Colin jumped to his feet, and she could hear him moving items around the room until he approached her with a letter opener he must have taken from her escritoire.
Elizabeth felt him tug on the back of her dress with his hand before most of it pooled around her knees, and she was leftsobbing on the ground in her white shift, as her husband kneeled behind her with the blade in his hand.
Three
Chapter 25
Ever since the day they’d arrived back in London, Duke Colin Talbot had been living under a cloud of dread. He constantly had this awful sense of foreboding deep in the pit of his stomach, like God was trying to tell him something about what awaited him, but he chalked it up to the stress of the Parliamentary proceedings, the gloomy weather, and London’s bad air.
And then they went to that damned ball.
Now that the moment he’d been dreading for weeks had arrived, Colin felt an almost frightening calm settle over him. He'd read accounts of men who were led to (and saved from) the gallows, as well as the memoirs of several war heroes, and he instinctively recognised the state he was in as the resigned (but dignified) acceptance of one’s fate they all had written about.
His wife, whom he loved more than anything in the world, had discovered his deceit and his cruelty, and he had to face the possibility that she’d never look at him the same way again.
But unlike during other battles he’d fought during his life, Colin wasn’t going to lash out in this one. He’d had enough time these last few months (especially during the quieter moments, like when he would watch his wife read) to think about what he wanted, and he’d decided on two things:
He wanted magic to be real; if not magic, then at least time travel. He wanted to go back in time and not say what he had said, not do what he had done.
He also wanted to give his wife something that no one else could, to enrich her life like she’d done his.
But there was no doing either of those things now, was there?
“Lizzie,” he started, but she interrupted him, whispering, “Don’t.”
She raised her head from where she had been crying among the tatters of her once-glorious sunset-coloured dress. “Is it true?“
Colin, who had stood up and moved to sit on a chair to her right, didn’t immediately respond, so she continued. “Is what Lady Helena said true? Did you ruin my life for your own amusement or some deranged form of revenge?”
Colin paled. “Have I truly ruined your life?” He asked sadly.
“Answer my question, Talbot.” Her voice was devoid of all feeling.
She stood up and, with great trouble, walked over to her escritoire and sat down. She was facing him now, but wasn’t looking at him.
“It’s true, in a way,” he responded evasively, not knowing how to explain the things that he himself had only recently realised. “We used to be friends, you and I. But then that was over, andI couldn’t get the thoughts of you out of my head. You wouldn’t even look at me any more, and I was so angry…”
He stopped, forcing himself to take several deep breaths and gather his thoughts. He wanted to reach for her in order to anchor himself, but (correctly) gauged that she would not be receptive to his touch, so he put both his hands under his thighs to keep them in place.
“Before I ruined our friendship, I had thought we would have two or three seasons of dancing, witty repartee, smiles and laughs, and then time would cure me of this…affliction. I was burning up without you, while you were cold as ice, and then you announced your engagement to that uninteresting, unworthy man!” Colin’s entire face twisted in distaste.
“Did you want your toy back just because another boy was playing with it?” Elizabeth mocked him.
“I… acted without thinking. That’s what I meant when I said it was true in a way, how it happened is accurate, but your ideas on why it happened are not. My actions were reprehensible, but I didn’t know what else to do. I just didn’t want to feel that way any more.”
“Oh, you mean you didn’t want to feel that way for someone as unworthy as me? Or did you thinkno oneshould want me? I still remember what you said about me behind my back!”
“I apologised for that!”
“When?” Elizabeth asked with a grimace that indicated he was out of his mind for claiming that. “Regardless of the motive, your little plan backfired on you, because you were forced to marry me.”
He’d never seen her like that; she was almost distressingly beautiful in her fury. He felt himself catching the fire from it.
“No one forced me to marry you! No one can force me to do anything, you should know that by now.”
“So, you’re saying youwantedto marry me,” she said mockingly. “How rich!”
“Confound it, Lizzie! There aren't enough words to describe what I want! I want to give you the world, I want to be the only reason for your smile, I fear this is some new disease. I am truly unwell,” he admitted and suddenly deflated, all his previous anger gone.
