Page 48 of The Wise Daughter
“Nora,” he tried again, his voice only slightly more in control. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. There are things I must say.” His features pinched. “I… I have discovered something that pains me greatly. I fear I am not in a state to speak much on the subject.”
“Aaron.” She reached to put a hand on his arm but stopped short when he turned away, making her stomach lurch.
He shook his head. “I wanted so much to love you, Nora.”
“Wanted?” Air fled from her lungs. Her stomach seized with piercing pain.
“It is as you once said.” It was Aaron’s voice she heard, but it was devoid of all his usual tenderness. “I was too hasty about our engagement. I did not yet know you. It is now clear to me that our lives must follow different paths. You and your father must leave as soon as possible.”
“Aaron, I don’t understand. Leave? But why? Why the sudden change?”
He shook his head. She didn’t know if he wouldn’t give her an explanation or couldn’t.
Finally, he spoke again. “I don’t think I can allow you to stay in the castle any longer. I’ll permit you to stay in Raven Manor until you have secured for yourself a position somewhere else, but I would prefer you leave within a fortnight.”
He would prefer it? “Aaron, I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
“Please, Aaron, it pains me to–”
“It pains me as well. Under the circumstances, Miss Lacy, it would be more appropriate for you to address me as my title demands.”
She had to fight her own shock to finish her sentence. “It pains me to see you like this, Your… Your Grace.” Those last words, once spoken with ease, were heavy on her tongue like too much salt on her meat. “I beg you to explain what has happened.”
He finally held her gaze. His eyes were so full of heartache, but it quickly turned cold. “I hate the thought of you and your father once again being reduced to ridicule and poverty, but the terms of our marriage settlement are clearly broken by what I have discovered tonight.”
“And what have you discovered?” Her voice dwindled. Was her father’s gambling so terrible that Aaron no longer wanted to be connected with her family?
“Were you ever engaged to Lord Newberry?”
A wave of nausea rolled over her. “Whatever you heard, it isn’t true. My father arranged it before I could even share my thoughts on the matter, but I adamantly refused.”
“Did he give your father money?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible, but I–”
“And what can you say about Mr. Hunt?”
“Mr. Hunt? How did you learn about him?”
“It doesn’t matter, but those men are not my only complaints. I have discovered a letter.”
“A letter? What letter? You must explain it to me!” Her insides grew frantic as she struggled to maintain control over her voice.
A similar struggle warred across his face. “Do you have the signet ring I gave you?”
“Yes, of course.” She held up her hand and showed him the place where it rested on her thumb.
He took her hand gently, but as she curled her fingers around his, he loosened her hold and removed the ring. He might as well have plucked her heart out. She felt herself sway like a ship in a storm.
“Aaron,” she dared whisper.
“I am not so hard-hearted as to send you away with nothing. If you needed more than what I offered, you should have come to me. I thought you understood that. I’d rather give knowingly than have my wealth taken behind my back.”
“Aaron, I do not know what has happened, but I would never–”
He grimaced. “Blast it, Nora! It hurts too dreadfully to even talk of this! Take whatever you want! Anything in the castle. Just leave! What care I for any of my wealth when I know you want it more than you want me?”
Her insides shook. “I don’t know what absurd lies you’ve been told, Aaron, but there’s been a dreadful misunderstanding. You’re speaking nothing but nonsense!”
He would no longer look at her. “I don’t think I am, Miss Lacy. No one regrets what has happened more than I. Please leave as soon as you are able, for both our sakes. I can no longer abide your presence.”
She dropped to the stone bench as if she had just been hit, her legs no longer able to support her. Confusion and hurt overwhelmed her into a numbness that froze her to the spot as she watched Aaron walk away. How had the distance between them stretched so quickly?
Earlier, before they were interrupted, he had looked at her like a man in love. She tried to remember each word, each compliment, and each tender gaze as evidence it was so. Was it possible she had seen something there that didn’t exist? Had her own hope given rise to false expectations?
Have I made a mistake?
Or perhaps she was the mistake, just as Mr. Carver had implied that day outside the stables. The memory of his words now rang in her ears.
“He knew,” she whimpered to the vines. “He knew Aaron would regret me.” Aaron regretted engaging himself to a stranger with a humiliating reputation.
She wanted to cry, but no tears came. She wanted to groan with the way her stomach twisted, but no sound escaped her throat.
Overcome, she bent in half and heaved, clenching her middle to brace against the shock of so much hurt.
She didn’t know how many minutes she sat bent over like that, but her fear of being discovered alone in her wretched state gave her the strength to straighten herself and walk.
If Aaron wanted her gone, she would leave. To stay and fight to convince him to marry her against his wishes was beneath her.
“I have royal Saxon blood you know,” she spoke softly into the night.
Barely aware of how her body shook, she slipped inside the castle through one of the servants’ back entrances, climbed the staircases, and traversed the corridors back to her bedchamber.
She would leave immediately, exactly as she had come, carrying nothing but what she wore.
Only this time, as she left Ravenglass behind, she would spit on that bridge.