Page 66 of The Virgin Duchess

Memories mingled together with the past. He saw how he’d pursued her, how he had wanted that woman so very much, using his charm to get in her good graces. So much had fallen apart after that. He’d tried to make amends for the ruin he’d wrought upon the situation, but it was too late.

She had already gone to the nunnery.

Frederick could hardly breathe, but he looked up at Charlotte. He would never forget the look on her face when she heard his words. Her brows were raised, but they melted down into place, and an expression of such…disappointment and hurt crowded her features.

“You are joking with me.” Charlotte’s quiet voice was filled with no conviction, as if she’d already made up her mind but was looking—desperately—for Frederick to contradict her. “Frederick. Surely, you must be?—”

“I am not.”

Reeling internally, Frederick did everything to keep his countenance in check. He would not give Charlotte cause to disbelieve him now. Frederick would not allow her to continue to sully herself by lowering herself to be with someone like him. He did not deserve her, and he would not continue to hurt her—drive a wedge between her and her brother—because he had enjoyed Charlotte’s company so.

I would give all I have in the world to protect Charlotte from harm. Even if it means protecting her from me.

Charlotte bobbed her head in a gentle nod, chewing on her lip. Her eyes took on the glassy sheen of tears, and she sucked in a sharp breath through her nose before clearing her throat.

“I see.”

Her anger would have been easier to deal with. Charlotte’s unbridled rage would have felt justified and been a pill that Frederick could force himself to swallow without much of a fight.

Seeing her disappointment, seeing the utter betrayal ringing from behind her deep brown eyes, was too much for Frederick to stand. Invisible knives dragged through his skin wherever Charlotte cast her glance on him, and after a moment, she dropped her stare, turning away from him without looking up.

Frederick’s chest ached, a massive hole cut through the center of him, and he watched his wife exit the room quietly. The devastation gnawed his bones, and Frederick promised himself he would not fall apart. His tears or sorrow were nothingcompared to securing the future happiness of the woman he cared about more than anything in the world.

He…he loved Charlotte, and he would not let her down by forcing her to remain at his side.

To protect her. You may not have been able to do the right thing before, but you will do it now. Even if it kills you.

Chapter Thirty-One

Charlotte awoke with a headache the next morning. She had gone to bed without eating anything, and she had cried herself to sleep. Among the personal reasons for getting little rest—her sleep interrupted by nightmares that scared her out of slumber and into a cold sweat—she had heard raised voices down the hall.

Frederick and Rose appeared to have been arguing. She could only make out the occasional word, looking to hide herself from their conversation anyway. Still, Charlotte had been able to hear that the Baron was causing trouble again.

Rose had cried, loudly in fact, and while Charlotte felt terrible for that—beginning to think of the woman as a friend, like a sister—she’d kept herself from intervening. It didn’t feel like she belonged in this estate anymore. After her encounter with Frederick about the scandal sheets, it was clear that he wouldn’t deny who he was.

A rake—presumed and apparently guilty.

The growing anger Frederick held toward the Baron was also palpable through the walls. Charlotte could hear the vitriol in his voice even if she could not understand his words. He had done more to put Rose at risk, and there was nothing else that mattered to Frederick more than his sister.

Nothing at all, perhaps.

“Ugh,” Charlotte sighed, dragging her hands down her face and getting up from the bed. “Enough feeling sorry for yourself. This is your life, Charlotte.”

She walked over to the bureau, looking at herself in the large oval mirror that was bolted to the top. Charlotte looked tired, with bags beneath her eyes and a slight gray tinge to her skin. A fitful night of sleep had not done her well, and she was still as miserable as she was before she’d passed out.

“Whatareyou going to do about it?” she asked herself.

The reflection held no answers for her, only that mournful expression on her face that matched everything Charlotte felt down to her core. Something had been so strange, so off, about her husband when they had discussed the scandal sheet. She could see it behind his eyes, though he fought to keep it away.

“There is something more to the story. Something Frederick is keeping from me.”

Charlotte sighed again, raking a hand through the disordered tangled of her hair. Was she being naïve to think that Frederick had not simply been honest? Was she only looking for there to be more because she didn’t want to believe that her husband, indeed, was what everyone had warned her about?

But she considered the situation. Frederick had not been clear, overly vague, if anything. What’s more, she was a good judge of character for the most part. While she had believed her husband to be a rake before, she’d come to know him and now spent more time with him. That suggested she knew him reasonably well.

This was not the man who he’d shown himself to be beneath the layers of constructed identity.

Righting herself in a straight line, holding her spine as erect as she could, Charlotte met the eyes of her reflection once more and nodded.

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