Page 80 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T HE KITCHENS HUMMED with activity and a thousand scents.

Aurora walked, one red silk pump after the other, through the white shirts and black waistcoats of the staff working diligently away in the smaller kitchen preparing the silver serving trays.

The champagne glasses sparkled as the bubbles rose to the top.

The canapés were the perfect size for the guests who were beginning to enter the great dining hall.

‘Mind your backs,’ a chef called as she stepped into the bigger second kitchen.

She stopped at the roasting trays, pulled from the ovens by the team of chefs in their whites. The trays steamed. The smell of tiny quails, smothered in herbs and butter, assaulted her airways, but she resisted the urge to stick her fingers in the juices and lick them.

She’d eat them soon enough at the head table with Sebastian.

‘Miss Arundel?’ She turned her back to the chefs, ignored the grumble of her stomach, and focused on the bright blue eyes of the event coordinator, Tina.

She was a godsend. Without her and Esther, she couldn’t have pulled it off in a week. But together they had pulled it off in an afternoon.

Her stomach twinged. She was right to rush this—to rush him . Their time was almost up. The baby would be here in three weeks…

‘What’s wrong?’ Aurora asked when those blue eyes, wide with worry, stared at her unblinkingly.

Tina pushed the microphone of her headset away from her lips. ‘Nothing.’ She smiled. A perfect smile. But Aurora wasn’t fooled. It was brittle.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Aurora said. ‘The hall isn’t ready, is it?’

She shook her head. ‘The dining hall’s ready,’ she said. ‘The guests are arriving and are being shown in.’ She waved to the staff exiting the outer kitchen. ‘The staff are taking the canapés out now…’

‘So, then, what is it?’

‘Esther Mahoti is here.’

‘Is she?’

Aurora couldn’t wait to meet her in person.

A no-nonsense woman who had supplied everything Aurora needed to make today a success.

She’d curated the perfect guest list, deployed the teams of staff to ready the castle.

She’d planned, with her team, the transport for the guests, organised the art team to install Sebastian’s pieces in the dining hall, and personally sent Aurora the silk pumps on her feet.

‘She is.’ Tina swallowed. ‘And she’s demanding to see Mr Shard.’

‘Then show her to him.’

‘I can’t find him.’ Panic tightened the slender throat inside the baby-pink necktie. ‘I’m supposed to know where he is. Where everyone is. And Esther—’

‘Will be fine,’ she soothed, but her throat was tightening too.

‘She’ll never use our event company again if I lose the star of the show.’

‘Bring Esther into the hall. Let her see what you’ve accomplished in such short notice.’

‘It won’t be enough. If I can’t deliver Mr—’

‘I’ll deliver him.’ Aurora tucked Tina’s arm in hers and walked her back out the way she’d come.

Her stomach flipped. Was he ready? Had she demanded too much? Too quickly. Too fast.

‘Do what you do best.’ She smiled tightly. ‘We’ll be with you soon,’ she promised.

Tina flipped her headset back into place and walked off, talking into it in hushed whispers.

Aurora watched her leave, turned on her heel, and pushed through the side door to the back of the courtyard.

Her heart raced. This morning Sebastian had kissed her forehead and told her he was going for a walk. Alone. It wasn’t unusual. Since the night he’d told her about Amelia, he’d claimed more and more moments for himself. But he’d always returned to her by nightfall and climbed into bed beside her.

Aurora moved out of the side gate. She looked up at the skies. A helicopter whirred. It descended the mountains lined with trees. More guests.

She dropped her gaze to the trees standing guard at the entrance of the forest. She moved towards them, over the field of short green grass.

She’d find him.

Aurora stepped into the forest. Twigs broke underfoot as she took herself deeper into the overlapping trees.

‘Sebastian?’ she called, but all that answered her were the birds she’d startled, flying upwards to higher branches.

White beams of light shone through the branches overhead, scattered with drooping leaves.

She closed her eyes and listened.

She could hear running water.

She opened her eyes, listening, finding the right direction…

She moved toward the sound of rippling water, and it got closer with her every step.

Her feet halted at the top of an incline. A slow-flowing river moved below. A natural stairway of roots led the way down through the trees. She took them, step after step, down to the river. As she did, the trees parted.

And the view stole her breath.

‘ There you are. I found you,’ she husked, stopping still.

He stood from where he knelt next to the river.

And she watched him rise. Watched the sun play with the wisps of his hair hanging loose at his shoulders.

