Page 27 of A Duke's Unwanted Bride
She swallowed as she hastily let go of her sister. “I am not asking to have all your time. I am simply asking you to act like you care about me.”
“Of course, I care about you. You are my sister after all.” Bianca sighed as though she were dealing with a particularly irate toddler.
The sigh broke something in Adele. “And yet you have not even visited me once since my husband died. The only correspondence I had from you was my invitation to this party.”
She is my sister, and yet the Black Widows have been more kind to me than she has.
Her sister stiffened. “And what good would a visit do? It would not undo your widowhood.”
“It would have helped me feel less alone. You could have brought my nieces, and we could all have spent some time together in Kidlington house.” Adele swallowed around the lump forming in her throat. “I lost my husband, Bianca. My husband died in front of me on our wedding day.” She hadn’t loved him as a wife, but she’d treasured him as a friend.
“And while that is a tragedy, I do not want my children exposed it. I feared that having them around you would only make your grief harder to bear.” There was something in the words that Bianca was saying that made Adele think that was not the entirety of the truth.
A suspicion formed in her mind, and she clenched her fist as coldness spread through her chest. “You could have just asked. You could have written. Anything.”
“I have not had the time for such things. I have been planning this event.” Bianca gestured around them.
It is always some excuse.Bianca, and her other sister, Mildred, always did this. Every time, they gave Adele a reason why they could not visit. Why they could not write or spend time together. And she had always accepted it, but now, she could not.
Maybe it was because the Black Widows treated her with such kindness. Maybe it was because she still had some leftover anger from her fight with the Duke. Whatever the reason, Bianca found herself unable to let things go. To let Bianca walk away and force down the feelings that had been bubbling up within her for years.
“Even now, you will not even ask me how I am. You have not even offered your condolences, let alone any kind of affection.” Bianca met her sister’s gaze. “What is your excuse this time?”
Bianca’s eyebrows rose so high that they were at risk of disappearing into her hairline. “I already said that you may stay out here as long as you wish; I will see that you are not disturbed.”
“But you are my sister.”
“And what has that got to do with any of this?”
“You are supposed to care about me, to look out for me, and yet you treat me like a stranger. Like we scarcely know each other.”
“That is because we do not know each other. You were still a babe when I left home.”
The words hit Adele like a slap to the face. Her sister had just confirmed her worst fears. She saw Adele as a stranger, and she treated her as a stranger.
“And did that never bother you? Did it never upset you that you did not know me?” Adele moved towards her, eyes stinging in the wind. “It did not have to be like this between us. We could have been close; we could have cared for one another.”
“I had other things to focus on. I was married. I had children of my own to look after. Do you really expect me to look after a child who was not mine as well?” Bianca folded her arms over her chest.
Adele recoiled away from her sister, but she could not bring herself to drop the topic. “You could have come and visited. I was a child. Do you know how lonely it was with only mother and father for company? And even then, they were scarcely home.”
“And carted around my children? Come now, Adelaide, be reasonable,” Bianca tutted.
“I am being reasonable. You act as though this estate is ages away from our own. It is scarcely more than an hour’s ride, and that is at a slow pace,” Adele pointed out.
“Adele, it is my fortieth birthday party; is now really the most appropriate time to discuss this?” Bianca tapped a foot on the ground.
“Probably not, but when else will we talk about this? When am I supposed to get you to talk to me, to listen to me? You abandoned me.” Adele shrugged.
“I grew up. There is a difference, Adelaide.”
“You say that, but you chose not to be in my life. You chose not to get to know me,” Adele retorted.
Bianca began to pace, throwing her hands in the air as she did so. “And what would you have me do differently? We do not live in some fantasy world where everything gets to be the way you want simply because you wish it.”
“I know that.” Adele crossed her own arms, resisting the urge to start pacing as well. “I suppose, what I am saying is that we are strangers, but we do not have to remain so. We could get to know one another.”
She tried to keep the hope from her voice, but she could not. She reached for Bianca’s hand, but her sister moved away from her, shaking her head.
