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I knew as soon as I’d said it that I’d hurt him terribly, another blow I’d inflicted against a friend that night.

He stared at me, panic fading and replaced by anger, and he gripped the railing so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“Learn my place?” he echoed. “I know my place. Do you? Do you have any idea how hard Arthur worked to set up that meeting with Matthew Hughes? How anxious he was that it go well? Now that you’ve made your connections and gotten what you want, you’re leaving.

You’re no better than any other leech that’s come through these doors.

Perhaps you’re worse, because you made each and every one of us think that you cared! ”

I had no retort, no rebuttal, because I could see that from Felix’s position it looked as though I had taken the easy way out.

I had accepted Arthur’s connections without complaint and now was not willing to fight to stay, but he had not heard what Charles had said nor had he seen the look in his eyes.

The idea of staying at Ashford Hall and facing the anger that Charles had for me was impossible, and I knew that I had to go.

I did not answer him, turning back around and hurrying down the stairs.

A carriage was waiting—Felix was good at his job, and I felt another twinge of terrible regret—and I hoisted my travel bag inside, the young driver at the reins giving me a nod of acknowledgment as I tapped on the door to let him know we could leave.

I settled into one of the plush seats, realizing for the first time that my heart was beating uncontrollably, my breathing short and shallow.

I rested my head against the back wall of the carriage, closing my eyes and trying to calm myself, seeing only Arthur there against the back of my eyelids.

I took small comfort in knowing that the bridges I had burned tonight were for him.

Charles’s disgust, anger, betrayal: with me gone, they might disappear, might allow him to continue to love his brother.

Felix’s worry about his lord: if I left, there was no risk of a scandal, no fear I was using Arthur simply to advance my career.

And Arthur… despite what Felix said, he would recover.

We had agreed to a summer affair, and we had enjoyed a few weeks of just that.

I would fade from his memory, although I doubted he would fade from mine, and things could return to normal.

I’m not sure how long we had driven before I heard the sound of hoofs approaching.

I opened my eyes, sitting up straight in the carriage and recalling my return to Ashford Hall earlier this month.

Was Charles riding us down to deliver some parting insult, some ultimatum?

The thought that I had betrayed him so thoroughly that he would do such a thing made my nausea return and I clenched my fists against the seat, willing myself to calm down.

Abruptly, the carriage stopped. I heard muffled voices for a moment and considered opening the carriage door when it opened on its own and Arthur entered.

If Felix had looked disheveled, Arthur looked positively frantic.

He had clearly ridden hard to catch up to us, his curls a mess and his clothes in disarray, his riding coat only half-buttoned and one shoulder showing from where his shirt had undoubtedly been caught on a branch and torn open.

Already there was a thin thread of blood on his collarbone where the skin had been cut.

“Arthur!” I managed, so surprised at his appearance that I nearly fell out of my seat. My surprise was almost immediately replaced by guilt, however, and I quickly composed myself. “What are you doing?”

“Felix came and fetched me,” he said, panting softly from exertion. He tugged on the shoulder of his shirt to move it back into place, looking at me with clear misery in his green eyes. “What are you doing, Thomas?”

“Leaving,” I said, trying to harden my heart against what was to come.

I knew that I was going to hurt him, but I had hoped like a coward and a fool that I would have been able to get away with not having to hurt him to his face.

With that option gone, I needed to do what I could to get away, but I saw a path open up in front of me.

Charles’s hatred of me did not need to extend to his brother.

I had still had a single piece of ammunition in my arsenal, and I would have to use it.

“Please, just let me go without causing a scene. The driver will hear.”

“I told him to stand with my horse until I am finished,” Arthur said, regaining some of his usual composure, although he was still visibly flustered. “You intend to steal away in the night like a thief? What could have caused this?” A darkness passed over his face. “Did James do something?”

“No,” I lied, because of course Arthur was right. James had turned Charles against me before I could even begin to stop the events from playing out, and he had no doubt meant to do the same to Arthur. “No, James said nothing. I just took advantage of your distraction with the ball to leave.”

