Page 41

“COME WITH me.” Charles had already begun to move before he said those words, leading me through the ballroom and towards the large glass doors that led outside.

There was a note in his voice that was genuinely frightening, an anger he was desperately trying to suppress, and nausea flooded me as I followed him, not that his iron grip on my arm would have allowed me to do anything differently.

He didn’t say another word until we were outside, a good twenty feet from the doors of the estate, and he finally let go of my arm, pacing back and forth in front of me.

The night air was cool and pleasant after the humidity of the ballroom, but a fine cold sweat had broken out over my forehead and my neck, making me far chillier than I should have been on a summer night.

I crossed my arms over my chest, watching him walk back and forth, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides as though he was struggling terribly with some inner turmoil.

I knew then that something had happened, that I was too late to do anything to repair this.

“Charles,” I said, and he stopped pacing, turning to look at me fully.

For a moment, I genuinely thought he was going to hit me and I took a step back, Charles watching me briefly before he went back to pacing.

“James came up to me tonight,” he began, and my chest twisted up into a tight ball.

“After I’d danced with Ida. He pulled me aside, and he said…

he said that he needed to talk to me, but that it wasn’t something he could discuss in polite company.

I didn’t trust it, but he produced a letter with my brother’s signature on it and said that it was a necessity. ”

A letter.

The letter, undoubtedly, the one I had stolen.

The one I had left stupidly in my room, my unlocked room, where anyone with a passing knowledge of the layout of the estate could enter and find my things without trouble.

James had undoubtedly taken the onset of the ball to do just that, to rifle through my papers in search of something incriminating, and he had found something so damning that I could hardly breathe thinking of it. “Charles—”

“Stop!” he snapped, continuing to stalk back and forth, voice thick as though he might cry.

“Stop it. Let me finish. We spoke in the sunroom. I listened because I thought I would be able to refute his claims. I knew he was targeting you because you were working on the poaching case, and I knew that he was behind you being called back to London. I’m not a fool, and I thought if I knew his accusations, I could defend you.

” He stopped, turning to look at me fully.

“Until the end I was sure I could defend you, but… the letter, Thomas. My brother! Do you have any idea?”

“Please, just listen,” I said, my voice trembling despite myself; I had never had to defend my sexuality before, and to have to do so against my closest friend, the one person I had always been able to rely on, was making me sick. “I never intended for this to happen.”

“I invited you here,” Charles said. “I trusted you, and you just turned around and threw it back in my face. My brother, Thomas? Do you know the scandal this would create if it were to get out beyond these walls?”

“Charles, please, of course I know,” I said, swallowing a wave of nausea down. “I was going to end it when I left for London again. I’ve never intended for it to be long-term and certainly never intended for it to bring shame on anyone.”

“Shame?” Charles shot back, and I could tell he was only getting himself more upset.

“No, this is not shame I am feeling. It is disgust .” He turned his gaze back on me, and I could practically taste it radiating off him, the terrible crushing weight of his disappointment and his betrayal, a Shakespearean mixture of rage and regret that he had ever let me into his life.

“I have trusted you my entire life. We’ve shared beds, Thomas.

I defended you against every sort of insult imaginable about your upbringing.

And I… I bring you into my home so you can what? Debase yourself for my brother?”

I was still reeling from being called disgusting, my arms uncrossed now, a weight settling on my shoulders.

I could recognize when I was backed into a corner, could see that I was not going to change his mind.

Decades of friendship gone, swallowed by my own rash adoration for Arthur, and the worst part was I could not even defend myself properly because I had not recognized the depth of my feelings until this very night.

I stared at him, waiting for him to continue his tirade.

Instead, he reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper.

My eyes flicked to it before returning to his face, brow furrowing in confusion. “What is that?”

“It’s the damned letter,” he said, clutching it in his fist. “Consider this a last kindness. I stole it back from him to prevent any word of this getting out. You can take your cursed letter and leave the estate this very hour. I will not have this continue, Thomas.” He stared at me searchingly, and I wondered what he saw in my eyes looking back: the fearful gaze of a cornered creature or the defiant gaze of a man who would not apologize?

While I desperately wished it was the latter, I knew just from the way his lip curled in disgust that he had seen nothing human in me.

“I trusted you,” he said finally, throwing the letter on the dirt at his feet and stalking back into the estate.

It took me several minutes before I could move again, walking over to the discarded letter and bending down to pick it up.

Writing that had filled me with butterflies for days prior now left a lead weight in my chest, and I looked at it unfeelingly before slipping it into my pocket and glancing around the garden.

If it was my last time here, I wanted to remember it as it was in the moonlight, softly lit and fragrant.

When I finally came to my senses, I realized Charles had given me an order to leave.

Undoubtedly he had already alerted Felix to my impending departure, although I doubted he had given the servant the truth of it.

As though in a fog, I made my way to the servant’s entrance to the estate, avoiding the ballroom doors altogether although I could still hear the music, lively and loud.

I’m not sure how long it took me to reach my room, only that it felt like an eternity, and when I arrived I found that a maid was already packing my things.

“Lord Charles says he can ship anything you’ve left behind,” she said politely, avoiding my gaze, and I wondered how many of the staff had figured out the truth of why I was leaving already.

I merely nodded at her statement and gathered my traveling bag with shaking hands, putting together enough to get me back to London comfortably.

I was cognizant of the maid stealing glances at me, so was perhaps less thorough than I should have been in collecting my items, as later there were several boxes delivered to my London flat, but I needed to get out from underneath her scrutiny.

Bag packed, I left the room and began to make my way downstairs, only for Felix to come flying up the grand staircase.

He looked dreadfully disheveled, his red hair askew and his face flushed with exertion, and he grabbed the banister, steeling himself as he stopped me from going further.

“What has happened?” he asked, sounding genuinely upset.

“Charles has just told me to prepare a carriage. What’s going on? ”

“Have you prepared one?” I asked, surprised at the composure of my voice, an icy quality to it that sounded foreign to my ears. “I need to leave.”

Felix stared at me, his eyes huge with disbelief, and when he spoke again it was nearly accusatory. “Thomas. What on earth has transpired? Charles looked as though he was about to cry. If you’ve had a fight, you shouldn’t just storm off like this. It can be fixed.”

“No, it can’t,” I said. “Charles has made it abundantly clear that I’m no longer welcome here and that my mere presence disgusts him. I have no desire to impose any longer.”

“But Arthur—”

“Felix, if you are truly my friend, you need to keep my departure to yourself until I am well out of the county,” I said, looking at him, and something in my eyes must have struck him because he took a small step back. “Now let me go.”

He pressed himself against the banister to let me pass, his chest heaving before he managed to speak again, this time barely audible. “This is a mistake,” he said, beginning to follow me. “Tom, if you leave now, you might not be able to fix this. Arthur will be crushed.”

“He will recover,” I said, continuing down the stairs. “I am not going to try and change Charles’s mind.”

“He won’t recover, you know that,” Felix said, the words a dagger, and yet I still didn’t stop. “Please, this can be fixed!”

I stopped short on the landing, turning to face him and bringing him to a halt as well.

He was three steps above me, looking down with a panic in his eyes that I had not seen there before, and I could not stop the dreadful words that came pouring out of me next.

“Stop it, Felix. You need to learn your place.”