Page 93 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

Frederick released the mantelpiece. He stepped back into the center of the parlor and stood still, and for a moment neither of them spoke.

“You have allowed Ashford to fill your head with ideas,” he said. His voice was quieter now, the anger losing ground to a bewilderment he could not fully conceal. “He flattered you. He told you what you wished to hear, and you believed him, because a duke’s compliments carry more weight than a gentleman’s honest devotion.”

She held his gaze. “Oliver taught me to stop hiding. But I am not leaving you for Oliver. I am leaving you because I loved the idea of you, and you love the idea of having a wife. A restful one.”

Frederick looked at her. She watched the fight drain from his posture, his shoulders loosening, his hands unclenching at his sides.

“I see,” he said at last.

She looked down. “I am sorry.”

“Are you?” A short laugh followed his words, and she looked up.

“I am sorry that I let this go so far. I should have spoken sooner. I owed you that.”

He was quiet for a long time. She waited for him to argue again, to reach for the comfortable authority that had carried him through every previous conversation, but he did not reach.

“You are certain?”

She nodded and shifted uncomfortably.

“Yes.”

He nodded once.

“The ring, please,” he said then, holding his hand out to her.

She pulled it from her finger. The band slid off easily, as it always had. She placed it in his palm. He closed his fingers around it and put it in his waistcoat pocket without looking at it.

“I hope you will not regret this,” he said. “Society will be unkind.”

“I know.”

He collected his hat from the stand and buttoned his coat. He walked to the door and paused, his hand on the frame. She thought he might turn.

“Goodbye, Louisa,” he said, without turning, and let himself out.

The front door closed. His footsteps faded on the pavement, quicker than his usual stride, carrying him away from the house, away from the engagement, away from the version of Louisa Fairchild he had chosen and the real one he had never troubled himself to meet. The knocker settled against its plate, and the house went quiet.

Her mother appeared in the doorway. She looked at Louisa’s bare hand.

“It is done,” Louisa said.

Her mother crossed the room and took Louisa’s left hand between both of her own.

“I shall write to Mrs. Ansell and Lady Cresswell before supper,” her mother said. “They will hear of it by morning regardless. Better the version comes from us.”

“Mama, I am sorry.”

Her mother squeezed her hand once, firmly, then released it. “Bravery and foolishness look identical from the outside. I shall reserve my judgement until I see which one this turns out to be.”

She returned to the morning room. Louisa heard the scratch of pen on paper resume behind the closed door.

The parlor was still. The sapphire was gone. The late afternoon sun had shifted while they talked, and now it fell across the far wall where the wallpaper had faded to a paler shade, the outline of a painting that had hung there for years before being sold.

Tomorrow the whispers would start. Lady Caldwell would tell Mrs. Fenton, who would tell Lady Ashton, who would tell everyone Louisa had ever smiled at across a ballroom. The invitations would stop. The cream-colored cards would cease their arrival on the silver tray. The doors that had opened would close for the woman who had jilted Frederick Langley.

She looked at her bare finger. She looked at the empty chair.