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Chapter Twenty-Five

“ C harlotte,” Eleanor whispered, taking a step toward her friend.

Charlotte looked between the two of them, her face twisted in betrayal. Confusion creased her brow, but anger tightened her mouth. Fury raged in her eyes, so blue, so different from her brother’s.

“Charlotte, I?—”

“You have both been lying to me.” Charlotte’s voice was whisper-quiet, appalled.

She looked at Spencer in accusation. “Brother, I have known of your petty falsehoods over the years. Lies you said to keep me safe, but this .” Her eyes flashed to Eleanor.

“And you! Heavens, I knew there was something not right about your story. I did not believe it at first, but I wanted to see you both happy. I-I believed you. I fell for your lies.”

She took a step back, but Spencer took a step forward. He didn’t look lost or helpless, not like how Eleanor felt. If anything, there was only cold detachment on his face.

“Yes,” he said simply. “We have been lying to you. The truth, Sister, is that Eleanor was never in the Caribbean—nor did we meet there, of course. There was no romance. It was a set-up, an arrangement, to ensure her safety.”

Charlotte’s expression shuttered, trying to work it out. “Why?”

“The why does not matter.” He shook his head. “The only thing that matters is that the arrangementwill continue regardless.”

“What does Lord Follet have to do with it all?” Charlotte pressed angrily. Eleanor ached, for her friend had heard so much. “And Lord Belgrave. That was your former fiancé. I do not understand a thing.”

“Stay out of this, Charlotte,” Spencer sighed, moving toward the door.

“Why?” she cried. “So you can send me away again, pretending I do not exist like our deceasedsister? Family does not exist like that! Not on lies and avoidance. Not on letters that I had to pretend were enough to replace a brother I barely recalled, a sister I was not even certain was real until I begged Aunt Katherine for stories of her. She barely had any, Spencer! Why? Why ?”

“I said, stay out of it!” Spencer growled, stalking past them both, leaving them staring across the hallway at one another.

Charlotte flinched, stepping back.

“Charlotte, please,” Eleanor began, but her friend was already shaking her head.

“No,” she hissed. “No, not if you will only tell me more lies. How can I believe you anyway? He lies, but I was not expecting the same of you, Eleanor.”

“Please—”

But Charlotte was already storming away from her.

Eleanor chased her. Down the hall, she heard Spencer’s voice muttering something she could not make out. She heard footmen and watch . Too soon, he had stormed out of the house, the door slamming in his wake.

She was left hovering in the hallway, caught between wanting to rush after her husband and beg for answers, and wanting to give answers to her angry friend, whom she had always wanted to tell the truth.

She had known it would come back to bite her one day, but she had thought she was safe.

She hadn’t wanted Charlotte to find out like this, regardless.

Her heart cracked, splitting in two, and she ran, trying to forget Spencer’s words. She couldn’t listen, and he couldn’t mean them, surely. He couldn’t…

And yet she feared her did. Or if he didn’t, he would be too stubborn to take them back.

She bolted down the hallway to Charlotte’s room and pounded on the door, shouting for her to open it. No response came, no footsteps or creak of wood.

She banged and banged. “Charlotte, please! Please open up. You are angry, but you must hear me out. Please . Just open the door so we may speak.”

Again, her pleas were met with silence.

She slumped against the door, slamming her hand on the wood. “I must explain!”

The silence rang too loud, threatening to echo back her racing thoughts.

I have failed her. I should have told her from the start.

But her downward spiral was interrupted by Lady Montagu, who poked her head out of her chamber.

“What is the commotion?” she demanded, approaching her. She gently nudged her aside and knocked on the door. “Charlotte, whatever has happened, please open the door. Eleanor appears rather distressed.”

“Then you may tell her that she can remain distressed, for I will not speak to her.”

“Charlotte—” Eleanor began.

“Aunt Katherine, do tell Lady Eleanor that she must address me by my title from now on. We are no longer friends, as friends do not do what she has done.”

Lady Montagu cast a glance at Eleanor, raising an eyebrow.

“I only want her to know the truth,” Eleanor muttered. “She must give me a chance to explain.”

“Charlotte, you must give her a chance to explain.”

“Do tell her she can explain to my horse’s backs?—”

“Charlotte, do act like a proper lady and open the damn door.” Lady Montagu’s order was sharp as a whip.