“But why ?” Arthur insisted, and he reached across the carriage, seizing one of my hands and drawing it to his chest so I could feel the rabbit-fast beat of his heart. “I rode like a madman to catch you. I think that I deserve some sort of explanation.”

I withdrew my hand almost as quickly as he took it, willing my face not to flush at the touch, the feeling of his skin on mine a balm to my anxiety that I could not allow myself to indulge in.

“What aren’t you understanding?” I asked, barely capable of keeping my voice from shaking.

“I’m leaving, Arthur. That’s all. I have nothing more to say. ”

“I don’t believe you,” he said, getting up from the carriage seat and moving so he was sitting alongside me instead, his presence overwhelming.

I was seized by the desire to tell him everything, to beg him to take me back to the estate and tell Charles everything in the hopes he would understand, but I knew that what I was doing now was the best thing to do for both of us.

I was mad to think that I could have a relationship with a titled man, mad to think that there would not be repercussions.

I just hadn’t expected them to come from Charles, nor had I expected them to seem insurmountable.

“I saw you earlier this evening. I saw the way you looked at me. The way you are still looking at me. You can’t hide it from me. ”

“I’m hiding nothing,” I said, reaching into my breast pocket and removing the crumpled letter.

Immediately his face changed, his eyes flicking to the paper then back to me.

“I intended to blackmail you from the start,” I said, the lie coming to my lips unbidden.

“I used your feelings for me against you, and tonight I went into the library and I went through your desk in the hopes of finding evidence.” I shoved the letter at him and he took it, and I was sick to see that his hands were trembling as he did so.

He opened it, saw which one it was, and the color drained from him.

“I found it. I was fully intent on using it against you, but Charles intervened before I could. He told me in no uncertain terms that I had to leave.”

He was still looking at the letter. The letter I had stolen, not because I ever wanted anyone to see it, but because it had filled me with so much love and adoration that it had been impossible for me to not want to read it time and time again.

I had memorized it, the looping curves of his handwriting and the way his nib had pressed too hard into the paper as he had been overcome by emotion.

To hand it back to him and claim that the words written there were only important to me because of what I could gain materially… .

When he spoke, there was a chord of devastation in his voice.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, but I could tell that he was beginning to believe me, that my performance was convincing enough.

He would not find out about James Wright, would not find out about what Charles had said.

He would return to the estate, and he would continue his life the way he had lived it before I had come along, and we would both be happier for it.

“What possible reason would you have to blackmail me?”

“Money,” I said, and his eyes flicked up, alarmed. “Do you truly believe that a man of my standing would have had a friendship with Charles for so long if I didn’t want this in the end? I saw an opportunity and I took it.”

“I would have given you money if you needed it so badly,” Arthur said, my heart cracking straight down the middle. “Money, jewels, prestige… I would have done anything. Do you… did you not realize? Should I have said it out loud?”

“I’ve tricked you into feeling whatever way you do,” I said, although I did not believe a word of it. My feelings for Arthur—his feelings for me—were genuine.

“Say it,” he said, and it was my turn to look surprised. He grabbed my hand again, leaned forward, peered at me closely. “I will only let you leave if you tell me to my face that you never cared one whit for me, Thomas. Say it!”

I hesitated, teetering on the precipice.

If I said what he wanted, there was no recovery.

But I could not return to Ashford Hall anyway, and if this was a clean break, perhaps he would move on.

Felix was certain that I would wound Arthur, but I had wounded him already.

The only way forward was through this insurmountable agony.

“I never cared for you,” I said, and it was the final blow, his expression crumpling.

The man I had for months seen as stoic had finally revealed his face to me, and in that revelation I had learned how to see his misery as plain as anything else.

“I saw what you were and I used it against you. You were right about me from the start.”

He rose from the carriage seat, crushing the letter in his right hand, and I willed him to hit me, yell at me, show anything to tell me that he would be all right when the anger and betrayal had dispersed.

Instead, he merely opened the carriage door and went out, his back to me, and his retreating form and the terrible look on his face were the last I saw of him before the driver returned and we began our departure from Ashford Hall.