“All I said was that she’s mentioned in the paper as a benefactress of a charity. It was an off-handed comment; I didn’t think it would offend you so.”
After all these years, the mention of Amelia’s name still had enough power to reopen old wounds that had barely begun to heal. Worse than the mortification of her breaking off the engagement had been the blow to his young, lovesick heart during a formative time in his romantic experiences. Following the loss of the woman he’d once loved with such innocent and earnest desperation, he’d escaped into the debauched life of drinking, gaming, and wenching his father had expected of him as the heir to the marquessate, and Dorian had embraced it with such zeal that he became an embarrassment to the family. He’d swung from one extreme to the other in less time than it tookto have a new coat cut and fitted. He had also developed some rather tasteless habits, because, why not?
When, mere months after their own wedding should have taken place, word of Amelia’s engagement to a Scottish lord of English birth had reached Dorian, he’d fallen into a fit of the blue devils so deep and tortured that no one could pull him out.
When the birth of Amelia’s son and her husband’s heir had been announced less than a year into their marriage, he’d thrown himself into a drunken stupor that had lasted for weeks until finally, having had enough, Brinley had stomped into his musty, dark chambers and dumped a bucket of icy water over his head. The mattress had been soaked beyond salvation, and Dorian had been forced to purchase another while nursing the worst morning-after headache of his life.
Following that, he’d deliberately avoided any news about Amelia until one day it was announced that her husband had died following a hunting accident, where he’d fallen from his horse. It had been a year since that news, and Dorian had been fairly successful in avoiding mentions of the woman who’d gotten away at all costs, until that day.
Unfortunately for Dorian, he happened to be best friends with one of the most irreverent men in London.
Dorian suspected Brinley could no more comprehend Dorian’s heartache than he could imagine what it would be like to live on the moon; the notion was born of imagination and not something he ever, ever expected to experience. He could not fathom why Dorian was still so pained by the mere mention of the former Miss Alvin, nor could he appreciate the adamancy with which Dorian announced his dislike of her on the rare occasions she did come up as a topic of discussion. It had become a habit for Dorian to use that harsher emotion as a shield rather than reveal the fact that the mere thought of the woman could still make him ache.
“Oh no…” Dorian’s younger sister, Clara, groaned from across the room. At nineteen, she’d been out in Society for almost one year already, though she had the spirit, confidence, intelligence, and tongue of a woman at least a decade older. Despite his best efforts after their parents’ deaths some five years earlier, she’d grown into a willful, precocious young woman. And there was nothing he could do to disguise her beauty from the men in the world. She’d inherited the rich, dark hair and eyes of the Poole family, but maintained their mother’s porcelain skin and pixie-like nose. It afforded her the illusion of being younger and more naïve than she was, but that was a trap into which a man fell only once. There was a true mind lurking beneath the deceptively sweet, naive exterior. Unfortunately for him, Clara was well-versed in vexing him with that intelligence.
Dorian turned to her, grateful for the interruption and change in topics, and found her busy sifting through her correspondence at the desk in the far corner of the room.
“What? Did you not receive your copy ofThe Prattler?” Brinley teased her dryly. The two of them were forever at each other’s throats about one thing or another. It would have been more annoying were it not so often a source of amusement for onlookers. Dorian was so used to their antagonistic, almost sibling-like dynamic that he often allowed it to roll off him like water on a duck’s back.
Clara chose to ignore the quip that Brinley so constantly attempted to engage her in and looked to her brother. “My friend, Miss Mary Standley, cannot accompany me to Northumberland next month. Her great-aunt was intended to act as chaperone for our holiday, but she’s taken ill and her mama insists she spend the time tending to her instead.”
“Well, that is unfortunate.” Dorian sighed distractedly and raked his dark hair back from his face. It was well past time his valet gave it a trim. “What was this holiday for again? Youmentioned it before, but I do not recall hearing many details.” To anyone else, it may have been a callous statement, but everyone who knew Clara was aware of how she could spend hours talking around a topic without actually addressing it. Come to think of it, Dorian did not remember her discussing this trip in any detail—almost as if she’d been avoiding it.
Clara cringed and went silent, as if regretting her announcement and frantically trying to figure out how best to answer him. She looked everywhere except at her brother.
Finally, she sighed. “That is the part you really are not going to enjoy.”
A sense of foreboding crashed over Dorian as a glance passed between Clara and Brinley. Something like unspoken dread and understanding connected there, and Dorian knew the answer even before the name crossed his sister’s lips.
Amelia.
She’d been so close-lipped about the details and had even gone so far as to procure an accomplice in one of her friends to keep him from finding out she was planning a visit to his former betrothed. Not only that, but she’d lied about where she was traveling! How she planned on keeping her true destination from him a secret was beyond him, and, knowing Clara, he likely did not wish to know the scheme she’d concocted. The details would likely have sent him into conniptions of worry and rage. She was too smart, too cunning for her own good, and now she’d secretly planned to travel beyond Northumberland—a destination already a substantial distance from where he would remain in London—and spend her holiday with the woman who’d shattered his heart and blackened his reputation.
This knowledge was the final spark on the powder keg of Dorian’s patience.
Dorian exploded. “You’ve been corresponding with her behind my back? For how long?” he roared.
“Well…we never really…stopped…”
“What? So you were just going to lie to me about where you were traveling?”
“Just because your marriage didn’t work out all those years ago doesn’t mean I have to break off my friendship. Amelia has become like a sister to me.”
The sense of betrayal made Dorian feel ill. Clara—the same little girl who’d once believed him the hero in all her fairytales—had plotted beneath his nose. She may have been only a child when his arrangement with Amelia had crumbled, but she’d known he’d loved her. She’d known he’d looked forward to marrying her and starting a life together. That she’d seen how wounded he was behind closed doors and away from the prying eyes of thetonand still chosen to continue her correspondence with the current Dowager Countess Coylton. “Leave. Now.” The injury to his pride was too great for him to say much else to her at the moment.
Clara scrambled to gather her things to flee the room. “You are a horrid, crabby monster!” she snapped as she took her leave, leaving Dorian and Brinley alone in the study.
Must he suffer this torture for the rest of his life?
Especially when he hadn’t actually done anything bloody wrong in the first place?
Brinley chuckled, the sound grating on Dorian’s already frayed nerves.
“What is so amusing?” he demanded.
“I am picturing what Lady Coylton’s face would look like if you showed up on her doorstep instead of Clara, like a ghost from her past.”
Several heartbeats passed where Dorian’s mind whirred. The potential unrolled before him like the winding road to Scotland. What he’d initially dismissed as a foolish comment morphed into something with possibility. What if he did go to Scotland?What if he landed on Amelia’s doorstep and spoke to her for the first time in a decade? Was that the closure he required to move on with his life?