Moments later, Charlotte wrenched the door open, fury on her face. “I have nothing to say to you,” she hissed at Eleanor.

She made to shut the door, but Lady Montagu shoved a hand against it.

“Clearly, Eleanor has plenty to say to you, and you will hear her out, as some of us wish to sleep.”

After a long angry pause, Charlotte finally opened the door wider and cut a glare to the floor.

Eleanor took it as an invitation, hesitating long enough to glance at Lady Montagu. “Thank you.”

The older woman merely nodded and retreated to her chambers.

It left Charlotte and Eleanor in a quiet stalemate once the door was closed, shutting them in together.

“I am absolutely furious with you.” Charlotte walked over to the window, her arms crossed over her chest. Her face was a stoic slate, tense with anger.

“It is not just the lies, but it is the fact that when you came back after disappearing, it took me some time to get over it.

It took me time before I even saw you come to terms with the fact that you had left me behind.

You have lied, but there is also a pattern that I cannot ignore, Eleanor.

People hiding things, disappearing, my brother reverting to old ways that upset me, decisions being made for me.

“I do not know what Lord Follet has done, but even that was decided for me, and now my safety, my location, even my upbringing—it was all done for me , and I am tired of it. I am tired of feeling like a prisoner, of feeling blindsided by those I am meant to trust. How can I ever trust when it keeps on happening? I thought Spencer and I were doing well, but now I see he has only roped you further into his ploys. He is a good man, yet… He has made me so angry, I cannot fathom it sometimes.”

The vulnerability cracking through her anger was what finally broke Eleanor. Her knees wobbled, and she all but crumpled on the edge of the bed. There was a hysteria rising in her that she tried to tamp down.

“I was shipped off to a convent.”

The confession—the confession she had ached to tell her friend for so long—finally tumbled off her tongue.

“It was all a lie. There was no scandal. I-I was falsely accused, and rather than help me set the rumors right, my family believed Lord Belgrave. Charlotte… he is a terrible man. He sent me there. He had me sent away so I was no longer a problem.”

Charlotte fixed angry eyes on her. “Why would you have been a problem?”

Eleanor inhaled. “Because Lord Belgrave and Lord Follet run a horrible operation where they take vulnerable women and send them off for money.

I found the documents that proved it, and that was when Lord Belgrave publicly accused me of compromising myself with a stablehand to get my parents on his side.

They agreed to send me to the convent. There was no aunt living abroad. You were right to doubt that.

“I was kept there for three awful years, Charlotte. The things I endured… I cannot even speak of some of it. Belgrave came to visit me on my last day there to inform me of your engagement to Lord Follet. He knew that I would realize what that would mean for your future, and he used it to torment me. I escaped the convent that night and raced to Everdawn Hall. I intended to warn you, to tell you everything, but…”

She inhaled sharply. “Spencer found me instead. He sent me back, thinking I was lying. He only knew me as a disgraced, former friend of yours and did not trust me not to tarnish your image with my own. He believed Follet and Belgrave to be good, as everybody does. But when he returned me, he saw how I was being treated. I begged him to believe me when I told him about the two men’s operation.

“Eventually, he did, and he swore to protect me. He knew that the only way to keep me out of the convent for good was to marry me, to keep me under his watch. That was why you were sent away to Lady Montagu’s again.

Because he feared that my reappearance would set Belgrave and Follet off, and with your engagement delayed because of me, he feared retaliation.

There was no romance, no former meeting.

We indeed lied to you, but until we knew for certain that we could put Belgrave and Follet behind bars, it was too risky.

We have been investigating them ever since. ”

Her words spilled out, a torrent she could not stop. “But our marriage changed over time. It went from a convenient arrangement to… to more. What you have seen these last several weeks was real. Every laugh and dance, every brush and touch, every intimate moment—it has become real.”

Wearily, she lifted her gaze to Charlotte, finding that the fury had ebbed ever so slightly.

“We did it for your safety,” Eleanor whispered. “I did not intend to-to fall for Spencer. I needed a way out of the convent and to safety, but I did not think it would change so much.”

“Then why would you walk away now?”

She had not expected that question. She stiffened, gathering her thoughts. But the silence only encouraged her friend to continue.