Page 28 of Love & Letter Charms
Will you ignore me forever?
I need to know. If this is the end—if my confession has severed the connection between us—please tell me. Send back a single word: Goodbye. I’ll understand. I’ll respect it. I’ll stop writing.
But this silence is agony. Every day I check the box, and every day it’s empty, and every day I wonder if you’ve even read these letters or if you’ve closed the box forever, leaving me to pour my heart into a void.
I’m not asking for what I asked before. I’m not asking for more. I’m asking for an ending, if that’s what this is. Even rejected suitors typically receive the courtesy of a refusal.
Please. Just one word. Even if it’s farewell.
Still desperately yours despite myself,
R
Please.
Chapter Seven
“Lady Aurelise Rowanwood,”the footman announced, and the words seemed to hang in the air like a physical thing, heavy and impossible to retract.
The room turned toward her—a kaleidoscope of silk and suspicious smiles that refused to resolve into individual faces. Aurelise’s vision swam, catching fragments: a perfectly arched eyebrow here, lips curved in what might have been welcome or warning there, the glint of curiosity in eyes she couldn’t quite focus on. They were all looking at her. Every single Crown Court lady who had arrived before her was looking, evaluating, measuring, and finding her wanting. She was certain of it.
Her heart hammered so violently she could hear nothing else, only that terrible rhythmic pounding that surely everyone else could hear too. The room tilted slightly, or perhaps she did, and she had to lock her knees to keep from swaying.
A delicate trill of embarrassed flutes escaped into the air.
Horror flooded through her like ice water. She coughed loudly, desperately, bringing her gloved hand to her throat as if the musical mishap had been nothing more than an unfortunate clearing of her airways. “Thank you,” she managed to the footman, her voice pitched too high, too bright. Another cough.Then another, until she worried she might be overdoing it but couldn’t seem to stop.
She stepped past the footman into the room, her legs moving of their own accord toward the nearest refuge—an absolutely enormous arrangement of pale pink peonies that erupted from a vase nearly as tall as she was. The flowers were so abundant, so enthusiastically oversized, that she wondered if she could simply position herself behind them and remain there for the duration of tea. Perhaps if she stood very still, the other ladies might mistake her for a piece of statuary. A decorative element. Anything but a person who needed to speak and smile and pretend she belonged here.
More than a week had passed since the Opening Ball and the High Lady’s announcement of the Crown Court. More than a week since R’s desperate letter had arrived in the enchanted wooden box. More than a week of silence—hers, not his. The letters had continued to appear daily, his tone shifting from hopeful to confused to hurt to desperately pleading.
Every night, she’d removed them from the box with trembling fingers. Every night, she’d read his increasingly anxious words, his humor growing more strained with each unanswered day. Every night, she’d struggled with the guilt of her silence, knowing it hurt him but unable to find the right words to respond.
She had tried, of course. Multiple times. But the truth was, she still didn’t know what to say. With a single letter, R had changed everything about their correspondence. There was no path back to what they’d had before. No way to return to the safe, beautiful distance that had allowed her to be more honest with him than she’d ever been with anyone.
R, thank you for your letter, but I must inform you that I do not feel the same?—
No. That was a lie so profound it had made her hand cramp.
R, no, you are not worth the risk of reality after the safety of correspondence?—
Cruel and untrue. He was worth every risk; she simply wasn’t brave enough to take them.
R, it matters not how I feel because?—
Because what? Because she was a coward? Because the thought of loving someone with the same overwhelming intensity with which she experienced every other emotion terrified her more than any amount of public humiliation?
R, I think I may be as desperately yours as you are mine, but?—
No. That attempt had been the worst one of all. It had come far too close to the truth she couldn’t bear to acknowledge.
She’d crumpled and discarded each attempt, yet she’d packed the wooden box among her things to bring to Solstice Hall, which meant that somewhere deep within, she knew she would answer eventually. Or at least, she missed him too much to leave the box behind.
“Lady Aurelise!” A warm voice cut through her thoughts just as she reached the enormous vase she’d been planning to hide behind. Lady Willow Blackbriar approached with a genuine smile, her light brown hair catching the light like polished chestnut. “How lovely to see you.”
“Lady Willow,” Aurelise managed, dipping into a small curtsy. “It’s good to see a familiar face.”
Though the two of them had never formally conversed, Lord Hadrian Blackbriar—Willow’s older brother—was one of Jasvian’s closest friends, and that connection, however tenuous, felt like a lifeline in a sea of strangers.
