Page 47 of The Duke that I Lost

“I hadn’t even considered it might be you. I thought perhaps my brother-in-law had a change of heart. What does this make me…? ‘Funds to lubricate?’ After… Was it some sort of… payment?”

“ Non !” He drew back, needing her to see his eyes, to feel the truth in them.

“ Dieu , Ambrosia! It was never about that. We were friends first, always. I only wanted to make your new life easier.” She would barely have survived on what her late husband had left to keep the townhouse.

Dash scratched the back of his neck, heat prickling there like the beginnings of a rash. “You’d been through too much already.”

A single tear escaped to roll down her cheek, and he caught it with his thumb as though it might brand him.

“Ambrosia…” Shame and longing twisted together.

“Please, don’t let it take away from anything you’ve done.

My help, it was nothing, a little thing.

I wanted to give you so much more. You could have managed without me—I know you could—but I was sick about leaving you.

I knew you’d be hurt. I had to do something for you. Anything…”

She shook her head slowly, staring, not into his eyes, but past his shoulder. “I am happy. I was happy.” Her voice wavered, the words trembling in the air between them. “It took so long for the hurting to stop… And now. You. This.”

Dash let his hands fall away. Mon Dieu , what a ruin he had made of it all.

When she’d come outside, he’d been resolved, he would tell her everything…

Almost everything.

About Hannah, once promised to another duke. About the need to protect her from Groby.

He kept telling himself this fight was for both of them—that winning her back was an act of love, not selfishness. But even as the thought took shape, it tasted of a lie.

Because there was another truth.

A truth that began years before Hannah, before Ambrosia, before he had any right to think himself a man.

A cold night on the cliffs near Harrowgate Hall.

Six boys slipping out of the dormitories, flushed with stolen spirits and bravado. The hiss of steel in the moonlight. A duel that should have been all swagger and no consequence—until one misstep, one moment of drunken overreach…

Only five had returned.

And though they tried to convince themselves it was an accident, Dash had never been able to scrub it from his mind—Sebastian’s startled cry, the silence that followed.

And everything that came after. More lies. More selfishness, all to protect himself. Still, it haunted him even now, leading him right to this very moment, in fact.

Perhaps he was the greater danger hiding beneath the mask after all.

She rose then, arms crossed over herself in a fragile sort of armor.

“I’m… going inside. I thought I could put all of this behind me.” But she was shaking her head…

“I’m sorry, princesse . Ambrosia, I’m sorry.” The words felt pitifully small. He’d thought he knew his next steps before tonight, but now, he wasn’t so sure.

“I know.” She offered a wavering smile, more sad than anything else, before retreating into the house.

Long after the door shut, Dash sat staring at her windows. He had given her flowers, a hothouse, a bench built for two… and none of it mattered. He had been gone too long. He had lost her.

By the time he reached Beckman House, the streets were dark and hushed.

The butler held the door wide, but Dash didn’t go to his chambers.

His home was cavernous, absurdly so, and he prowled its corridors like a restless ghost. A few sconces burned here and there; otherwise, the place was shadow and silence.

He had just turned down the long gallery when a door clicked open behind him.

“I wondered where you’d been.” Beatrice’s voice drifted through the dim light, teasing rather than concerned.

Barefoot and still in her dressing gown, she padded toward him with a loose braid over one shoulder.

“Not that I worry, of course. I assumed you’d been off sulking somewhere—” Her grin tilted.

“Or mooning about in Madam Bloomington’s hothouse. ”

Dash didn’t smile.

Undeterred, she went on, “You missed a very fine garden party today. They held an archery contest. I entered, naturally. And, mon frere …” Her eyes sparkled with mock triumph. “I beat everyone. Everyone. Even Lord Hawkins, and you know how highly he thinks of himself.”

Dash’s mouth curved faintly, but it didn’t last.

Beatrice slowed as she drew nearer, finally catching his expression. “What happened?”

He didn’t speak. They were words he wasn’t yet prepared to say out loud.

“She’ll come around,” she said softly, her teasing replaced by something gentler. “You’ve always had a way of?—”

“No.” His voice was quiet but firm. “Not this time, Beatrice.”

He touched her arm briefly. “I’ll be fine. But for now… just… go back to bed.”

She hesitated, searching his face for a glimmer of… hope, perhaps—but found none. Finally, with a little sigh, she turned and padded away.

Dash was alone again.

I am happy. I was happy.

The words gnawed at him, but worse was the image that went with them—the shimmer of hurt in her eyes, the slight tremble in her hands.

She had been light itself when he first came to London, walking down the street with her head high and her smile unguarded.

He was at fault. He had stripped that away.

He had clung to the memory of a single week together—her laughter, the ease between them, the wild, sweet night of so much more than just possibility.

But Ambrosia…

She had been doing her best to forget, to build something new. And he had come back only to remind her of everything she had fought to forget.

She had moved on.

He wondered if he ever could.

He doubted it.