After the Wedding (The Worth Saga #2)(44)

Camilla had not realized that Rector Miles had made her feel small and unwanted for every one of those eighteen months until she had experienced kindness again.

She had to keep looking forward—not back. Be reasonable, her mind whispered. It would just be for a day. Half a day. But her stomach churned. Miles had never hurt her, so why did she feel so utterly harmed by the prospect of seeing him again?

Adrian looked over at her.

“What did we decide about lies?” Camilla heard herself say.

“True. I’m terrible at them.” He gave her a warming smile. “That’s why I’m sure you will come up with a far better story than I ever would. Especially if we work together.”

She didn’t want a story. She just didn’t want to do it.

“Camilla?” He looked at her—really looked at her, this time with a searching glance that ran over her trembling hands, then traveled up the length of her arms to her tense, tight shoulders. “Is something the matter?”

She opened her mouth to say that everything was lovely, fine, no problem…

Nothing came out.

“Camilla?” He took a step toward her. “Whatever is the matter?”

Nothing was the matter. Everything he was asking for was logical. All he was asking her to do was…

…Was to go back into a place she could no longer bear to see, with someone who had claimed to care about her soul, but had made her desperation the object of laughter.

Adrian was asking her to look back, and every time she looked back, she thought of her family. She thought of the people who had never loved her. She remembered all the hope that had never come to fruition. She didn’t want to look back.

Camilla drew in a deep breath, then another, then all she could concentrate on was trying to breathe through the iron fist that gripped her chest.

“Camilla?” He took a step toward her. “Are you crying?”

“No.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I hate crying. My eyes are just easily bothered, and it’s windy out.”

He stopped a pace from her. “Camilla. We’re in this together, remember? We’re allies. We’re friends. If something is the matter, you can tell me.”

She hadn’t meant to say it; even though he’d told her to speak, she hadn’t meant to really do it.

But when her mouth opened to say once more that nothing was the matter, something else came out.

“I can’t go back,” she said. “I can’t. I can’t look back.”

He stood in place. Through the haze of her tears, she could see him shaking his head in confusion.

“I want to. I want to be useful. I am trying so hard, but I can’t, I can’t. I don’t want to have to remember. Nobody wants me. Nobody ever, ever wants me to stay.”

Now grief and anger twined together, rising up inside her. It was one thing for her eyes to get misty. It was another thing entirely to sob. She wouldn’t. It would be weak and ugly and—damn.

She had always felt her emotions so keenly, and this time was no different. She swiped at her eyes.

He looked totally taken aback.

“I left my family,” she told him. “I didn’t tell you the full truth before. Do you know what happened to them? My father was convicted of treason. I tried to walk away from it. My uncle took me in. I told you that.”

This was why she couldn’t look back—because the past hurt too much.

Camilla could recall what happened as clear as day—that conversation with Judith when she’d decided to go to her uncle. “Camilla,” Judith had said, “he’s stuffy. He doesn’t love you.”

And Camilla, stupid child that she had been, hadn’t wanted to understand the truth. She’d just wanted to forget the people who pointed at them in the streets and called them names. She had wanted her life not to change.

Camilla felt her fists clench. She looked over at Adrian and told him the devastating truth. “My eldest sister said our family should stay together because we loved each other. I told her that I wouldn’t starve.”

Judith had looked at her and said, “If you don’t want to be loved, we don’t want to love you.”

She remembered that feeling of foolish surety she had harbored that could only belong to a child. She remembered how upset Judith had been. They’d had an all-out row.

Judith had always had something of a temper, and it had ignited at that. At the very end, Judith had stalked out of the room, pausing only in the doorway to deliver this: “Have it your way. I hope you never have love again. I hope you don’t get to wear it or eat it or experience it. When you’re crying yourself to sleep at night because nobody cares about you, don’t come crawling to me and expect me to make it better. You made your choice. You don’t get love anymore.”

Judith had been right. Camilla hadn’t had love—not ever again. Not after that.

Camilla had asked her uncle to post letters for months after she’d arrived. She had tried writing for years—even though she hadn’t known her sister’s direction, she’d sent the letters to her uncle to send on for her.

There had been nothing from Judith but resounding silence. That silence had swallowed all her hope.

When she was sixteen, after four years of silence, Camilla had vowed to look forward, not back.