Page 102 of Trapped with the Forbidden Duke
“Do you truly believe that?”
“Right now, yes,” Lucien whispered.
Jasper groaned, standing up and striding backward. “Will you let me help you, Lucien?”
Lucien laughed drily. “Why bother? Edwina said quite plainly, as you have, that I do not let anybody come close to me. Do not waste your efforts, Jas. I only hurt others, no? She deserves somebody who will not make her live a lonely life.”
“And yet you are leaving her to do exactly that,” Jasper snapped, frustrated. “I cannot help you like this.”
Lucien drunkenly waved a hand towards the door. “Then there is your solution.”
“Will you truly do nothing about this?”
Lucien staggered to his feet, swiping up the glass, and reached for his own, refilling it. Glaring at his friend, he drank and let himself fall into that blissful numbness.
Jasper shook his head, muttering under his breath before he left. Of course, he did, for Lucien was not an easy man to help or care for.
Edwina had left without putting up a fight. Jasper had tried, but Lucien was irredeemable.
He sank back into his chair, thinking of his wife’s broken-hearted, angry look as he left her alone at the ball.
“Have a safe journey…”
God, he was a fool. As prideful and stubborn as his wife. But he could not trust her care for him—he could not trust anybody.
His eyes found the bottle of bath oil he had snatched from her bathing chamber. Jasmine and rose. He unstopped the bottle and inhaled deeply. The scent was intoxicating, and he made himself ill with how much he ached for her.
Lucien drank again.
A week had passed since Edwina had watched Lucien stride away from her at the Tulley ball. In response to his spiraling anger, to his walls flying up to a point where she could not even keep fighting for him—forthem—she had packed her belongings and returned to Stormhold House the same night.
Already, she had met with Diana. She had sobbed into her friend’s arms, spilling everything about the argument, only to be met with Diana’s insistence that all would be all right. That Lucien would come to his senses.
But a week had passed, and Edwina’s eyes were red-rimmed from all her crying. The circles beneath her eyes were dark fromfitful sleep, from tossing and turning, her body knowing she had sometimes fallen asleep next to Lucien after they had made love.
Now, she despised the thought of missing him, yet she could not stop herself.
“He does not deserve my missing him,” she snapped to herself, forgetting for a moment that she was in her carriage.
Her heart pounded, painful and demanding, as if it called for her husband even in the fits of her anger and pain. She could not stand being in the townhouse, for it reminded her too greatly of Lucien. His touch was everywhere, and she only missed him harder.
“Your Grace?” her lady’s maid at Stormhold House asked. “Is everything all right? We have arrived at the market.”
“Everything is fine,” Edwina said curtly as the carriage door opened and she stepped out.
Over the past week, she had attempted to harden her heart, to focus only on Lucien’s sharp, callous words, to not miss him like a hole in her chest.
Now, back in London without him, she searched the crowd for him, even as she hoped she would not stumble upon him. He would not be there, either way.
“Can I recommend anything, Your Grace?” her maid asked.
“I am not sure what I am looking for,” Edwina answered. “Perhaps there is some special bread available, or jewelry.”
She was thinking of something for her aunt.
Yes, think of others. Take your mind off Lucien.
“Maybe…” she trailed off, moving further into the busy market, so focused on keeping her thoughts off Lucien that she did not truly notice how busy the market was and did not hear the call of her maid.
