Page 2

“Please do keep an eye on her,” Leonardo told her. “Your Grace, would you mind coming after me?”

Richard nodded.

“Ara, Let’s go outside and enjoy the fresh air. I have a feeling you might need some,” Sarah suggested, all but whispering that last part to her.

The two ladies made their way through the crowd of excited partygoers and dancing couples, periodically turning a few lonely men’s heads.

They reached the back double-glass doors that led to the outside garden and pushed them open, the crisp air raising the hairs on their arms. As much as Arabella enjoyed a good party or ball, she was never a fan of how stuffy and overwhelming they could be.

Sarah pulled her along the garden hedges that they used to play in as children, and Arabella remembered when they would often play hide and seek in this garden. The memory of those precious moments brought a small smile to her lips as well as a somber reminder that those days were long gone.

“So, is Leo trying to marry you off tonight?” Sarah asked her bluntly, taking her a little bit by surprise.

“You could not tell from the way he dressed me?” Arabella snorted. “I keep trying to tell him that it will not work, but he is dead set on sending me off regardless. He is so insufferable sometimes.”

“Please do not think our brotherwantsto send you off. If anything, this is probably more stressful to him than it is to you,” Sarah told her, sitting down on a bench in the middle of a large flowerbed. “Are you still so against the idea of marriage?”

“It is no longer appealing to me. It lost its luster,” Arabella confessed, hanging her head. Her cheeks reddened, and they felt warm. She wasn’t one to profess her feelings like that.

Sarah took a moment, possibly contemplating her words, and with sweetness lacing her voice, she said, “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but your duty as a woman comes before your heart.”

A bitter laugh erupted from Arabella’s chest, but she quickly covered her mouth with her hands to stifle the inappropriate bluster. She took Sarah’s gloved hand in hers and responded, “Sister, I do not wish to wed. At least not now. I know I am becoming almost too old, but there is still so much in life that I have yet to understand. How do you do it, Sarah?”

“How do I do what?” Sarah asked.

Arabella didn’t know how to broach this subject. How would she ask her sister that she lived every day possibly not living her own truth? How would she ask her if she was tired of being whittled down to the prize of a man? How would she ask her to move on from the one person that she thought she might have spent the rest of her life with? How was she supposed to overcome that kind of rejection in a timely manner?

Instead, she asked her, “Excuse my impertinence, Sister. But… do you love His Grace?”

Sarah looked taken aback by that question, but she quickly regained her composure and gave a soft smile. Arabella had always been a little blunt.

“I do. He is like my best friend in many ways, but it took us time and dedication to reach that point.”

Sarah took her sister’s silence as an invitation to continue. “Ara, what exactly happened between you and the Duke of Green?”

It seemed the fresh air did not do much in the long run to help Arabella, because she felt her heart beginning to thrum in her chest at the mention of him.

“People don’t often talk of mental scars, but they do exist,” she started, her shaky voice betraying the hurt she was desperately trying to hide. “I spent months moving on and trying to handle the bloody embarrassment it caused our family. I was not enough for him, it seemed. A few days before we were to announce our courtship to the ton, he told me he would be pursuing another. I was… upset, to say the least. He was not fond of my response, and to be honest, Sister, I was rather rude to him. I said some choice words—quietly, of course. I do not believe anyone heard me, but I made sure he knew how much he had hurt me. He made me feel so precious to him, only for him to tell me that I was merely an option he chose not to go with.”

Silence fell between the pair. Arabella was on the verge of tears, thinking about that day, but she had always been good at hiding the welling dam behind her eyes.

Sarah tucked a loose strand of hair behind Arabella’s ear. “I am so sorry, Ara. You are such a wonderful and beautiful woman, and he was a fool to let you go. I, too, have had my run-in with heartbreak.”

“You have? How come I never heard of it?” Arabella questioned, turning towards her on the bench.

Sarah laughed fondly and explained, “When I was twenty years old, Father introduced me to the son of a nobleman related to the Duke of Green, funnily enough. While we never got engaged, I fell head over heels for him—or at least I thought I did. Our courtship did not last long, as he found his interest lay in another. There was nothing I could do about it, as his decision was final.”

“How did you move on?” Arabella asked, astounded that anyone could turn her sister down.

“I reminded myself that he is not the only man out there. I kept my head held high and kept my dignity intact, as I knew I would have others I needed to impress. I will be honest with you. While I do not necessarily agree with it deep in my heart, I know that is my job as a woman.”

“But…” Arabella paused, not knowing how to continue with what she had planned on saying.

Her sister had always put up with the wild stories and statements she would tell when they were children and even encouraged her creativity a little bit. But she understood now that she was a grown woman and that she must act like one, even if being a woman meant she must sacrifice what makes her uniquely her.

“What is it, Ara?” Sarah asked, her hand resting on her sister’s shoulder. “You know you can talk to me.”

Arabella sucked in a deep breath and said, “I do not wish to marry. I am afraid that it may happen again, but I do wish to experience the tangible pleasures that come with marriage, even if I’m unsure of what that exactly entails. But I just don’t know if I could love another the way I loved him. As a child, I was infatuated with the idea of a happily ever after. Now I’m afraid all I want is the tangible benefits. Is that wrong of me?”