Three years she carried his life on her back and he never once thought to ask what it cost her. Then she stopped answering his secret signal across a crowded ballroom — and something in him finally cracked open.
PART 2
“I am,” he lied, unable to drag his eyes off the emerald silk.
“I said I want the carriage reupholstered,” Beatrice repeated, voice climbing over the music. “That drab velvet your mother favors is depressing. I want canary yellow. Now go fetch me an ice — it’s stifling in here.”
Alagan turned to obey, the way he’d resigned himself to obeying for months. Beatrice was fine. Loud. Demanding. A headache dressed in silk. But she was what a man in his position required — presentable, lively, uncomplicated.
His path crossed Christine’s before he reached the refreshment room.
“Christine,” he said, stepping in front of her.
She stopped. Didn’t startle. Didn’t blush. Just looked up at him with placid, polite eyes.
“Good evening, Lord Westland.”
The jolt went through him like a struck bell. Lord Westland. She hadn’t called him that in three years.
“What are you wearing?” he blurted, instantly sounding like an idiot.
“Silk, Alagan. I’m reasonably certain you’ve encountered it before.”
“You never wear green.”
“I decided I like green.” Her voice was smooth, frictionless — a polished wall of marble with nothing for him to grab onto. No warmth. No fondness. Not even irritation.
“I came by the townhouse Thursday,” he said, shifting his weight. “Dawson said you were out.”
“I was.”
He waited for more. Where. With whom. She offered nothing, only stood there, composed, waiting for him to finish so she could move on.
“Right,” he mumbled, wrong-footed. “Well — my steward sent the quarterly reports. A mess. I thought perhaps tomorrow—”
“I’m afraid tomorrow is entirely booked. Lord Henry is taking me driving at a quarter past one, and I’ve promised my aunt the theater in the evening.”
The words hit him like small, hard stones. “Booked. Lord Henry — Akerman? You don’t even know him.”
“I’m coming to know him.” Her lips curved, just barely, though the smile didn’t reach her eyes when it landed on Alagan. “He’s very observant. Now, if you’ll excuse me — I believe Miss Littleton is waving her fan at you quite aggressively. You shouldn’t keep her waiting.”
She stepped around him. The scent of her perfume lingered — clean, sharp, unfamiliar. Bergamot and wood. Not the lavender he’d known for three years.
He watched her cross to Henry Akerman by the card tables. Watched Akerman lean down to say something. Watched Christine laugh — really laugh.
His hand tightened around the empty brandy glass. He had a sudden, irrational urge to cross the room and take Akerman by his meticulously tied cravat.
Don’t be absurd, he told himself. She’s your friend. You should be glad she’s finally amusing herself.
But when he turned to fetch Beatrice her ice, the room felt thin, and his chest felt entirely hollow.
By the time the Haddingtons hosted their annual hunting party in Yorkshire three months later, Alagan Ford was a man operating on the brink of collapse. He shot well. He rode hard. He sat beside his unofficial fiancée at dinner and nodded at appropriate intervals.
Internally, he was bleeding from a thousand paper cuts — a wrong-packed collar with no one to summon a maid, a tedious conversation about crop rotation with no one to rescue him, a woman three seats down the table who had become, impossibly, a stranger.
Then, over dessert, Henry Akerman leaned close to murmur something against Christine’s ear — and she tipped her head back and laughed, low and unguarded, the sound rolling the full length of the mahogany table.
Alagan’s fork clattered against his plate.
Beatrice stopped mid-sentence. “Alagan. Honestly. Clumsy.”
He wasn’t listening. He was staring at Christine — glowing, radiant, wiping a tear of laughter from her eye with a linen napkin — and something cold and enormous dropped into his stomach.
It wasn’t jealousy. Jealousy burns hot. This was colder than that.
This was the first, unmistakable shape of loss.