She curled her upper lip. “Yes, I think about that often myself. An unfortunate day. But I wanted you to know that I am content now. Happy, even. Charles—that is, Lord Lundgren—has a large estate in Devon. We have horses—Arabians. He has a vacation home in Bath and another outside Glasgow.”
“I am happy for you,” Aaron said.
And in a strange way, he was, because these were all things she had always wanted. Now she had them. After all, he wasn’t a monster. When he had ended things, he had seen how humiliated she was. Not because she had been so in love with him and had her heart broken, but because the title ofDuchess had escaped her. Plus, having a broken engagement undoubtedly made it harder for her to find a match.
Whatever her reasons, she had been upset, and he wasn’t the kind of man who enjoyed seeing a woman in anguish.
“He is a marquess?” he asked politely.
Her eyes flashed with irritation. Clearly, she’d assumed he’d kept tabs on her.
“The fifth Marquess of Lundgren,” she enunciated stiffly. “And I hear you are still not married.”
“No, and I do not think I will ever be. You see, if I learned one thing from our courtship, it is that I wouldn’t make a good husband for anybody.”
She snickered. “I agree with you. A first,” she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
Aaron’s strong dislike for her resurfaced. He recalled how unpleasant he had found her when they were courting.
“There’s a first for everything,” he replied tersely.
“I heard your father passed away. I was sorry to hear it, as he seemed a decent man,” she said, offering her condolences with a thin veneer of sincerity.
“Both my parents have passed,” he pointed out, though of course she had to know this. Anytime a duke or duchess passed, the scandal sheets wrote about it in detail.
“Ah, a shame,” she said, though she clearly didn’t mean it.
He wanted to excuse himself from this conversation but didn’t know how. It would be impolite to walk away, and thus far she hadn’t given him a chance to end the discussion elegantly. So instead, he changed the subject.
“What brings you to London?” he asked.
“My brother is in need of a wife, and I have come to town to help him find one,” she replied, nodding her head in the direction of a lanky, tall man who was talking to a woman.
Aaron vaguely remembered him as Amelia’s younger brother. The last time he had seen him, he was perhaps fifteen, but now he looked like a grown man. Time had indeed flown.
“I was always fond of your brother,” Aaron said sincerely.
She looked at him with a hint of bitterness. “At least you were fond of one person in the family.”
He opened his mouth, wanting to protest, but then realized he could not. Fortunately, she hadn’t expected a reply, as she pressed on.
“You did not tell me why you are here,” she reminded him, turning the conversation back to him. “Did your aunt press you to attend? I recall she is one of the Lady Patronesses.”
“No, although I am doing a favor to someone. I’m helping my friend’s sister find a husband,” he explained.
“Is that the lady I saw you talking to?” she asked.
Aaron felt uncomfortable that she had watched them. He felt oddly protective of the quiet moment he had shared with Judith yet saw no point in denying it, and thus he replied with a nod.
“I’m glad to hear you aren’t courting her, because that is what it looked like. I wouldn’t like to see another lady mistreated,” Amelia said.
Now Aaron lost his cool. “Amelia, please let us not pretend that I mistreated you. I think I did you a kindness, actually. I would have been an awful husband. And let us not forget you didn’t want to marry me any more than I wanted to marry you. We were forced into it by our parents.”
She drew her shoulders back and puffed out her chest. “That’s not entirely true. I would have honored the arrangement, as expected.”
“But you never loved me,” Aaron argued sharply. “You were more concerned with the title and the prestige.”
“And you were more concerned with your freedom,” she shot back, her eyes flashing with anger. “You never gave us a chance.”
