Chapter 22

“Alice!” Lydia exclaimed, flying down the steps at such a speed that Alice feared her older sister would fall.

“Lydia,” Alice said meekly, feeling a fresh wave of tears prick her eyes.

She was frozen in the doorway of her childhood home. Unable to go back. Unable to move forward. Something awful was happening, something her brain was making fuzzy and vague to protect her. She didn’t need to know the details to know that it hurt, though.

Lydia slowed down and then stopped a few paces before Alice, taking a moment to look her little sister up and down.

“Corey,” she said at last, looking toward the family butler, “would you be so kind as to assist the Duchess to the nearest sofa? I fear she is not well.”

“Come, Your Grace,” the grandfatherly-like butler urged gently, taking Alice’s elbow and hand. “Have a seat for Miss Lydia now, that’s it.”

Alice felt her legs move stiffly in the direction he guided her. “Thank you, Corey,” she replied in a hollow voice as she was seated. “Would you please be so kind as to go get my bags from the carriage?”

“You’re staying?” Lydia asked, taking a seat next to her. She reached out to take one of Alice’s hands and gasped. “Alice, your hands! They’re freezing!”

Alice looked down numbly as Lydia picked up both her hands and started rubbing them together in an attempt to warm them up.

Is that how people died of a broken heart? Did everything just turn to ice? It certainly felt like it. Every breath, every heartbeat, came with a stabbing pain that would not abate.

“He gave me the manor, but I cannot stay there,” Alice said in the middle of her sister’s worried mutterings.

“What was that, dearest?” Lydia asked, still rubbing Alice’s hands.

Alice turned her head slowly toward her older sister, feeling more tears spill down her cheeks. “I said, he gave me the manor, but I cannot stay there,” she croaked.

“Gave you—what? What do you mean, gave you? What happened that made him decide to give you the manor?” Lydia asked, scooting closer to her.

“I don’t know,” Alice choked out, hating the truth of those words. “I just know that this morning he decided that he could not be with me, and he left. He told me to stay, to make Baxter Manor my own. But I couldn’t stay there. Not without him.”

She began to shake her head, imagining the misery she’d feel waking up in the empty bed she once shared with her husband every morning. How painful it would be to even glance at the swing or walk into the library she so carefully and affectionately brought back to life. Places where they’d embraced one another. Accepted one another. There was no way she could be there alone now.

Lydia gave her a confused look, but instead of asking more questions, she took her by the arm and helped her up.

“Come, Sister,” she said calmly, “let us get you upstairs and into a bath. Then, I am going to send a servant to retrieve Juliet from the Barringers’ and another to fetch Barbara, and we are going to sort this out.”

“What about Papa?” Alice asked, becoming vaguely aware that she needed her father’s permission to come back home.

Fear overtook her sadness for a moment as she pictured being kicked out and forced back to Baxter. She had not thought about how her father would react to her failed marriage. What would she do?

“He is staying at our summer home until the end of the week, and I will handle him after,” Lydia assured her, killing her new fears immediately.

An hour later, Alice sat at the tea table, clad in a simple white shift, her skin and hair still wet from her bath. She’d allowed the water to be prepared and her clothes to be removed, but when she was left alone, she simply sank into the water until it came up to just under her nose, and stayed there until the servants returned to pull her out.

Now she sat at the table in her childhood room, surrounded by her childhood friends. Lydia was behind her, running a brush through her long, dark, wet hair in a soothing, motherly fashion, and Barbara and Juliet were seated across from her. Both looked at her with heartbroken expressions.

“This is not right,” Barbara stated for the hundredth time. “He cannot just leave you like this!”

“He did,” Alice mumbled with a numb shrug.

“Something is wrong with him,” Juliet said accusingly, looking more cross than sad. “He needs our help.”

Alice looked over at her little sister, sympathy welling up for her through her own pain. Their father had never truly paid any of them any mind, and Duncan had been the first man who showed Juliet any true paternal if not brotherly care. It was as if she had lost him too.

“I tried to help him, sweetheart,” Alice told her, giving her an apologetic look as fresh tears filled her eyes. “I still want to.”

