Page 2 of The Reclusive Earl’s Scandal (Vows and Vanity #1)

However, the mere thought of walking into a ballroom, the wide spaces packed wall-to-wall with guests, women in their silk dresses and men in their tailcoats, the dance sets required, the music that never seemed to stop.

The lights; too many lights, too many eyes, too much whispering.

Perhaps it was a normal gentry’s love to be in such a place, but not for Edward.

For Edward, it was a nightmare destined to send him into a bout of panic.

He couldn’t explain his fits of anxiety when he had been among people.

Those days after his father’s death, the short weeks he had endured in London before eventually moving to Thornshire Hall, had been difficult and sickly.

His stomach had clenched, and there had been a restlessness beneath his skin like a tune out of place, a melody clunked on the wrong keys, something just terribly off .

A dread had pulled every limb down until Edward had been dead weight, unable to pull himself from a room to prepare getting ready. The very thought of it made him lose control.

Yet he could not explain that to his mother or sister in a way they would understand, so Edward paused, fought back his reluctance, and nodded.

“Fine,” he eventually said when his mother’s stare didn’t relent, clearly wanting a verbal agreement. “Fine. I shall return to Thornshire House with you in London. When are we going to depart?”

“After breakfast.” His mother’s swift response said enough about her planning this all for him. “We will depart swiftly. I do not trust you to follow after us alone.”

“Thank you for that trust, Mother,” he muttered, looking away. “I need more time. The day. The afternoon, even. I must have time to pack, to...” To say goodbye to my freedom. To leave the only place that makes me feel comfortable in my own skin and life. “To just… prepare.”

The dowager countess looked ready to protest, but after a moment, something softer crossed her face and she only nodded. Did she recall the moment they found out they had lost Edward’s father? That awful, heart-wrenching moment as Edward himself had watched his father’s life leave his eyes?

The unexpectedness of it; one moment, laughing and eating, and gone the next.

Was she remembering what it was like to be that widow in love and mourning she had mentioned, even if she no longer classed herself in love, or in mourning?

Edward lowered his gaze back to his breakfast, and the family continued eating in silence.

***

After breakfast, his mother muttered about speaking with the housekeeper to arrange for Edward’s belongings to be packed as quickly as possible while he prepared in whatever way he pleased.

Elena lingered at his side, walking with him through the empty halls.

“It must have gotten lonely here.” She looked around, and Edward followed her gaze, eyeing up the portraits lining the walls, and the busts of old heroes that he had begun to collect over the last year. He had gotten into mythology and legends, finding them from all over the world.

There had been something kinder in reading about worlds that didn’t exist, worlds such a far cry from his own.

“It did,” he admitted. “But I found the solitude was kinder than the eyes of the ton. ”

“You really do not like it, brother?”

“I abhor it, Elena,” he sighed, stopping to look at a painting of an old, British king that his father had favored.

Would Edward somehow become a similar figure?

Not a king, of course, but an earl worthy of favor in the ton again?

“The parties, the social etiquette, the endless small talk. It is all so tedious. I do not know how you not only stand it, but enjoy it.”

Elena gave a soft smile that he looked at side-on. “It is my life. It is what I know.”

“Knowing it is not liking it. What if it must be expected and therefore it is easier to trick yourself?”

His sister turned towards him. “Both, perhaps, then. But when I enter a ballroom, I see endless possibilities. I see a hundred ways my life could go, a hundred endings. One suitor might offer me a title of a countess with so much land. A marquess might make me his marchioness. A duke could give me a duchy, but we may lose our money within a year. I could travel with a viscount. The stories are countless, and that is what I like.”

“Does it not worry you?” Edward asked. “If you were to choose the wrong suitor and end up in a bad life? Does it not make you think you ought to have picked another ending?”

Elena shrugged lightly. “Perhaps, but until I have picked one that is not really a problem. I will be content for my choice will be based not on a whim but genuine thought and consideration for who I am presented with. That is, if I am presented with any choices at all.”

Edward couldn’t tell if it was a slight moment of self-deprecation and doubt, or if it was a subtle jab at his absence causing people to stay away from her, wondering why she had no man of the household there to chaperone her and assess her suitors.

He had a duty to her. If he could not focus on anything else he had to focus on Elena.

“You have grown up, Elena,” he admired softly. “I do not quite know when.”

“It would have been when you started hiding in this empty mausoleum,” she countered, and set them both back on their path down the hallway. “Truly, is this all you have aspired for these past two years?”

The judgement set him on-edge, but he forced himself to keep walking, to clench his jaw to hold back a too-harsh response.

Elena pushed on. “This is what you will be content to have for the rest of your life? An empty residence, no laughter or conversation to fill it? No wife to dine with, and no child to raise and see as your pride and joy?”

Her question and notion of what he could have, made him pause.

Another painting lorded over them from the wall—a woman’s hair streamed out behind her as she perched on the edge of a ship, her smile bright, her bonnet wide.

Ribbons danced from the hat, and her dress looked as though it was being tangled in the wind itself.

A man reached for her from behind her, emerging from the ship’s interior.

Edward’s chest ached.

Did he want this echoing loneliness forever? This life where he told himself he was very fine alone, and that he would be all right?

His eyes wandered to the woman in the painting again.

I do want more , he realized. He recalled his earlier words. What if he had tricked himself into contentment of this solitude because it was easier than facing the ton ? What if facing the ton could be worth it if he found a love like his parents had once had?

Edward turned, finding his sister’s eyes already on him.

“Let me help you,” she said. “Help me, and I shall help you. This Season shall be ours, Edward.”