Page 33 of The Reckless Love of an Heir (The Marlow Family Secrets #4)

Henry stood before the door of Uncle Casper’s town house and breathed in, his hands clasping into fists. His fingers flexed as he breathed out and his heart beat out an erratic pattern.

He had come to resolve the mess he had created.

He was here to tell Alethea he did not wish to marry her.

Then he would tell Susan he would not take no for an answer.

Admittedly he and Susan would need to be mindful of Alethea, there could be no hasty proposal, but he needed time to adjust to this storm of emotions anyway.

He was tired. He had barely slept last night, thinking constantly of Susan, of the words that might persuade her to accept him.

He raised the large circular door knocker and dropped it down once, heavily.

As the door opened, nausea twisted through him. He had come here to escape the heavy chains of one obligation and yet to potentially snap another manacle about his leg.

He was still not certain he was ready for marriage, and yet he wanted Susan, and the only way he would ever wholly have Susan would be to marry her…

Dodds, the butler, smiled. ‘My lord.’ He bowed then stepped back, pulling the door wider. ‘Come in, sir. Shall I announce you in the drawing room?’

‘Yes, please.’

Dodds lifted a hand to take Henry’s hat and bowed again before he passed it to a footman. Henry handed his cane over too.

Henry walked across the hall at Dodds’s heels, with the eagerness of Samson, his heart thudding in his chest.

Dodds pushed the drawing room door open a little wider and knocked on it gently. Henry heard the women’s voices.

‘Yes!’ Aunt Julie called.

Dodds stepped in. ‘Lord Henry, my lady.’

‘Come in, Henry. You have no need to hover outside the door!’ Aunt Julie said.

Alethea turned to face him. She was sitting on a sofa with her mother, and from the movement it looked as though they had been holding hands. Something was wrong. Their eyes were red-rimmed and watery. They had been crying.

Heat flushed his cheeks, as he walked across the room. ‘Aunt, what is wrong?’

Aunt Julie stood. ‘Do not mind me, I am being foolish.’ She gave him a brief embrace and kissed his cheek. ‘Dodds, have a maid bring some tea.’ She looked back at Henry. ‘Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Alethea will appreciate your company.’

He did sit, only because he did not know what else to do.

Henry leaned towards Alethea. ‘What has upset you?’

‘Susan has gone.’

‘What? Where? ’

‘Home. She insisted on going today but she would not say why.’

She had run. ‘Was she upset?’

‘Yes, but she would not even tell Mama why.’

He breathed deeply. She had been upset because of him.

‘You were the last person to speak with her at the ball, was she distressed then? Mama thinks something must have happened there.’

The air caught in his lungs. Yes. She had run from him and kept running. ‘No, she was happy…’ The lie left his throat effortlessly. ‘You said she left the ball with a headache…’

‘That is what she said. But this morning she said London has made her unwell.’

‘And she gave no other reason?’

‘None.’ Aunt Julie sat in a chair near them.

The words Susan said to him played in his mind.

‘If I was in Alethea’s shoes I would not be able to bear it.

To watch us together. To know my sister cared so little for me she would do such a disloyal thing.

It will hurt her, Henry. I cannot hurt her like that.

’ So, she had run. He had chased Susan away from her home, and her family.

If she was more like him, more self-centred – the word mocked him – they would be sitting here telling her sister together.

But then Susan would not be Susan. She was full of care, mindful of others – as she now cared for him.

And he cared for her… The thought of her in tears…

Leaving in distress… Leaving the sister she loved…

Last night she had talked of standing in her sister’s shoes, now he imagined standing in hers.

The pain, guilt and regret cut deep inside him.

He was no longer a careless man, he could not hurt her any more than she would hurt Alethea.

She was the first to accuse him of self-absorption, it had been true, but she was also the one to break him free of it.

And last night… Last night was going to be all he had then.

He would remember it, rejoice in it and regret forever that memories were all he had of Susan…

His heart broke, cracking as though it were porcelain pressed under the heel of her shoe.

The cracks in his heart ran into his veins, reaching deeper.

He now knew this was love, this pain was what his father had spoken of when he talked of losing his mother.

‘Henry.’ Alethea held his hand. ‘Did you see last night…’ Her conversation swept Susan aside and became focused on the ball itself, and the balls that were still to come this season and how they would be spoiled from Alethea’s perspective because Susan was not here.

