All that she knew was that she could not stand to just go away without having a last conversation with him.
Charity climbed out of the carriage, skirts gathered just enough so she would not trip, heart pounding hard enough to make her dizzy, and her fingers still rubbing her necklace even as she told herself to stop.
Duncan was halfway down the hallway when she reached him, and he turned at the sound of her footsteps.
Had he expected her to run after him like this? Or did he not care?
“Duncan,” Charity said, her voice shaking with anger and hurt mixed together. “Stop.”
“What are you doing?” Duncan asked, stopping. For a second, she could see a flicker of emotion in his face, but he quickly masked it.
“I… are you really asking what I’m doing?” she said. Her hands were trembling now, and it felt embarrassing to be facing him like this.
She felt as though she was entirely exposed. But now it was too late for her to turn back.
“You stepped into my life, and you helped my sisters. All this time that we have spent together… I thought… well, was it really so easy for you to say goodbye to me?”
“I said goodbye since you’re leaving,” he said, as if the logic was enough. “What did you expect me to say otherwise?”
Charity felt herself tremble even more.
“You always say the logical thing,” she went on. “But don’t you understand how cold you’re coming across when you do? It’s… I am tired of this. You are kind to me one moment as though I matter to you in some way, and then in the very next, you are cold.”
“Charity…” Duncan sighed.
“No, you don’t get to react like this,” she stepped closer.
For a moment, she worried if she would look entirely mad confronting him like this. He was calm while she was the opposite. But then she told herself that this might be the last chance she has to be honest with him.
She was not going to waste it.
“Why did you help me then?” she demanded. “Why did you show me such kindness that no one else in my life has ever shown me before? You made me feel safe… and you looked at me… you… Why did you kiss me if it all had to come down to this? This awful scenario where I have to simply go away and pretend as though none of that mattered even a little bit?”
“I’m worried about you,” Duncan said, taking note of the state of her distress.
“Oh, you don’t get to say that you worry about me. That would be admitting that you feel something for me, and you’ve just demonstrated that you do not. If you did, then you would not be calm about me leaving.”
“Do you want a moment to settle your thoughts?”
Charity shook her head.
“I don’t understand it. None of it,” she went on. “I know that you are not without emotion, because I have felt it. But you bury it so deep inside of you that I cannot retrieve it. You are willing to watch me walk away so easily…”
Duncan took a slow breath, and Charity saw the tension in his face. He looked like he was holding himself back by force.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Duncan said.
“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Charity replied, and her hand clenched around her necklace again. “This is simply not right… You cannot make me love you and then let me go like it was nothing.”
Love.
She had finally said the word out loud. Her heart was pounding against her chest, but this was the only way that she could admit it to him.
Under extraordinary circumstances. Just as they had met.
It seemed to have left an impression on Duncan, who was looking at her with an intensity that she had never seen from him before.
He took one step toward her, then another, and before Charity could say anything else, his hand caught her wrist gently. He stopped her from fiddling with her necklace.