“Then you should go back to Baxter,” Juliet replied, standing up suddenly. “We all should. We can go together and wait for him. Send his guards out to go get him.”

“Juliet, that is enough!” Lydia snapped, her voice forceful but quiet.

“He does not want to see me, dearest,” Alice insisted, her voice breaking as she looked at Juliet with pleading eyes. “He is not coming back.”

Juliet looked back at her with defiance and anger, and then, as if she had played grownup for too long, she suddenly bowed her head and walked over to her, sitting on the floor by her chair and putting her head in her lap.

Alice stroked her little sister’s hair soothingly as Juliet, caught in that age between adulthood and childhood, cried for the older brother she only briefly got to have.

“They said he was insane,” Barbara said, breaking through the muffled sounds of their sniffles. “Perhaps they were right.”

“Barbara, come now, that is not helpful,” Lydia sighed, sitting in Juliet’s chair.

“Well, look at the evidence,” Barbara hissed, glancing back at Alice. “No right-minded man would do this to a woman. Especially Alice!”

“Darling, please, calm down,” Alice pleaded, unable to take the shouting.

After another flood of tears streamed down her face, a dull ache had started to form between her temples, wrapping around them tightly like a band. She had explained to them what had happened, and it had shocked and confused them all. She could not blame Barbara for her response, but she could not bear any yelling right now, not with her head ready to explode at any second.

“I’m sorry,” Barbara muttered. “But this is exactly why I chose not to marry. Alice, this is all my fault, and I am so sorry.”

Alice felt the pain in her head grow sharper as she drew her eyebrows down and looked at her friend questioningly. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

Barbara looked back at her with guilt-filled eyes, looking as if she were ready to spill some tears of her own. “I am the one who dared you to go off and do that idiotic, little experiment. I am the one who said you would not get caught. If I had not goaded you so, you would never have done it, and you would never be here.”

Through her pain, Alice let out a soft chuckle and shook her head at her worried friend. “I have never blamed you for my situation,” she told her, reaching across the small table to grab her hand. “And as painful as this marriage has been, I would not trade it for anything. It was, for a short time, the most joyful part of my life. I will never forget that, and I will never forget that it was you who pushed me toward that happiness.”

Barbara lost her well-fought battle with her tears and bowed her head as they spilled down onto her untouched plate of food.

Without a word, the four women gathered around one another and embraced tightly.

“Come now,” Lydia urged, her voice breaking after they’d hugged for several long moments. “You cannot stay like this. None of us can.”

She cleared her throat and sniffled, then briefly turned in a circle as her hand went to her face.

“We need fun and relaxation, not pity and sorrow. The evening is still young. What shall we do?”

“We could have a ladies’ dance!” Juliet suggested excitedly, all too willing to help.

“Intriguing, but no.” Barbara laughed. “Aside from you, three ladies, I wish not to see those venomous chickens we call friends.”

“They are not all bad,” Juliet argued with a sigh. Still, she let the suggestion go.

“A round of card games and dinner in the back garden,” Lydia suggested. “We could have the torches lit and have a few bottles of wine brought up from Papa’s cellar.”

“Really?” Juliet gasped excitedly, her eyes glittering at the potential mischief.

“Just this once,” Lydia warned lightly, then smiled. “I believe the occasion calls for it. What do you think, Alice?”

All Alice truly wanted to do was crawl between her bedsheets and disappear, but she knew her band of sisters would never allow it. If getting drunk on her father’s secret stash was her next best option, then she would take it.

“What are we waiting for?” she asked, motioning to the servant holding a clean dress for her. “Let us pop some corks.”

She assured them that she just needed a shawl, but once she was alone in her room, she went to her reticule and opened it. She pulled out Duncan’s cravat—the one he’d wrapped around her wounded hand—and wrapped it around her wrist.

Longing poured through her as she looked down at it, but she needed the scrap of fabric. It was all she had left of him.

Making sure her wrist was covered by her nightgown and shawl, Alice slipped out of her room and joined her band of sisters.