Hugo set down his glass. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
“Are you afraid of her finding out about the stammer?”
Hugo’s entire body went rigid.
The glass on the table beside him might as well have been a mile away. The room contracted to the space between his chair and Edward’s, and the blood drained from his face.
“I never told you about that.”
“No. You did not.”
“Then how…”
“I have known for years, Hugo.” Edward’s voice carried no judgment. No pity. “When we were at school, I noticed that you drank before debates. Always. Without exception. That your speech was smoother after the first glass than before it. Inoticed that you avoided certain words, substituted others mid-sentence, and that when you were caught off guard or emotional, your consonants caught. I noticed, and I said nothing, because you clearly did not want it noticed.”
Hugo’s hands gripped the arms of his chair. His knuckles whitened. “You dug into my past.”
“I dug into everyone’s past. I was young, paranoid, and had just inherited a Dukedom for which I was not prepared. I investigated every person in my circle. Yours was the file I closed the fastest, because nothing I found changed my opinion of you.” Edward held his gaze. “You are my closest friend. A stammer does not alter that. It never has.”
“You had no right.”
“No. I did not. And we can fight about that later if you wish. But right now, your wife gets further and further away, and that matters more than a fifteen-year-old breach of privacy.”
Hugo stood. The chair scraped against the floor. He crossed to the window and pressed his palms flat against the sill and stared at the street below.
“She got stuck with me.” His voice came out raw, stripped of every defense. “She was never supposed to be bound to me. She was supposed to marry Wilfrey and travel the Mediterranean and live a quiet, intellectual life with a man who would never stammer on a word in front of her and then send her away because he could not bear the shame of it.”
“Hugo.”
“I was never supposed to marry like this. I was supposed to be the temporary solution. The man who helped her fix her reputation and then stepped aside so she could have the life she deserved.”
“And instead?”
“Instead, I fell in love with her, and I do not know what to do with that, Edward, because every woman I have ever been with has seen the performance. Lily is the first person who has ever tried to see past it, and I sent her away because I am terrified that if she sees what is actually there, she will wish she had married the man with the ferns.”
The words poured out of him, and once they started, he could not stop them. He pressed his forehead against the window glass and breathed. The cool surface anchored him against the vertigo of having spoken aloud, for the first time in his life, the truth he had been carrying since the night Lily walked into his parlor and changed everything.
Edward was quiet for a long moment. “What are you doing, Hugo?”
“I do not know.”
“Yes, you do. You are standing at a window feeling sorry for yourself while the woman you just admitted you love ispreparing to leave the country because you are too frightened to be honest with her.”
“It is not that simple.”
“It is exactly that simple. Everything you carry, the stammer, your brother, your father, all of it, those are old fears. Real fears. I do not dismiss them. But you are using them as an excuse to stay untouched, and the cost of staying untouched is losing the one person who wants to touch you anyway.”
Hugo lifted his head from the glass. He turned and looked at Edward.
“Let her see you,” Edward said. “Not the Duke. Not the rake. Not the man who commands ballrooms and deflects every question with a joke. Let her see Hugo. The real one. The one who stammers. The one whose brother was cruel, whose father was cold, whose mother died before she could tell him he was enough.” He paused. “Let Lily stand beside you while you exist as you are. That is all she has ever asked for.”
The room was quiet. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the club, a door opened and closed, and voices murmured. Glasses clinked, and the ordinary business of the world went on without any awareness that a man in a leather chair by the window was being taken apart and put back together by his best friend’s words.
Hugo looked at the brandy on the table. He looked out of the window. He looked at Edward. “Marriage has made you insufferably wise.”
Edward’s mouth curved. The half-smile held warmth and relief. “If you go after her, you will grow too.”
Hugo stood motionless for a beat. The afternoon light shifted across the floor. The dust motes turned gold.
