Page 76 of The Dreaming Beauty
It meant his whole life was a lie.
Chapter 31
Tansy woke to a tearrolling down her cheek. She wiped it away and rolled onto her side. Flashes of a dream passed through her mind, and she put her finger to her mouth and bit down on the skin, trying to transfer the pain gathering in her chest to somewhere else.
She was a young girl again, standing next to Aster at her mother’s funeral.
“Why does she have to leave me?”
The stark image was replaced with one of Marcus walking away from her.
He’s leaving me too.
The too-recent pain from her dream elicited another tear.
She wiped it away even faster than the first one. Was it a premonition? No. She was not going to make this into something it wasn’t. After Marcus learned she had turned down his brother, he would see reason. He would know where her heart truly lay. Her dream was not an ominous sign of the future. It was wallowing, and she would not give in.
Later in the morning, while darning stockings with her aunts in the drawing room, a knock on the front door sounded. The steady staccato sent her heart racing. Had Marcus come to his senses so quickly? Aster stood to answer it, and Tansy dropped her sewing into the basket, her fingers trembling. To her great surprise, her aunt returned with the duke.
Her disappointment made her forget to greet him. She did not think he would restate his earlier declarations of affection, but it was not quite comfortable seeing him again so soon. Evidently, by his somber expression, he felt the same way. Aster took a seat by Tansy and her other aunts on the sofa, the heat of the late morning making the tight position a sweltering one. The first thing she would do once her inheritance came was to refurnish the cottage and see if they could not squeeze in another sofa.
His Grace sat across from them in Marcus’s chair. Admittedly, it wasn’t Marcus’s chair, but at some point, she had come to think of it as his.
“How did you like the party yesterday?” he asked, his question directed toward her aunts.
“I liked it very much,” Daisy said, grinning where Tansy could not. “I thought the hard candy wrapped in gold foil most creative.”
“That was my idea,” His Grace said, cheering a bit. He glanced at Tansy, but she looked away.
“And how is Lady Melbourne?” Aster asked, oblivious to the tension between Tansy and the duke. “Does she still suffer from a headache?”
“She has been having quite a few of those lately, but this time I did not invite her to come along. I hope you are not too disappointed.”
“Not at all.” Iris’s arms folded, and her elbow hit Tansy in the ribs. It was not done intentionally, but it got her to speak. After all, His Grace was a good man. It was not his fault he was not Marcus.
“And are Mr. Taylor’s friends still in town?” she said.
“His friends? I did not know he had any friends in town.”
No wonder the Cadogens had stood so far from the party. The Masked Baron probably garnered quite a bit of attention wherever he went. “I must have been mistaken. I still do not know everyone in town.”
“Speaking of my brother...” The duke tugged at his cravat, quite damaging the double knot. “He has returned to Oxford much earlier than expected. He hopes to do a series of lectures before the fall semester.”
Tansy leaned forward, sure she did not understand. “He left?”
His brother squirmed. She’d never seen him nervous before but was quite certain he was telling her the exact truth. Shock seeped through her skin like Whit-field’s hard, persistent rains. She wanted to curl up on the ground as Daisy often did. Anything to protect herself from the cold, hollow reality that Marcus had left her without saying goodbye.
Her aunts were quiet. Marcus’s departure affected all of them. He’d been a good friend. Too good. Tansy fought the hold of despair and tried to assess the problem logically. She would write to him and demand an explanation.
No, she couldn’t write to him. They were not engaged. She couldn’t go to him either. Such an idea at that distance was illogical, nonsensical. Would he come back at Christmas? Would he avoid her even then? Her hand went to her mouth, and she dug her fingernails into her lips as the inevitable hot tears stung her eyes.
She stood suddenly. “Excuse me, I—I left my fan upstairs.”
The duke’s knowing expression was filled with compassion. “Go,” he said. “Take your time.”
Time. She would have plenty of that now. But she already knew it would never be enough to get over Marcus.
Chapter 32
