Page 79 of His Mad Duchess
Her hands twisted together, the knuckles white. “I would rather bear the hurt now than wait for it to fester into something unbearable.”
The silence rang sharp, like the echo of glass breaking.
Margaret’s hands clenched once more, then loosened with sudden decision. She rose, though her limbs trembled beneath the effort.
“Margaret—” Sebastian started, reaching as though to steady her.
She shook her head, silencing him with the faintest lift of her hand. “No. Do not speak. I have said what must be said.”
For a heartbeat, she wavered, her breath unsteady, her gaze lingering on him as if memorizing the shape of him in that moment. Then, gathering her skirt, she turned from him.
Her steps were unsteady, but her bearing remained proud, carrying her down the gallery with all the dignity her breaking heart could muster.
Sebastian remained kneeling where she had left him, his outstretched hand closing on nothing but air. The silence that followed was deafening.
The days that followed passed in a haze, though Margaret scarcely marked them. When she quit the townhouse, she had not looked back. Her feet had carried her swiftly down those corridors, away from Sebastian’s voice, away from his eyes, away from the weight of his promises into Moreland Manor. Yet her heart, traitorous thing, had remained behind, clutched in his hand even as she tore herself free.
The first night at her aunt’s house, she lay awake, the candle guttering low, her mind replaying every moment until it was near unbearable. The way his hand had closed over hers. The rawness in his voice when he called her sweetheart. She pressed her face into the pillow to smother the memory, but it lingered still, warm against her ear like a phantom caress.
And always, the other image intruded, the painted face above the gallery, cold and unyielding. To see it hanging in Sebastian’s house, as though it belonged there, as though it were honored, it had felt like madness. How could she remain beneath that gaze?
She thought of him…of Sebastian…until her chest ached. What folly, to have allowed her heart to entangle itself when she had sworn it never would. She told herself she had ended it before the root grew too deep, before love bloomed into something that could not be untangled without blood.
Yet even in those first days, she felt the tearing wound of absence. She missed the steadiness of his presence, the warmth of his nearness, the way his silences had seemed to wrap around her like shelter.
Margaret sat long at the window, staring at the faint outlines of the garden through the half-drawn curtains, her thoughts circling him no matter how she tried to bar them.
Beatrice had not left her side all morning—sometimes standing sentinel at the mantel, sometimes wringing her hands, sometimes urging her with little huffs to take a spoonful of the soup that now sat cooling on the table untouched.
It was there Cecily found her, slipping softly into the chamber as though afraid to startle her.
Cecily tugged the curtains wider, letting in the afternoon light. “You sit here every day as though the world beyond has ceased to exist,” she said gently. “Mother frets you will make yourself ill.”
“I am already ill,” Margaret said softly, her voice drifting like smoke.
Cecily kneeled beside her chair. “Not in the way you think. You are weary, yes, but if you would only let us cheer you?—”
“Cheer?” Margaret’s lips moved in the shadow of a smile that never reached her eyes. “What could possibly cheer me now?”
Beatrice, pacing with restless energy, halted abruptly. “You must at least eat. A few spoonfuls if nothing else. You must take food. I will not have you dwindling away to bones beneath our roof.”
Margaret turned her head, surprised. “You, Beatrice, of all people, playing the nurse?”
Beatrice flushed, frowning as though the tenderness cost her. “Well, someone must. You drift about this house as if half in a dream, and Cecily cannot scold you properly.”
Cecily slipped her hand into Margaret’s. “She is right, Margaret. We only wish to keep you with us whole. We will not lose you. Can you not see how dearly you are loved here?”
For a moment, Margaret’s gaze softened, though it was veiled with pain. She heard their voices, felt their hands, but the weight in her chest did not ease. Her thoughts circled, relentless, back to Sebastian—his promise, his eyes, the way her name had sounded in his voice.
She blinked rapidly, as though the very memory scalded. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “I cannot… not today.”
Beatrice squeezed her hand, gently but steadily. “Then we will simply sit. No words if you prefer. Only company.”
And so they did, Cecily at her side and Beatrice near the hearth.
CHAPTER 28
Margaret’s breath caught as she lifted the cushion from the window-seat and found nothing beneath. A tremor shot through her fingers as she dropped it to the floor. She hurried to the escritoire, tugging drawers open with a force that rattled the handles, half-mad with the thought that Miss Fortune might somehow have wedged herself inside.
