She Refused to Curtsy to the Most Feared Duke in London—But Instead of Punishing Her, He Protected Her From the Ballroom’s Cruel Whispers. Months Later, Just as They Fell in Love, One Rumor Made Her Believe He Was a Terrible Man.

 PART 7

Eight weeks of silence turned the Douglas household into an unbearable cage. Emily painted landscapes that felt dead. She endured her mother’s anxious looks over Casper. And still the memory of James standing in the rain outside her window refused to fade — it burned in her chest like an open wound that would not close.

The truth arrived by accident, on an ordinary afternoon, when she finally worked up the nerve to walk to Westfall House and end her own torture. A tall, unfamiliar gentleman answered the door instead of a butler — Lord Preston, delighted, insisting she come in for tea, informing her cheerfully that James had left for Venice two months prior in a foul temper.

“Lady Annalise is inside,” he added. “You’ll love her.”

The name struck her like a blow. She tried to retreat. Preston, oblivious, guided her firmly through the marble foyer before she could escape, and by the time they reached the drawing room, it was too late to run.

Near the tall windows stood a sweet, petite blonde woman, laughing softly in pale silk — radiant, delicate, visibly younger than Emily. She will have him, Emily’s mind screamed. She will be the one he pulls close in the quiet of the evening.

“She is very —” Emily started, and could not finish.

“Younger than us, yes,” Preston said easily. “Five years behind the rest of the nursery. James and I treat her like a little sister. We’ve protected her since she was in pinafores.”

Before Emily could process the words, the woman crossed the room with open delight.

“You must be Emily. James told me so much about you.” She linked her arm through the handsome gentleman rising from the settee behind her. “Come — you must meet my darling Philip. Lord Philip Marwood has only just returned from Paris, and we are to be wed next spring. You simply must come to the wedding.”

The room went silent in Emily’s ears. Fiancé. Lady Annalise had never been James’s bride. Had never been his betrothed. The gallery gossip — the malicious, careless whispers — had been nothing but empty talk, while Philip had been falling in love with her across the Channel the entire time.

Preston’s smile disappeared as he watched Emily’s face. “You truly believed James meant to marry Annalise?”

Emily could barely force the words out. “Everyone said — her carriage —”

“Her father owns woodland bordering Westfall land. They were arguing about timber rights. James complained about it for a week.” Preston stared at her. “Good God. Is that why you stopped seeing him?”

Heat and cold chased one another through her body. “He stopped seeing me. He left.”

Preston went very still. “He left because Ingrams told him you were engaged.”

The teacup clicked violently against its saucer. “What?”

“James came here the night before he departed. He looked like a man who had been dragged behind his own carriage. He said Casper Ingrams had informed him that you had accepted his hand and had personally asked Westfall never to approach you again.” Preston’s expression hardened. “I assumed you had chosen. James certainly believed you had.”

For one terrible second Emily could hear nothing at all. Then fourteen days rearranged themselves in her memory: James below the window in the rain, the returned letter she had never known existed, Casper insisting that a duke would tire of her, the sudden silence on the fifteenth day.

James had never lied. He had stood in the rain for fourteen days, begging for a single word, while she hid behind wounded pride. And Casper had not merely comforted her afterward. He had built the silence that followed.

She made it through ten more minutes in the drawing room — nodding, murmuring congratulations, holding a rattling teacup with hands that would not stay still — then left Westfall House with Preston’s final words following her down the steps: James was in Venice, and no one knew when he intended to return.

Casper was waiting in the Douglas drawing room when she reached home. For once, Emily did not remove her gloves or wait for the servants to leave.

“What did you tell him?”

Casper’s face changed. That was answer enough.

“Emily —”

“What did you tell James on the fourteenth day?”

He stood slowly. “I told him what should have been true. That you were safe here, with people who understood you.”

“You told him I had accepted you.” Her voice shook, but not from uncertainty now. “You told him I asked him never to come back.”

“He was destroying you.”

“No. Fear was destroying me. Gossip was destroying me. And you saw that I was too frightened to ask one honest question, so you used it.”

Casper’s anger flared through his shame. “I have loved you since we were children. Was I meant to stand aside while a duke made you miserable?”

“Yes,” she said, tears burning behind her eyes. “If standing aside was what honesty required, then yes. You were meant to let me choose badly for myself rather than choose for me.”

He had no answer. Their childhood sat between them — ponds, stolen pastries, scraped knees, years of uncomplicated trust — and Emily felt the grief of losing that too. She did not hate him. In some ways, that made the betrayal worse.

By midnight she had packed two dresses, her sketchbooks, and the unfinished portrait. Her mother called the journey reckless. Her father, after a long silence, quietly opened his desk and placed enough money for the passage into Emily’s hand. Lucy helped fasten the trunk and said only, “This time, ask him before you believe anyone else.”

Emily promised she would.

She would cross the continent on her knees if she had to. She would find James in Venice and beg for his forgiveness. The only question left was whether eight weeks of silence had already made her far too late.

The crossing was an agonizing blur of steam, crowded stations, jolting carriages, and sleepless nights. Every delay felt personal. At inns she woke before dawn convinced she had heard James’s voice in the corridor; aboard the packet she stood at the rail until spray soaked her sleeves, rehearsing apologies that all sounded inadequate. She had spent months demanding honesty from everyone around her and had failed at the simplest version of it herself: Is the rumor true? Do you love someone else?

Emily filled a sketchbook with a portrait modeled on the miniature from her reticule, James’s features drawn with painful precision, the woman beside him rendered only as a faceless shadow — a bitter confession begun in heartbreak, carried now as a plea for forgiveness. On the final night before Venice, she erased the shadow’s face and drew her own. Not because she believed she still had a place beside him, but because she was finished hiding from what she had wanted. Whatever answer waited at the palazzo, she would hear it from James himself.

At the palazzo, the same footman who had received her months before recognized her instantly, his face softening. “His grace is upstairs in the library.”

She would not let him carry the parcel. She climbed the marble staircase herself, heart thundering, and as she reached the gallery outside the library, bright laughter drifted through the half-open door — James’s low, easy chuckle, answering a woman’s teasing voice.

Emily froze. Crept closer. Looked through the gap.

James stood at the sunlit windows, taller, broader, sleeves rolled up, his arms wrapped around a radiant young woman in pale muslin, his chin resting near her dark curls as they laughed together at some private joke.

The breath tore out of her chest. Too late. He had built a life here, in the Venetian sun, and left the gray English rain — and the foolish painter — behind.

A house cat darted past, startling her. The wrapped painting slipped from her numb fingers and struck the floor with a hollow clatter. Panic seized her. She fled.