I couldn’t finish the sentence, so he did so for me. “You can’t be sure.”
I gazed up at him in pleading, trying to make him understand. Begging him to make me understand. But he merely stared down at me unmoved. I felt my heart shrivel inside my chest.
“Then I suppose we’re at an impasse,” he replied.
I could not speak, not past the lump that was forming in my throat, threatening to choke me. But it appeared Gage didn’t require a response. Instead, he turned and marched from the room.
As I watched him go, my lips wobbled and a single tear slipped from my eye, and then another. I pressed my palms to my eyes, grinding them into the sockets as I tried to calm myself. But the seal was broken, the dam was burst, and I dropped to my knees.
I wept quietly, my body shaking with grief and despair, wishing Gage would return, hoping he would stay away. And all the while hating that he had the ability to do this to me. I didn’t want to want him, to need him. It was so much easier, so much safer, to be on my own.
The look in his eyes as he’d realized I was not going to say yes kept flashing through my mind—the pain and anger. It made me sick to my stomach seeing what I’d done to him, and yet I could do nothing else. Not knowing how disastrous marriage under false pretenses could be.
In that moment, I think I loathed Sir Anthony more than I’d ever loathed him before, which was saying something. I cursed his name in every foul way I could imagine, furious that he’d taken so much from me.
I railed at my father and his foolish choice in picking a husband for me, and his inability to protect me from what was to come. Why hadn’t he seen what really lay behind my late husband’s motives? I’d trusted him. I’d trusted him to find a good man for me, trusted that his judgment was honorable and true, and he’d failed me, damning me to a three-year-long nightmare and a lifetime of regrets.
But my wailing swiftly devolved back into tears. I didn’t want to be so upset at my father. I didn’t want to feel this. After all, he was my father. He’d done the best by me that he could. If only he hadn’t let me down in this regard, how different my life might be.
I wept for the loss of my innocence. I wept for my friend William Dalmay and all the suffering he’d endured, his life ended too early. I wept for Dodd and Willie, and the old caretaker’s murder still unsolved. I wept for Gage and the pain I’d caused him. But mostly, I wept for myself, for my cowardice and the past hurts that stung too deep.
It was like scouring an infected wound clean, and though I knew it was probably for the best, I didn’t enjoy doing it—either during or after.
When my sobs finally ceased, I felt ill. My head pounded and my stomach churned, but I swiped away the remainder of my tears and climbed determinedly to my feet. I reached for my palette and my brush. There was no solace like art. Even if that art was of the man you’d just rejected. Taking a deep calming breath, I swirled my brush through the paint on my palette.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I woke the next morning stiff and bleary-eyed on the wicker settee in my art studio with Earl Gray curled up against my side. I vaguely remembered his comforting presence pressed against me as I stroked my fingers down his back and cried into his fur at some point during the night. I think I might even have hugged him, but he hadn’t squirmed away. The eyes of the peacefully slumbering feline opened to slits as if to say, “You’re welcome,” before closing again.
I pushed myself upright, and a blanket I hadn’t remembered pulling over myself slipped from my shoulders. I pressed a hand to my face as the shift in position made my sinuses pound. And as the haze of sleep cleared, I began to recall why I had been weeping in the middle of the night in the first place.
I looked up at Gage’s now finished portrait still propped on my easel. The first rays of dawn shone through the windows at my back and filtered through the conservatory’s foliage, bathing the painting in muted light. With a few hours of much-needed slumber, I found I could view it more objectively than before.
I’d chosen to paint him informally, standing near a window with his arm pressed to the frame at the level of his head. His coat had been discarded and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal his strong forearms. Light filtered through the window to limn his blond curls with gold and highlight his sharp features. But rather than looking outward, he had tilted his head to throw a glance at the viewer.