. I knew.”
Silence. Julian didn’t move or even appear to breathe, but the air in the room shifted somehow, became thinner, colder. When he spoke at last, it was one quiet word only, but it shattered the silence like a bullet. “Why?”
Why. Oh, God, so many reasons. She’d been terrified when she found she was with child, and so ashamed—too ashamed to tell her mother or even Ellie the truth. She remembered little from that time except the agony of a tender first love crushed into oblivion, and a blinding fury at Julian, because despite his lie she’d loved him madly still, and his betrayal had shattered her heart into a thousand pieces. Those weeks had blurred together in a kaleidoscope of rage and heartbreak, and by the time she found herself again, it was too late.
By then she wasn’t Charlotte anymore. She was someone else. A wife. The Marchioness of Hadley. Mistress of Hadley House.
She struggled to find the right words to make him understand, but when she opened her mouth to give voice to the crushing welter of emotions she’d felt at that time, all that emerged was, “I was afraid.”
It wasn’t enough. As soon as her words fell into the silence between them, she knew it wasn’t enough.
“I begged you to see me before you married Hadley, but you wouldn’t talk to me.” Julian’s voice was low and hard. “You sent back all my letters unopened, you refused to see me when I called, and all that time you knew about our child, and you never told me.”
Charlotte covered her face with her hands. “I was afraid, Julian. I’d just found out you lied to me, and I thought… I didn’t know what to do.”
Julian didn’t answer. He didn’t say another word, but slid out from under the covers and rose from the bed. She heard him fumbling in the darkness for his clothes, the rustle of cloth as he donned his breeches and shirt, and it was odd, wasn’t it, to hear such normal sounds when her world was falling apart? The ring of his boots across the wooden floor as he walked toward the door, away from her—that sound made more sense in this moment, each of his steps heavy, portentous.
Final. The way an ending should sound.
She didn’t want to look at him and see his back turned on her, but as the silence continued to stretch between them her gaze was drawn to the door. Julian’s head was down, his gaze on the floor. “It’s best if we don’t… I can’t …”
