Page 40 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
Belle. Her name was becoming more of a curse than a name.
He hadn’t even needed to confront her to know what must have been said. The very same story she’d been spreading ever since he had married Alice two years before. He didn’t know how she had come to make Imelda believe it, but then he didn’t suppose it would be too terribly difficult for how strained things were between them.
“Would you like me to get you some more juice?” Romeo asked suddenly, jerking Corin’s attention back to the present.
His brother was already half-standing, eagerly looking to his wife in the hopes of actually receiving an answer, and the responding look on her face was almost barren.
Her normally gentle gaze was an arctic tundra, her lips parting as some small, choked noise left her in response. And then the glacial freeze melted and in its place was a grief so profound that Corin almost felt as if he were intruding just sitting there bearing witness to it.
“Why would I want you to get meanything?” Sybille whispered the words like whips in the silence surrounding them.
Her voice shook as she spoke, her throat bobbing, and Corin watched helplessly as tears filled her gaze. Her accusation couldn’t have been more clear if she had stood on her chair and announced it to the household at large.
Romeo had evidently erred again.
On the very brink of Sybille allowing him home, he had found someone else. Dallied elsewhere despite all his protestations against repeating such folly.
The shocked silence after her declaration was broken only by the dissonant screeching of the chair legs against the wooden floor as she surged to her feet and rushed out of the room.
Unfortunately, not quickly enough to hide the silvery streams of tears flowing down her pale cheeks as she did.
“Well…” Romeo huffed, his ears burning a bright rosy red as he fell back roughly into his chair, looking slightly disgruntled. “She could have just said no…”
Corin’s eyes focused on his brother slowly, a jarring beat ringing through his ears as he processed what his brother had said.
He knew that Romeo was trying to save face. He knew that his brother was hurt and uncomfortable, but that did nothing to excuse saying such a thing knowing what he had done. Knowing thatCorinmust know what he had done.Again.
“And you could have just kept it in your pants,” Corin bit out, his words unerring in their harshness.
Romeo blinked, looking up in surprise as Corin pushed angrily back away from the table, his half-eaten breakfast forgotten.
“I will not speak for you again,” Corin promised darkly, his rage swelling around him like a too-full waterskin. It bubbled beneath the surface of his skin, harsh and so close to bursting that Corin could barely breathe. “I will not beg your wife to forgive you, to allow you back into her home or her heart. I will not. Has it even been twoweeks, Romeo?”
Romeo spluttered, clearly at a loss for words as he avoided Corin’s gaze. “I—”
“You? You are the problem!” Corin shouted. “You and your penchant for putting your cock into whatever orifice is available and most likely to result in shame! You, who have a wife at home that you claim to love and yet still chase every skirt even half-willing across town to have your way. You! You! You! It isalwaysabout you with never a half-thought to the devastation that you leave behind!”
Corin wasn’t even aware that he had lifted his hand until he smacked it back onto the surface of the table. Silverware and china clinked from the force of it as his palm smarted.
“Get your act together. Remedy things with your wife, learn some modicum of control—because I swear to you, Romeo, I will not further sabotage my own life and happiness in order to salvage any of your own when you are so happy to piss it away!”
Romeo shrank under the acidity of Corin’s words, his face paling, but it did nothing to quell the fury still raging within Corin.
Nothing would.
He stepped away, turning on his heel and stalking out of the room before he could say anything he would well and truly regret.
He knew the weight that had finally tipped the scales.
Imelda.
Sybille’s expression had been only an enhanced version of that betrayal and pain he had witnessed on Imelda’s face the night before. A mirror copy, almost, except Corin had been the cause of Imelda’s distress.
Corin. Alice. Romeo. Belle. Sybille. It was like a spinning kaleidoscope; the images blurring together and all overlapping in a way that made Corin feel ill. He couldn’t stomach it. He couldn’t remain in his own home, even the door slamming behind him as he made his grand exit.
***
“You don’t think that this is too rushed?” Sir John asked distractedly as he read over the marked-up paper in his hands.