His open-collared white shirt revealed the thick hair-covered throat.

And up her eyes went. To the tip of his bristled chin, to linger on his plump pink lower lip.

Up the length of his noble nose. To his eyes.

Green-and-amber depths staring straight at her.

‘I wasn’t lost,’ he said deeply.

She moved towards him. Her heart racing. Her body tightening, urging her closer. Nearer.

He had been lost. They both had in New York.

Would he tell her the same now as he had then? That he wasn’t hers to find.

She cleared her throat. ‘What are you doing down here?’

‘Thinking.’

‘And what have you been thinking about all morning?’ she asked, her lips moving into a smile. But her lips were too heavy, her lungs too breathless to perform the ease she wanted to portray.

She wasn’t at ease. The air hummed with it. A restlessness. And it made the hairs rise beneath her red-silk-covered arms.

‘You,’ he said, and his eyes dropped to her stomach. Rounded and obvious beneath the folds of her red sparkly gown. ‘And the baby.’

She stopped before him. The moss-covered ground was soft beneath her shoes. ‘What about us?’

‘They have breached the walls,’ he said. ‘The doors are wide open. And in they go. Into my house.’ His eyes rose to meet hers. ‘You invited them inside.’

His eyes were not accusing. His voice was soft, and yet she felt like a traitor.

‘We talked about this.’ She exhaled heavily. They had talked about it the morning after he’d told her about Amelia. Lay in bed together. Naked. Holding each other. ‘We decided to do it together for Amelia,’ she reminded him. ‘And we are doing it. Today. ’

‘I’m no speechmaker, Aurora,’ he said. ‘I don’t stand in great halls, or on podiums, in front of people like them and talk. I do not talk about myself.’

‘This isn’t about you,’ she said, knowing it was a half truth. It was the only part he would hear. The only reason he would do this was for her. But she understood he needed it far more than Amelia did now.

‘They don’t care,’ he scoffed. ‘They want what my hands create. They want my work. They don’t care what Amelia endured.

People like them, privileged and elite, ignore what happens in houses like the one I grew up in, houses next door to their own.

They pretend that what happens inside those houses doesn’t happen.

But they know, Aurora. How could they not?

’ he said, his top lip lifting to expose gritted white teeth.

‘They fear what lives in the dark, so they choose to be ignorant. To ignore it. They ignored Amelia’s suffering. ’

She wanted to touch him. Reach out and hold his hand. But he had to trust her enough to take it.

‘I wish I’d stood on a podium,’ she said. ‘I wish I’d made my parents listen one last time. Made them realise Michael needed help. He needed love. Unconditional love…’

Her heart raced.

Love. There it was in her mind. On her tongue. And it didn’t feel wrong to think it. To feel it.

She was in love with him.

She pushed it down. Today wasn’t about her.

‘I wish,’ she breathed, ‘I had used my voice before now. I wish I’d realised sooner the shame they made me feel about Michael, his condition, his addictions…

It was nothing to be shameful about. It was an opportunity to expose the awful atrocities not only the rich experience, but the less fortunate. ’

‘They don’t care, Aurora.’

‘Then make them care.’ She puffed out air. ‘Stand in front of them as Sebastian Shard and tell them the causes they are donating to are worthy. The people that experience these awful things are worthy.’

That you are worthy , she added silently, because he wouldn’t want to hear it. Nor would he accept it.

He had to believe today was for Amelia.

His lips firmed into a flat line. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ he asked.

‘Without shame,’ she said, swallowing all the emotion in her chest that was threatening to clog her throat.

‘You, Amelia…the children who have experienced, are still experiencing, the same things that you did…they have nothing to be embarrassed about. It isn’t their fault the world is ugly sometimes, that it exposes them to unspeakable things. ’

‘But it was my fault that she died,’ he corrected her. ‘Am I supposed to tell them that? That I locked her in?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If you want to tell them your and Amelia’s story, tell them. You did nothing wrong.’

‘And what?’ he snarled. Baring his perfectly white teeth. ‘Stand up there and shame you. Tell the world that the baby inside you was put there by a man who abandoned his family. Left them to—’

‘You abandoned no one,’ she interjected sharply. ‘You haven’t abandoned us.’

His cheek pulsed. ‘I want them to know you will be my wife.’

‘Sebastian…’ Her heart danced. She wanted to be that. To be his wife. She wanted to be his.

But not like this.

He thrust his hand into his pocket. He withdrew his hand, clenched in a fist, and held it out between them.