Once a Wallflower, At Last His Love (Scandalous Seasons #6)(69)

“You know I am correct,” her aunt continued ruthlessly.

“You are not correct, Aunt Agatha,” she said softly. She looked at the elegantly clad older woman with her greying brown hair and gracefully aged face. “In this cold, emotionless world you dwell in, you believe you are correct. But you are not.” Shame clogged her throat, making speech difficult. “With my fear for my brother and sisters, I allowed you to draw me into that world.” She shook her head. Pride brought her back up as she at last told her aunt what she was thinking. “And I don’t want to be part of your world. I don’t want to become you.”

Her aunt’s eyes snapped into thin slits. “What are you saying?” she barked.

“I’m saying I don’t want to see you anymore, Aunt Agatha. I do not like the person you’ve made me become.” Or perhaps that darkness had always been part of her soul? “And I certainly don’t—”

She struck Hermione across the face with an open palm. “You insolent baggage!” Outrage seeped from the woman’s dark blue eyes.

Hermione cradled her cheek, stunned. The usually unflappable older woman shook with rage. Did all people harbor hidden emotions? Aunt Agatha. Sebastian. Herself.

“After everything I’ve done for you?”

She flexed her jaw at the pain radiating from her up through her temple. “I am grateful for everything you’ve done,” Hermione continued. “But the moment you walk out this door, I do not want to see you again. Nor do I want you to see Hugh or Addie or Elizabeth.” Though she would wager all she’d earned as Mr. Michael Michaelmas that her aunt had no intention of ever seeing or acknowledging her eldest niece.

“Grateful?” Her aunt scoffed. “This is how you would repay me? I brought you to London, gave you a Season…”

Hermione started across the room. Sebastian was to call on Papa soon and she did not want her victorious, gloating aunt to serve as an additional reminder of the great crime Hermione had committed.

“What are you doing?”

As though, he needs reminders. Hermione yanked the door open. “You should leave, Aunt Agatha.”

Her aunt’s hand fluttered about her breast and then she slapped it against her heart. “Well, I never.” She stomped over the floor and then paused at the threshold of the room.

For a moment Hermione hovered behind the door, imagining her aunt intended to strike her once again, but then she stood firm.

The older woman jerked her gaze over Hermione’s frame. Her lip pulled in a sneer. “You may send me away, you may wish to never see me again because you do not like the person I’ve made you become.” She leaned close and Hermione forced herself to not back away. “You blame me for the duke’s displeasure in being wed to one such as you.” The words were a lash upon Hermione’s soul. An ugly laugh burst from the other woman’s lips. “The truth is, I’ve not made you anything you already weren’t, Hermione. I suggested you trap the duke and yet,” she smiled a cold, emotionless grin, “you were the one who actually led him to Lord Brookfield’s office. You merely send me away to hide from the truth.”

“What is that?” Hermione forced past numb lips.

“That for all your protestations, you are no less ruthless or title-grasping than I myself was.” With that, her aunt snapped her skirts and swept from the room, head held high.

Hermione stared after her long after she’d left, her heart thumping wildly. She drew in one slow breath. Then another. And another. However, she could not escape the hideous truth of her aunt’s vile accusations, all the more painful because of the truth to them. She covered her face with her hands. For all her aunt had been wrong about, in this regard, she’d been unerringly on the mark—she had no one to blame but herself for what she’d done to Sebastian. The truth of that was no balm for the guilt she now carried and would forever carry.

Filled with restlessness, Hermione wandered back over to her spot beside the window. She pulled the curtain back and peered out. Mayhap he wouldn’t come. Mayhap he’d decided she was unworthy of this great sacrifice on his part, because she was. Even as she loved him, Sebastian deserved more than a cowardly woman driven by fear who would betray him in this manner.

A stable match, an emotionless one would also be a lonely one…

She pressed her eyes closed. He’d spoken of more than an empty, emotionless entanglement and still even knowing that she’d trapped him into the very type of union he would have avoided.

A black carriage rumbled up to the front of their modest townhouse. The conveyance rocked to a stop and a moment later the liveried driver hopped from the perch atop his box then pulled the door open. Sebastian’s impossibly tall, elegant frame stepped from the carriage in a sapphire coat with fawn-colored breeches. He tugged on the lapels of his jacket. His mouth tightened with what she believed to be distaste for what he must do.

Look up at me, Sebastian. Know that I love you. Let that mean something.

As though feeling her gaze upon him, Sebastian’s broad shoulders straightened and he glanced up momentarily. His gaze immediately found her lone figure in the floor-length window.

The breath left her on a swift exhale and coward that she was, she let the curtain flutter back into place.

If he’d looked at her with the icy rage of last evening or the black fury, might be preferable, easier to bear than the blank, emptiness in his once warm eyes.