Guilt pierced Iris anew. She had tried so desperately to embrace her decision, to convince herself—and everyone around her—that she had made the right choice. That she could be content, perhaps even happy, as Hadrian’s wife.
“I wanted to be,” she admitted, her voice barely audible. “Happy, that is. I tried to be what I thought I should be, rather than what I am.”
“And what are you, Lady Iris?”
The question caught her off guard. She hesitated, considering. “I am someone who values truth above comfort,” she said after a moment. “Someone who cannot live half a life, pretending to feel what I do not, denying what I truly feel.”
“And what you truly feel is for someone else.” Again, not a question.
Iris could not bring herself to speak the words aloud, but her silence was confirmation enough.
For the first time since she had delivered her devastating news, Hadrian’s composure cracked. A flash of genuine pain crossed his features, followed by a flare of anger that transformed his usually gentle countenance. Iris had never seen him like this—had not believed him capable of such raw emotion—and the sight was somehow both unsettling and oddly comforting. At least he would not pretend this did not wound him.
“I see,” he said, his voice tight. He rose abruptly from the bench, then seemed to catch himself, forcing his body to stillness. When he spoke again, his words were measured, carefully controlled. “I appreciate your honesty, Lady Iris,though I confess I would have appreciated it more had it come before you accepted my proposal.”
“I’m so sorry,” Iris whispered as she stood, feeling utterly wretched. “I never meant to hurt you. And I … I do so hope this will not negatively impact your work with Lord Jasvian?—”
“You believe me so petty?” Raw hurt warred with disbelief in Hadrian’s gaze. “That I would jeopardize a project affecting the livelihoods of hundreds over … over this grievous personal slight?” He paused, visibly reigning in his emotions. “Whatever trust existed between Jasvian and myself may well be fractured beyond repair, but I will not allow that to affect our work.”
A thick knot of emotion clogged Iris’s throat. “Hadrian, I am so?—”
“Please.” He held up a hand, cutting off her tear-choked apology. “My family will devise some suitable explanation for society. We shall say it was a mutual decision—that you wish to focus more fully on your apprenticeship, and that this doesn’t align with the future I had envisioned. That we both agreed it better to part ways.”
Iris pressed her shaking lips together and took a deep breath. Then she slipped the pearl-and-diamond ring from her finger. “I believe this belongs to you,” she said, extending her hand. Hadrian stared at the ring for a long moment before accepting it, his fingers brushing against her palm as he took it.
He turned to leave, then paused, looking back over his shoulder. “Are you certain it was not you I danced with at the masquerade? I was quite convinced it was you, despite hearing you would not be in attendance.”
The unexpected question gave Iris pause. “No,” she said, baffled. “I was there, but we did not dance together. Or if we did, it was not for long.”
Something flickered across Hadrian’s expression—a subtle shift she couldn’t quite interpret. “Ah,” he murmured. “Then perhaps this is all for the best, after all.”
Before she could ask what he meant, he had turned away once more, striding back into the house with measured steps. Several moments later, the distant sound of the heavy front door closing echoed faintly across the lawn.
Brenna, noticing his departure, hastily approached Iris. “My lady?” she inquired softly. “Are you quite well?”
Iris nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Relief that the terrible conversation was over warred with a heavy guilt for the pain she had inflicted, and yet, stirring beneath it all was a strange and hesitant hope.
“I believe I shall retire to my room for the remainder of the morning,” she told Brenna. “Should my grandparents return, please inform them I am studying.”
“Yes, my lady,” Brenna replied.
Hours later, Iris lay stretched across her bed, an ancient leather-bound tome propped open before her. The scandalous history of enchanted tea brewing families had seemed like the only text capable of holding her attention on this most tumultuous of days. In truth, it was also the only book she had brought home from the tea house—a place she desperately wished to return to, though she knew a confrontation with her grandparents must come first.
She traced her finger beneath a line she had now read four times over, finding that, in truth, even scandalous history could not entirely distract from?—
The door to her bedroom flew open with such force that it struck the wall behind it. Iris sat up immediately. Her grandmother stood in the doorway, face flushed with anger, her grandfather’s tall figure looming behind her. Both were still dressed in their walking attire, suggesting they had come directly to her room upon their return—a completely unprecedented breach of propriety.
“What have you done?” The elder Lady Starspun’s voice vibrated with barely contained fury.
Iris felt the blood drain from her face. “Grandmother, I?—”
“How dare you end your engagement without consulting us?” her grandmother continued, advancing into the room with quick, sharp steps. “Do you have any notion of the consequences?”
“How did you—” Iris began, only to be interrupted by a familiar, irritating sound from the open window behind her.
A glossy black gossip bird with iridescent wings swooped into the room, alighting on the windowsill with a flutter of feathers. It cocked its head, beady eyes gleaming with mischievous intelligence.
“Lady Iris jilts Lord Blackbriar!” it shrieked in its shrill, grating voice. “Her heart belongs to another!”
