Page 110 of The Duke's Forbidden Bride
The confession—the confession she had ached to tell her friend for so long—finally tumbled off her tongue.
“It was all a lie. There was no scandal. I-I was falsely accused, and rather than help me set the rumors right, my family believed Lord Belgrave. Charlotte… he is a terrible man. He sent me there. He had me sent away so I was no longer a problem.”
Charlotte fixed angry eyes on her. “Why would you have been a problem?”
Eleanor inhaled. “Because Lord Belgrave and Lord Follet run a horrible operation where they take vulnerable women and send them off for money. I found the documents that proved it, and that was when Lord Belgrave publicly accused me of compromising myself with a stablehand to get my parents on hisside. They agreed to send me to the convent. There was no aunt living abroad. You were right to doubt that.
“I was kept there for three awful years, Charlotte. The things I endured… I cannot even speak of some of it. Belgrave came to visit me on my last day there to inform me of your engagement to Lord Follet. He knew that I would realize what that would mean for your future, and he used it to torment me. I escaped the convent that night and raced to Everdawn Hall. I intended to warn you, to tell you everything, but…”
She inhaled sharply. “Spencer found me instead. He sent me back, thinking I was lying. He only knew me as a disgraced, former friend of yours and did not trust me not to tarnish your image with my own. He believed Follet and Belgrave to be good, as everybody does. But when he returned me, he saw how I was being treated. I begged him to believe me when I told him about the two men’s operation.
“Eventually, he did, and he swore to protect me. He knew that the only way to keep me out of the convent for good was to marry me, to keep me under his watch. That was why you were sent away to Lady Montagu’s again. Because he feared that my reappearance would set Belgrave and Follet off, and with your engagement delayed because of me, he feared retaliation. There was no romance, no former meeting. We indeed lied to you, but until we knew for certain that we could put Belgrave and Follet behind bars, it was too risky. We have been investigating them ever since.”
Her words spilled out, a torrent she could not stop. “But our marriage changed over time. It went from a convenient arrangement to… to more. What you have seen these last several weeks was real. Every laugh and dance, every brush and touch, every intimate moment—it has become real.”
Wearily, she lifted her gaze to Charlotte, finding that the fury had ebbed ever so slightly.
“We did it for your safety,” Eleanor whispered. “I did not intend to-to fall for Spencer. I needed a way out of the convent and to safety, but I did not think it would change so much.”
“Then why would you walk away now?”
She had not expected that question. She stiffened, gathering her thoughts. But the silence only encouraged her friend to continue.
“I did not want to marry Lord Follet, and I have never liked him. I do not care if my engagement is canceled. I would be grateful for it, in fact. Spencer thought he was a good match—an advantageous match—but I never once connected with him. He was handsy and forward.
“But you… you are married to a man who makes you smile like a schoolgirl whenever you see him. A man who brings a blush to your cheeks, who looks at you when you are looking elsewhere, and who watches the space you occupied when you leave. Why would you let that go?”
“Because I thought I was strong enough to love him through anything. I did not even realize it was turning into love until he pulled away.”
Charlotte paused for another moment, but then she was there, kneeling before Eleanor. Things were not fixed, not truly. Yet they would get through it, just as they had gotten through everything else.
Quietly, Eleanor admitted, “I do not think I can love someone who will not fight for me.”
Spencer left Everdawn House before anybody else could rise for breakfast, chasing the morning sun. He had scarcely slept, so he figured he may as well use his time to ride.
Anger swirled inside him, demanding and insistent, a roaring call he had never mastered ignoring. Not truly.
He had scattered pieces of himself all over during his travels, as if by doing so he could lose who he was, lose his rank and title and ghosts, and now he was missing those pieces more than ever.
Eleanor made me feel whole.
He immediately shoved the thought away.
Eleanor had to become neutral in his mind, a woman stripped of the power she had over him. He had gotten careless, had endangered her, and the price to pay had to be worth her safety.
Yet he had gotten used to the warmth of her body, the soft sounds of her slumber, the curve of her shoulder as the sun warmed it of a morning. She always claimed to have fallen asleep accidentally, even if he suspected otherwise.
His horse pounded through London’s streets, to the countryside beyond, until he arrived in Everdawn Village.
He was too distressed to look at the villagers who called to him. Whenever he looked for too long, he saw Eleanor with her pastries, the villagers complimenting their love, the florist who had spoken of jasmine flowers with her.
His chest ached with something terrible, and he blamed it on the hard ride.
He continued onward through the fields to the path that broke the line of maple trees behind the estate. He rode through it with singular intent, stopping only when he reached a glade in the middle of the woods.
Dismounting with a force that rattled his bones, Spencer walked over to the two gravestones that sat beneath two maple trees. The branches were wound together, a strange phenomenon he had always loved seeing as a boy—back when love existed for him, back when love was foolish to want but unavoidable to yearn for.
He walked over there, eyeing the names on the slabs.
