There was another side to him, but it was not a side he wished to display. But Elowyn had caught those glimpses in theirencounters. Her gaze drifted to the chair by the writing desk, to the jacket still draped over its back. His scent was gone. Just like the man.
“I still can’t believe you fell in love with that man,” Persephone murmured. “Is this the legendary love at first sight?”
I still can’t believe I told him to leave.
Isadora swatted Persephone, sending her a warning look. Elowyn shook her head, picking at a loose thread on the pillowcase until it started to fray. She wanted to know herself, quite frankly. “I don’t know. Who knows what the heart yearns for and decides to fall for. I do not regret anything, however.” Despite how it had ended. She had still experienced her first kiss, her first dance, her first love.
That wasn’t nothing.
That was everything.
But she should move on. But . . . Was that even possible? Her gaze returned to the jacket. She should return it, right?
***
In all of Julien’s life, he’d only ever regretted one damn thing—not being able to save his mother as Silkin drove a dagger into her. Of course, the rational part of him now knew he had only been a boy. Unfortunately, regret did not distinguish age. What did it care about logic, or physics, or the sheer impossibility of a child overpowering a grown killer? The blasted emotion wore the skin of a grown man’s failure. And that single failure had become the foundation upon which every other choice in his life was built.
In a way, it demanded the strength of the man he was now, to answer for the helplessness of the boy he had been. But did that matter when the past could not be rewritten, no matter how strong he became? And now he had one more regret in his life.
Lady Elowyn Price.
He was failing.
Again.
Correction, he had failed.
Again.
That’s all.Two words, and he’d made all their moments sound like nothing at all—which was, he told himself, precisely the point. “Nothing” could not be taken away from him. If this was the case, then why the bloody hell was he consumed by loss, and the plaguing thought: What the devil had he done?
The right thing?
Then why the blazes did it feel so damn punishing?
“You look like shite, old chap.”
Julien looked up from the bottle he was nursing to Wrath. The man was cleanly shaven and fresh, whereas he, on the other hand, was pretty sure he’d spent two days drowning in White’s. Even the servers had started to circle him to avoid the stench of his misery.
“I am shite.”
“Can’t argue there.” Wrath dragged out a chair and sank down, regarding him. “You ruined two women in one fell swoop. Remarkable.”
“Don’t bloody jest,” he growled. “I only ruined one.”
“If you believe that, Mandeville, you really are a damn idiot.”
“I made things clear.” There shouldn’t be any rumors that harmed her.
“No harm no foul, then? You didn’t see Lady Elowyn’s face. The ruin you caused was not so much her reputation as something else.”
Julien cursed, then drained his glass and poured another. “I can’t take it back.”
Wrath arched a brow. “Do you even want to?”
“Yes.” Christ yes. He’d do anything to take it back. He rubbed his eyes. They bloody burned. “But I can’t. I can’t turn back time.” But he could ruin. And Dansbury, oh the things he had in store for him. He’d already been stripped of his last hope at the Duke Alliance and had been cut loose by Cranbrook the moment the scandal broke. Julien had also put out word that whoever stood beside that arse, stood against him. His political ambitions were just as ruined as his niece’s marriage prospects.
“You don’t need to turn back time, Mandeville. You just need to bloody decide what to do with yours. Go apologize.”
