Page 111 of In Need of a Duke
Alone.
I can’t stomach being away from England any longer. Or hear the filtered rumors at dinner parties about you and our marriage. I have broken us, and I’m returning in hopes you give me another chance at trying to rebuild our marriage.
I wouldn’t blame you if you have shut your heart to me. Honestly, I expect it. You haven’t written in years.
I will keep this short. I only wish to say I love you. It is an all-consuming love that won’t wash away, won’t quit.
For better or worse, I’m coming home to you.
Well…
She slumped back against the bed, tears streaming down her face.
What an impossible cad.
All those years ago, she had been swept up in their relationship, going to bed with him willingly not because she wished to trap him but because she loved him. They were to be married. She had always followed the rules, her heart had never been one to listen to reason. She had followed her heart, and there had been a consequence to them sharing a bed. And though terrified to confess it, Ian had been so happy.
But then their wedding night arrived. And it never had anything to do with what she said or what she did—it had never been about her.
CHAPTER 33
Ian glanceddown at his sketches again, then back to the half-erected frame of the glass house he was building for Charlotte. It was still too small.
“Damn it.”
“What is it?” Nathaniel asked from the stonewall twenty feet away.
His brother took a large bite out of a hand pie as the neighboring cow wandered over and nuzzled him, attempting to steal the hand pie.
“Will you go?” Nathaniel snapped. “I can barely keep it down as it is. The End has nothing on these cows. Yesterday, I attempted to walk through the field before fishing while eating a scone, and I thought I would have been trampled to death. It’s absurd.”
Ian nodded, laughing to himself and silently thankful that he had convinced Nathaniel to come stay with him at Stonehurst these past few weeks after what happened in London.
But still, he hadn't told his brother. There hadn’t been a perfect time. And maybe, more like, it was that he feared his brother would be furious with him.
Ian had ordered all the alcohol from Stonehurst to be emptied out, and for the first few days after his brother’s arrival, Nathaniel was violently ill. But after a week had passed, he had weathered the worst.
“You better eat that hand pie,” Ian said as the cow pushed its nose against Nathaniel's shoulder.
“I can't help it if she finds me a prize," Nathaniel said with a grin.
“Don't flatter yourself.”
Nathaniel turned his body, blocking the last few bites of the hand pie from the cow’s long tongue. "It's not as if anyone else is here," he grumbled.
That much was true.
Ian was well aware.
He was giving Charlotte time, but he would proceed with a divorce if she so wanted. Honestly, he had been too busy with his brother and now too busy attempting to build a glass house for her. Because even if they went through with a divorce, he wanted her to have a place for her plants. He wanted her to be happy above all else. He didn't want to think of it as a parting gift becausegiftmade it sound as though it were a happy occasion. But his heart was broken, and he had walked the halls of Stonehurst these past few weeks, numb and empty and missing her incredibly.
“I'll finish the hand pie,” Nathaniel said, and he scooted from his seat on the stone wall, glaring at the cow. “Go eat some grass.” He waved the cow away, then laughed. “She just wants some company. Don't we all?”
“Have you heard from her?” Ian asked, knowing full well that, like Charlotte, Arabella hadn't returned the letters that Nathaniel wrote.
“No.”
Nathaniel brushed off his hands before he walked through the tall grass, the wildflowers and daisies dancing around his feet.
