Twice the Temptation (48 page)
Read Twice the Temptation Online
Authors: Beverley Kendall
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical romance, #Victorian
Rutherford bent his imprisoned arm at the elbow. With obvious reluctance, he offered up the envelope. “She sent this for you,” Rutherford said, his voice strained and hoarse.
With a cautious step back, Alex dropped his hands to his sides. At first, he could only stare at the innocuous rectangular paper, uncomprehending. Slowly, the fog released its hold on his senses.
His gaze darted to the sheet of paper crushed in his friend’s other hand. She’d also written a letter to Rutherford and it was obvious he’d read his. Alex then recalled the footman hurrying down the hall. In that instant, he knew the man he’d passed with so little regard, so consumed with his own happiness, had been the bearer of the news that had sent his friends into such morbid melancholy. News that would assuredly send him someplace far worse.
Charlotte wasn’t hurt. The evidence stood before him in the form of her brother. Had she been injured or taken ill, a stable full of horses wouldn’t have been able to drag Rutherford from her side. But too swiftly on the heels of staggering relief nipped a growing fear, for penned in her signature slopes and curls was his name emblazoned across the front of the envelope. A letter from her on the day of their wedding could signify only one thing.
“She’s not coming, is she?” His cravat—silk mulberry that his valet had fussed into an elaborate knot—felt as if it had a stranglehold on his words.
“Cartwright—”
Alex’s head jerked violently in the direction of his friend, the set of his countenance effectively cutting Creswell off at the utterance of his name.
Armstrong sighed and ran his hand through a thatch of golden hair, regarding him with eyes filled with the kind of compassion no man should have to countenance on his wedding day. Sympathy was bad enough, but pity? Intolerable.
Directing his attention back to Rutherford, Alex stared at the envelope unclaimed in his friend’s hand, knowing its contents promised to deliver him the felling blow.
“What does she say?” he asked, his voice a hollow imitation of his former self.
“I did not read it,” Rutherford muttered gruffly, extending his arm so the tan paper touched the flesh exposed at Alex’s wrist.
The fires of perdition could not have singed his skin more at the contact and Alex retreated several steps as he surveyed it with abhorrence.
“What did she tell you?” he asked quietly, dragging his gaze up to Rutherford’s.
Three years ago when his friend had paced the halls outside his wife’s bedchamber awaiting the birth of their twins, he’d worn the same expression he did at present, a helpless sort of fright.
“What does she say!” Alex’s voice exploded like a cannon blast in graveyard silence. “Isn’t it in the letter she sent to you?”
Isn’t it in the letter she sent to you?
The echo transcended the room to storm the corridors of the prestigious church.
Rutherford appeared to be rallying his courage, swallowing and then drawing in a ragged breath before he said, “The footman brought the letters only moments before your arrival. I was coming—”
“God dammit, man, quit all your blasted blathering. Just tell me what she wrote!”
Rutherford made an uncomfortable sound in his throat before replying in graveled tones, “She wrote to beg my forgiveness for any scandal or shame her actions may bring upon the family but…says she can’t marry you.”
A roar sounded in Alex’s ears as he grasped the back of a nearby chair, the coolness of the metal frame muted by his silk white gloves. He blinked rapidly in an effort to halt the stinging in his eyes and swallowed to douse the burning in his throat. And a numbness such as he’d never known assailed him, turning his limbs into leaden weights.
“Where is she?”
Stark pain and fear flashed in Rutherford’s pale blue eyes. “I do not know. She’s quit the Manor but gave no indication as to where she’s gone. She merely states she is safe and that we must not concern ourselves unduly over her.”
The weight on Alex’s chest threatened to crush every organ beneath it. But such destruction would do little to his heart, for it had already broken into a multitude of pieces.
Like that, with the flourish of a pen, she was gone.
Alex turned to the open door. Around him, he felt rather than saw his friends move in chorus toward him. He stopped abruptly, angled his head over his shoulder and met their gazes. “Let me be. I shall be fine.” But he wouldn’t lie to himself; he would never be fine.
The three men did not advance any farther.
Alex blindly put one foot in front of the other. With every step, he discarded a piece of the life he’d foolishly dreamt to have with her…until there were none.
He took his leave of the room, his leave of the church, to start his way back to a life obliterated to a pile of nothingness.
~~~
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