“Oh, Malcolm.” Her heart went out to him. He was so clever, so able, so cunning, and yet so blind to himself. How could she not love those secret, tender parts of him, which had somehow survived so many years of neglect? “You have it backwards. Power doesn’t satisfy. Not the way love can.” She gently released his hands. “You are the one who isn’t truly happy. Another vote in the Commons won’t help you. Why should one more pocket borough fix what all the others have not? The fact is, Malcolm, that you are lonely. So terribly lonely that you’d even cling to a man like Sir Roderick, because he’s all you have.”
He was staring at her with his handsome jaw slack and his face as red as if she’d slapped him. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You won’t ever be the Lion Duke,” she said. “Trying won’t make you happy. But I’m afraid you’ll never be able to stop.”
He rubbed a hand over his chin, where once again, the morning’s shave had not been enough to quell the light dusting of stubble. “You really won’t marry me,” he said. A statement, not a question.
“No.”
The word hung in the air between them for a second, heavy with regrets and unspoken sorrow, until a rowdy cheer from the dining room window above them chased it away.
“You had better return to your guests.” Malcolm straightened out his shoulders, tugging at his coat with business-like precision. Something had dimmed behind his eyes. There was nothing in them now of either hope or remorse. “I am sorry to have called you away.”
“Not at all. It’s better to make things clear. Now we both know where we stand.”
“In that case…” He adjusted his hat, cocking it rakishly low, and shot her a final glance that she thought, perhaps, was genuine. “I should not have lied to you. I will never do it again.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Nevertheless.” He paused, fingers flexing, and then gave her a brisk nod. “Good day, my lady.”
“Good day.”
Selina stood in the garden for several minutes after he had departed, one hand pressed to her chest, until her heartbeat finally slowed.
She loved him. No more question about it. How strange, after so many years of running from it, that love should finally catch her in such an unexpected way. With a man she had so long thought had nothing to tempt her.
A little sob escaped her lips, quiet and pitiful, and she swallowed down the next and forced herself to be calm.
She had forgotten how much love could hurt her. How wonderful it was, even amid the pain. She was gladder than ever that she knew it could be survived, and eventually put aside.
She glanced at her own reflection in the window of the inn, and she found her face pale, as she expected, but otherwise much as it always was. The changes were barely noticeable. Proud lips, soft eyes – now showing the slightest hint of pain. The bloom beginning, at last, to fade. The face of a maiden aunt, a loving sister. Not a wife.
And that was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? She would remain unwed. Malcolm would get his election. And the wounds they had inflicted on each other, deep though they were, would eventually heal.
She gathered up her skirts and went back into the inn.
16
Daisy was well into her confinement, with the baby due any day. Though Aunt Ursula had recovered enough to make the journey back to their London home, she, too, was suffering under enforced rest. Selina had more than enough to occupy herself with seeing that both her beloved relatives were kept in good spirits. Whenever she felt the slightest pang of regret, or heard a ring at the doorbell and felt her heart leap into her throat, or woke in the night from a tormented dream in which Malcolm fell to his knees in the garden of the Twynham inn and swore he’d renounce his title for love of her, she turned her mind to her family. As she always had. And if she found less satisfaction in it than she had before, she hid it well.
George and Anthea visited often. Alexander grew so distracted by the thought of Daisy’s approaching labour that he had to be forced out of the door to attend to his work. Isobel composed a new piece on the harp and received an invitation from Georgiana Whitby to stay with her family in their seaside country home over the summer.
“Of course you may go,” said Selina, forgetting, as she too often did, that she was not solely responsible for Isobel’s activities.
Isobel laid the letter from Georgiana back on the writing desk, looking at Selina with a slight frown. “I will not go, of course, if you will be lonely.”
“Lonely? Nothing of the sort! I will have so much to do while Daisy is preoccupied with the baby. And there will be Aunt Ursula to think of. We must take better care of her in future. She will not accept that she has grown frail.”
Isobel bit her lip. “Mrs Whitby has also invited Aunt Ursula to accompany me.”
“But that is wonderful! The sea air will do her a world of good.”
“Selina…” Isobel pushed aside her writing equipment and rested her chin on her hand, clearly struggling to find the right words for what she wanted to say. “I think I will not go.”
“Why on earth not? Have you fallen out with Georgiana?”
“Not at all. She is the perfect friend. I simply feel that…” She smiled, though it only made her look more anxious. “We sisters ought to stick together, you know.”
Selina shook her head, returning
