She had to run before she was ill in front of him. The thought of the two people she loved most in the world locked in such a web of hate was torturous. She bolted out into the hallway and nearly collided with a frozen Amelia. She had a hand on the wall to steady herself, and the other was pressed to her abdomen. The horrified look in her wide, glistening green eyes told Clara she’d heard a great deal of what Brinley had said—if not everything—through the door Clara had neglected to close on her way into the room.
“Amelia,” Clara croaked out, her heart breaking as she watched Amelia’s soul shatter in her eyes.
When Clara reached out to her, Amelia spun away and fled as quickly as her legs could carry her.
Chapter Thirteen
Amelia was convinceda woman’s life could fall apart only so many times, and she was certain to hold a record for it. Her day had gone from terrible to tragic in the matter of a conversation no more than five minutes in length. She’d lost Faye and now…now she felt so foolish and so stupid for ever believing Dorian could forget the past.
She was sickened by the words and the promises she’d so naively accepted and spread her legs for. She should have known—dammit! She should have known better. Now, Dorian had gotten his revenge, and she was left humiliated. Perhaps what stung the most was the malicious nature of the revenge. He’d made her love him all over again.
He’d clearly wanted to wound her so deeply that she would bleed as Brinley said Dorian had bled.
An eye for an eye…
Amelia flew through the halls of the castle, deaf to Clara’s cries and pleas behind her every step of the way. She was a panting, disheveled mess by the time she discovered Dorian in her study—the place she cursed herself for not checking first. Her eyes were still puffy from crying over Faye, but Dorian’s keen gaze did not miss the pain—a new kind—radiating from them. His warm smile in greeting quickly dissolved into confusion.
“What is the matter, sweeting?” he asked softly, abandoning the man to whom he’d been speaking.
Clara caught herself on the doorframe behind Amelia. She was gasping for air, her breath hindered by her exertion and her stays. Her cheeks were damp with salty tears.
“Leave,” Amelia commanded icily. The man behind Dorian was momentarily frozen in shock and then quickly dashed away without another word. Amelia could not find it in herself at that moment to regret her horrendous manners; she was in too much pain.
Clara clutched at her arm, but Amelia kept shaking her off.
“How could you?” Amelia cried, her tears flowing freely now. “How could you do such a thing?”
His brow knitted together. “What are you saying? What did I do?”
“You know bloody well what you did!”
“No, I do not!” he stepped toward her, his voice growing louder.
Amelia chose her words carefully, not chancing another misunderstanding. She decided bluntness was the best course of action. “Did you or did you not accompany Clara here to my home with the intention of revenge by way of using me and then discarding me? To hurt me as you were hurt? Have all your actions been with that goal in mind?”
At first, Doriancould not believe what was happening—again! He felt like the ground was giving way beneath his feet, crumbling right alongside the hopes for the future he’d been building.
He did not immediately answer, briefly considering lying, but he couldn’t do it. The woman he loved deserved better than that. Instead, he told her the truth, though he knew it meant he would never see her again.
“Yes. I came here with the intention of finding a way to move past whatever lingering attachment I felt, but you must know that everything changed when I saw you again.” He could tell she’d stopped listening after the first word. Her eyes tipped toward the ceiling as if searching for strength.
“Get out,” she said, dangerously calm as she swiped tears from her cheeks. “Stay away from me. Stay away from my son. If you ever set foot on our land again, I will have you shot like the vermin you are.” She coolly turned and left the room. Dorian stared, incredulous, at the space she’d once occupied, feeling as if all the air had been torn from his lungs.
There was a loud sniff, and he turned to his sister. She watched him, furious and accusatory. “How could you?” Clara sobbed. “I do not know you at all.” She fled from the room as well, leaving Dorian to feel as if he were drowning in silence, suffocating in grief, dying from the pain that was gradually shredding his vital organs.
Clearly, fate did not want him to be with Amelia, or else why would this sort of thing keep happening? Love and happiness were not supposed to be so difficult, and perhaps it was time he realized they’d never been meant to be. No matter how much he loved Amelia, it was never going to work.
Resigned and broken, knowing there was nothing else left to do, he went to speak to his valet to have his things packed up for his retreat from Scotland.
Amelia watched theloading of the Brinley carriage from the height of a tower. It took a few hours, but true to her command, Dorian left. He surged forward on Maximus at a breakneck pace even before the door to the Brinley carriage was closed. Unable to watch as he flew away from the castle walls, she turned her attention to Brinley as he climbed aboard the conveyance. Though she’d never considered him a friend, she felt an oddsense of gratitude for his arrival and blunt speech. She supposed it had saved her from a more public form of humiliation that she now felt certain Dorian had planned for her. What else could have driven him to such a scheme?
Unable to stomach continuing her vigil as the carriage began to lumber away, she turned from the window. When she would have expected pain or anger or sadness, she felt numbness. It was an aching hollowness experienced by those who’d suffered repeated betrayal. She was embarrassed for having allowed herself to be led on—she should have stuck to her initial reaction to Dorian’s appearance and kept as far away as possible. And now, she didn’t have James to help her pick up the pieces of her life and start fresh; she didn’t even have Faye’s thick, scruffy neck to cry into.
The last clogged her throat with tears, but she held them back. She could not fall apart, not when Archie needed her. She had to be her own strongest support.
When her hunger finally won out over her nausea, Amelia took supper alone in her chambers, not wanting to sit in the cavernous dining room or bother dressing the part. She choked down what she could of the lovely spread her cook had sent up and then tried settling in to read, but she wound up only staring out through the rapidly darkening window instead.
She berated herself for her self-pitying mood, then determined that the past twenty-four hours had been hellish enough that she deserved a bit of wallowing. All her tears had dried, so she could only sit in the quiet tragedy of the turn of events and watch as the night drew ever closer.
