Page 62 of A Duke's Christmas Carol
If she had confessed to him sooner, then…
He faltered, narrowing his eyes against the glaring winter sun. Whatwouldhe have done if she had told him sooner? If she had informed him of the truth on the first night she arrived, would he have cast her out or permitted her to stay? If she had informed him of the truth when he hadjustbegun to care for her, might he have been convinced to help her?
I cannot possibly know what I would have done, because she did not grace me with the opportunity to find out.
She was a sly vixen, like every other that had come to his door. She had just been cleverer than the rest, manipulating him far better than anyone had done before.
“Take down any decorations that remain,” he instructed, for he knew that some rooms had been left the way that Valerie had wanted them to be. “And send staff to the town hall. Take everything down there, too. Burn it.”
A strange, strangled sound emerged from Jarvis’ lips. “But, Your Grace, it is Christmas Eve!”
“You keep saying that as if it means something,” Adrian retorted icily. “Do as I command, or I shall have to reconsider your position here. A butler’s first duty is to obey, after all.”
For a moment, it seemed like the butler might protest anyway. But he appeared to think better of it, as he bowed his head and withdrew from the bedchamber, his footsteps echoing down the hallway beyond.
The silence of the room crowded in around Adrian, so thick he could not catch a full breath. He had not understood Valerie’s aversion when he had found her cowering in her bedchamber, but perhaps he understood now: it wassovery quiet in the castle, as if it were holding its breath in anticipation, waiting for him to run out to her or to call to her to stop her leaving.
She has made a fool of me. Let her go. Let her return to the man she is promised to, for that man is not me.
He watched as Jarvis appeared outside and leaned in to say something to Valerie. She gave a small nod of her head and raised her hand to the staff who had come out to say goodbye. With that, she turned and made her slow way to the waiting carriage.
In the doorway, she hesitated, not moving. Despite himself, Adrian urged her to look up, to look him in the eyes before she departed so she would know what she had done to him.
A moment later, she disappeared into the carriage, and the footman closed the door behind her. The driver snapped the reins and the carriage rattled away from the castle, the wheels bumping and bouncing across the uneven layer of snow, headed for the road.
It was Christmas Eve, and Adrian was alone again, his cracked heart icing over once more.
Valerie wondered how it was possible that she still had any tears left. Still, they kept falling, trickling down her cheeks in hot rivulets. Sometimes, a happy thought or memory would conjure them. Sometimes, they spilled from her eyes without her realizing, only becoming aware when she tasted the salt in her mouth.
For two nights and a day, she had cried as if she would never run out of tears, her body so parched of moisture that she wondered if she resembled the husk she felt like.
This is not how I thought I would spend my Christmas Day.She glanced out of the window at the green world of the south, so starkly different to where she had come from that it was as if she had traveled between realms. She had departed the land of festivity and pretty winter and entered the land of misery and stretching fields devoid of a single speck of snow.
Her breath juddered as she sank back against the squabs and closed her eyes. She had barely slept on the lengthy journey to Gramfield, and it was proving difficult to feel anything but crushed.
I will see my siblings on Christmas Day. They will be pleased about that.
After all, itwasnow Christmas Day, and she was almost home. Yet, her mind and her heart remained hundreds of miles to the north, within a snow-capped castle filled with ghosts, and a hermit who had, no doubt, retreated back into his solitude.
“Why did you not let me explain?” she muttered, for the hundredth time at least. “Why accuse me of scheming without allowing me to tell you more? Why send me away, back to a fate like this?”
Was I mistaken to think he cared?
She had been so certain of it when he had smiled at her and walked through the crowd to ask her to dance. She had been convinced that her feelings were shared when he had said “I had no idea it could be like this.” Yet, the moment she revealed her betrothal, he had just tossed her out as if she was nothing. If he had cared, would he not have asked for her hand tospareher from that betrothal, that marriage?
Do not ask for too much.Those words screamed back into her head, taking on a different meaning. To think that Adrian would save her from marriagehadbeen too much, and she was an idiot to believe she could have expected such assistance. After all, it was not something as small as asking to borrow some money or have a gown altered or, indeed, to have a lost sister found. It was a lifelong union, and he was a man who had made no secret of preferring his solitude.
“I lied,” she murmured to herself. “I am to blame. I cannot blame him.”
Although, shecouldbe angry with him for accusing her of a scheme and of making up the story about her twin. She had done no such thing.
An hour later, as the sun began its afternoon descent, the carriage turned through the gates of Gramfield Manor. The gargoyles on the gate posts shied away from her, while the crooked and leafless oaks that lined the driveway seemed to point accusatory branches in her direction.
She was home… and wished with all her heart that she was not.
The moment the carriage pulled to a standstill outside the limestone porch, she heard the thud of furious footsteps.
A second later, the carriage door flew open and her father, Gregory Wightman, the Baron of Gramfield, stood there with a face like thunder. He huffed and puffed as if he had been running, while the paunch that strained his waistcoat and the jowls under his chin spoke of a man who had not run anywhere in a long, long time.
