Page 57 of A Wallflower's Convenient Duke
Evelyn followed his gaze, her expression softening.
“Philip,” she said quietly, “Blanche is not her mother. She never was. I believe—no, I know—that she had no part in any ruthless scheming. Isabella may have been deceptive. But Blanche... Blanche has only ever shown you her heart.”
He shook his head slowly, the ache of regret rising again. “I didn’t see it. I saw only what I feared. I let the past dictate the truth.”
“You let pain cloud your judgment. That is human. But you can still choose differently.”
He looked at her. “Why are you so certain she’s innocent?”
Evelyn’s lips curved with a quiet, almost maternal pride. “Because I know the look of a woman falling in love, even when she’s trying not to show it. I saw it in Blanche’s eyes every time she looked at you—especially when she thought no one was watching.”
Philip’s breath caught, but Evelyn pressed on, her tone soft and unrelenting.
“I see now that Isabella is a social climber and a schemer. A mother who would use her own daughter as a pawn in her game. Blanche, on the other hand, has only ever been earnest. Brave. Curious. Compassionate. You’ve seen it too, I know you have. The question is, are you brave enough to forgive her for something she never did?”
The memory returned to him, clear and sharp—the moment he asked Blanche to marry him in the aftermath of the scandal. The look in her eyes hadn’t been triumph. It had been shock. Sadness. Even fear. That was not the look of a woman caught in a conspiracy—it had been the look of a woman caught in a trap not of her making.
He had mistaken her silence for guilt. But now he knew—it had been pain.
“She didn’t want to trap me,” he murmured aloud, the truth settling like a stone in his chest. “She was as much a victim of her mother’s plans as I was.”
Evelyn gave a small, approving nod. “Yes. And now she suffers, not just because of her mother’s betrayal, but because the man she was beginning to trust turned away from her in the moment she needed him most.”
Philip closed his eyes. The weight of it crashed over him.
“Then I’ve done her a greater harm than even Isabella could,” he said hoarsely.
“Not yet,” Evelyn whispered. “But you will, if you do nothing now.”
She moved once more to the door, her touch squeezing his shoulder one last time. “Love is not about ease, Philip. It’s about choosing again and again, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. And Blanche is worth that choice.”
The room was silent after she left, but her words remained—settled into the air like dust, like truth.
Philip rose slowly, his heart pounding with the stirrings of something he had not allowed himself to feel since that terrible night—hope. It flickered in the darkness, faint but insistent.
And perhaps... just perhaps... There was still time to make things right.
