“He misses you,” she said softly.
Juliet covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes shining. “I know.”
For a moment, the room held only Juliet’s unsteady breathing and Frederick’s grim silence.
Then Juliet stepped toward her. “I oweyouan apology most of all. If I had not run, you would not have been taken to the wrong chapel. You would not have been humiliated or forced into this whole tangle.”
Emmeline thought of Foxdale, of his cold convenience and her own resigned walk toward a life without warmth and her heart beat a little faster.
“I did not wish to marry my betrothed either,” she said, very quietly.
Juliet blinked through her tears.
“Perhaps what happened was for the best,” Emmeline continued, though the words trembled with more truth than she had meant to reveal. “For me, at least. But things have settled now. Rowan is not the same man he was that morning. If you came home, I believe he would hear you.”
Juliet shook her head at once. “I cannot.”
“Juliet—”
“Please.” She reached for Emmeline’s hands, gripping them with desperate cold fingers. “Please do not tell him. Not yet.”
Emmeline’s heart twisted violently.
Rowan’s face rose before her. Rowan in the morning light, trying not to smile because Aaron had teased Biscuit. Rowan in bed, body hard and trembling above hers, whispering her name.
And now this.
“He deserves honesty,” Emmeline said, and the words hurt as they left her because they condemned her even before she hadchosen. “He is still searching for you. And Aaron deserves to know you are safe.”
Juliet squeezed her eyes shut. “I know.”
“Then how can you ask this of me?”
“Because I am not ready to face him,” Juliet said, the words breaking. “I am a coward, perhaps. When I think of his anger, I feel like that girl in the wedding gown again, with everyone waiting and my whole life closing around my throat. I need a little more time. Only a little. Please. Do not tell Rowan, and do not tell Aaron. Not yet.”
Emmeline looked at Frederick.
His usual lightness was gone. “I should have told Rowan,” he said. “I know that. But when I found her, she was terrified. I could not deliver her back like a parcel.”
“And now?” Emmeline asked.
“Now I am in too deep to pretend wisdom guided me all the way.”
The absurdity of that almost hurt more because it sounded likehim.
Emmeline drew a slow breath, but it did not reach the bottom of her lungs. There were two loyalties inside her now, pulling until she felt she might split apart. Rowan was her husband. He had finally begun to trust her with pieces of himself he had kept locked away for years. Yet Juliet stood before her trembling, asking only for time.
Emmeline had been a woman standing before a marriage she did not want. She could not forget that simply because she had been fortunate enough to be stolen from it.
But compassion could not become betrayal.
“All right,” she said, and the words felt like stepping off solid ground. “I will not tell him today.”
The moment she said it, her stomach turned, as though her body had recognized the lie before she could justify it.
Juliet’s relief was immediate and terrible. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me yet.” Emmeline held her gaze, her voice softening without losing its firmness. “I am giving you one day, Juliet. One day to gather your courage and decide how you wish to face him. Tomorrow, you must either tell Rowan yourself, or I shall tell him.”