Susan may not be selfish, but Alethea was.

Perhaps that was the only thing he had ever had in common with her.

After the tea had been served and drunk, Aunt Julie looked at him. ‘Why do you not take Alethea out in your carriage? That will brighten her mood.’

‘I cannot. I am sorry, Alethea. I did not bring my curricle, I walked.’ He was no longer in the mood to speak; nothing he said to Alethea would convince Susan to have him.

His shattered heart embraced the truth – if he loved her as much as he claimed, he should leave Susan alone. She had chosen to run away from him.

He stood up, half in a dream. ‘I ought to leave anyway. I agreed to meet someone at my club.’

Aunt Julie and Alethea looked at him in surprise.

‘Are you going to the Tomlinsons’ musical evening?’ Alethea asked.

‘I am not sure. Perhaps.’ He bowed towards his aunt.

Alethea stood. ‘I will walk into the hall with you.’

She held his arm firmly in a way that reminded him of how Susan held his arm. The memory was agony. This was the wrong sister .

She talked in a whisper as they left the room. ‘Mama believes something dreadful has happened to Susan, but Susan denied it.’

‘Nothing dreadful would have happened to her,’ he said in a dry tone. ‘She was at a ball surrounded by people.’

‘You think it happened at the ball then…’

‘I think nothing happened. She is probably just bored of such entertainments.’ Yet, she had loved them, she had come to life every evening.

He had taken that from her too. ‘But you know her better than I do.’ He knew nothing of her really, he had only begun to discover Susan and now he would know no more.

Alethea looked at him. ‘It was not boredom. I heard her crying last night.’

Henry swallowed against a dry throat.

That was what his love had done to her. He had hurt her. He must stay away. Yet his desire, the feeling of love inside him, wanted to go to her – to comfort her. To just bloody hold her.

He moved so his arm slipped loose from Alethea’s clutch. ‘When you write to her, tell her I passed on my regards.’ I will be thinking of her. Constantly. I will let her go, but I will not forget her.

The door into her father’s small library opened wider. Susan looked up. She was painting a picture of a rose which lay on the table, trying to recreate it on the paper as the artist had recreated the orchids in Uncle Robert’s book.

When she painted, she did not think of Henry for minutes at a time.

‘There is a letter for you, miss.’ The footman held it out as he came in.

‘Thank you.’

‘Do you require anything, Miss Susan? ’

‘No, thank you.’ She glanced down at the address. She knew the sender from the structure of the letters. She had seen several dozen letters written to Alethea in the same hand. Henry’s.

She broke the seal. There was no need to hide anywhere to read it. There was no one here other than the servants. Her father stayed with her for two days, until she convinced him she was truly not injured in any way, then he returned to London.

She walked to the window. Her heartbeat fluttered in a stuttering rhythm. She should not be pleased to hear from him. Yet as her fingers held the paper he had written upon, longing filled every artery.

And Alethea? She refused to hear the whisper of guilt. To read his letter was not acting upon her desires. They were only words on a page. Yet they were his words.

The paper trembled from the unsteadiness of her hand.

My dearest Susan,

I am trusting this will reach you unopened, and you will have the privacy to read it, so I shall write honestly. I wish you had not run. I miss you.

I miss you too. The words breathed through her soul. But how could she have stayed?

But I understand your reasons. I did not mean to upset you any more than you meant to upset Alethea. Forgive me. And I know I should not write, but I could not help it.

I called the day you left, to invite you to view the Egyptian Exhibition Hall, only so we could speak.

I wanted to persuade you to accept me. But Alethea told me how upset you were, and then I saw what you had asked me to try and see, a view through your eyes.

Yes, I see, this is too hard for you, and I expected too much of you to lose your family.

I would rather you were not a martyr, and yet I love you because you are. It is who you are. And so I must be a martyr too and sacrifice my happiness with yours. But I wish you to know my choice for a wife is you. If I had a choice.

As I do not, I will rejoice in the hours we were together and not chase you. Because I love you, I have let you go, I cannot see you hurt.

She took off her spectacles as the tears fell.

Your most sincere admirer,

H

Love…

Alethea had read out many of the letters Henry had written to her. They had been factual accounts of things he’d done with friends. They never contained words expressing emotions, never the words ‘I love you’.