“Dax.” The word was breathless and coaxing, but he stood his ground.
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, Dax.” Her voice was suddenly filled with tears, and his suspicions grated along the back of his neck like nails. “It’s too terrible.”
He thought for a moment something had happened to Isley. The man may have betrayed him, but once upon a time, they had been friends, childhood friends, and those were always the most precious.
“Why are you here, Bethany?” He asked again, putting more ice into his voice.
She took a step toward him and faltered as if sensing he was dangerous. “Oh, Dax, I heard about your marriage, and I had to come. It’s just too awful.”
He flexed his fingers. “Bethany, I’m sorry if you feel my marriage was a slight against you—”
Now she did come closer, sweeping forward in a rush of bows and flounces, her beribboned reticule bouncing against her arm.
“Oh, Dax, it isn’t that at all. It’s just that—” Her words were cut off by a sudden flow of tears.
He didn’t want to succumb to her machinations, but her cheeks were wet, her breath hitching. Bethany was a good liar, but she was not a good actress.
He took a hesitant step forward. “Bethany, what is it?”
She studied him through her tears. “I didn’t want to marry Ronald, Dax. I didn’t want to. My father—”
The last of her sentence was lost in a rush of tears, and something inside of Dax broke. Seven years of pent up rage evaporated, and he stepped forward, taking Bethany by the shoulders.
“Bethany, what are you saying?”
When she looked up, her lower lip trembled, and her chest hitched on another sob. “Isley made a better offer for my hand, and my father accepted it. I didn’t know until it was too late. I refused, Dax, and he forced me to go to Gretna Green to have the thing done.”
She dissolved in another fit of tears, and without thinking, he pulled her into his arms, pressing her head to his chest.
Her father had accepted another offer for her hand?
His mind reeled, scrambling to find purchase on a reality that no longer existed. One question still lingered though, and he eased her away from him.
“But why are you here now?”
He thought she would crumble into another fit of tears, but oddly, she seemed to gather herself.
“I had always thought—” She shook her head. “It’s sounds so silly when I say it. But I had always thought there was still a chance for us as long as you remained unwed.”
He looked into her eyes, shimmering with yet more tears, and he searched the lines of her face, the set of her chin, the focus of her gaze. He found nothing. Nothing there that warned him. Nothing there that suggested what she told him was not the truth.
A yearning buried so deep beneath the hurt of betrayal bubbled up inside of him. Once he would have done anything for this woman. Once his body had ached for her. There had been a time when he couldn’t have imagined a future without her.
Bethany.
She had always been there, and she still was there, in the most golden memories he had of his summers in Glenhaven.
Bethany.
He didn’t see the kiss coming because his thoughts had run away with his consciousness, but when her lips touched his, memory exploded through him. His eyes drifted shut of their own accord as he tried to reassemble the flashes of memory her touch sparked within him.
He had been so young, so in love. The future had been a vast openness of possibilities.
She gathered the lapels of his jacket in her hands and pulled herself up on her toes to deepen the kiss.
This was all he’d ever wanted. Bethany. His Bethany. Coming back to him. This was redemption. This was everything.
At least it might have been once. But not anymore. Because now he had Eliza.
Only too late did he register the sound of Henry’s growl.
He shoved Bethany away from him, violently severing their kiss, and his gaze flew to the door.
Eliza stood there, her braid unraveling across one shoulder, her wide brimmed hat limp. Henry stood by her side, his ears back, his teeth showing beneath a snarling lip.
“Eliza.” He stepped forward, which was a mistake.
Henry lunged but didn’t come after him. Instead the dog shifted, putting himself between Eliza and them.
“Eliza.” He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know where to begin, how to explain what she’d seen.
But his throat closed when he saw the look in her eyes.
Gone was the mistress of the fields and the commander of the sea wind.
The Eliza who stood before him was the wallflower from the Sudsbury ball, impervious to any hurt because society had taught her to expect it at every turn and she’d grown immune.
“Eliza.” It was the only word he could say, but she never acknowledged he’d even spoken.
Instead she said, “Come, Henry. This is no concern of ours.”
The dog obediently backed up, but he kept his gaze on Dax as they returned to the corridor. The click of the dog’s nails against the marble the only sound as it faded away.
He didn’t remember untangling himself from Bethany. He didn’t remember if he’d bid her good day or seen her to her carriage. He’d only gone after Eliza to find her sheltered in her rooms.
But he couldn’t reach her because it was the first time he had found her door locked to him since arriving at Ashbourne Manor.
Chapter 14
She hadn’t cried.
What would have been the point?
He had agreed to get her with child, not to love her. He’d held up his end of the bargain. She knew that with certainty now and not just from the wisdom of a seasoned seamstress. Her monthly was very late, and she could only hope what that meant.
Especially now as she sat all alone in the room she’d taken over for her watercolors.
Rain marked the windows before her, and the sea wind was feisty as it played with the windowpanes, shaking and rattling them. She heard and saw none of it as she held her hands over her stomach, hoping for a flutter of movement to assure her of the life within.
Her watercolors lay untouched behind her. She hadn’t painted a single one since that day she’d happened upon Dax and Bethany in the drawing room. She didn’t need an introduction to know who the beautiful woman was. The tension in Dax’s shoulders as he held her, the way he tilted his head to accept her kiss, it told Eliza enough to know the truth.
Dax had never stopped loving Bethany, and it never mattered if Eliza were a wallflower or not. There was no room in his heart for another so long as he still held feelings for the woman who had betrayed him.
The horrible truth was Eliza wanted Dax to love her. Of course, she did. She was being a rather irrational wallflower if she denied wanting to be loved. Didn’t everyone want the same thing?
These last few weeks in Glenhaven had been like an awakening, and for the first time, she believed herself deserving of a man’s love.
Fate had a funny way of reminding one of her place.
Henry bumped her hand, and she started. He looked up at her with imploring eyes, bored from being banished inside because of the rain. She smiled, studying his deep eyes.
“Perhaps we can do some work while we wait for the carriage to arrive.”