“She’s not running away—she’s finally understanding her true position.” Beatrice blinked. “Can you hear yourself?”
“Yes, I hear myself very well,” he countered, tugging on his clothes, dismissive.
A look of frustration furrowed his brow as if Margaret’s actions were so disappointing he could hardly stomach speaking to her. And, in his eyes, it seemed the whole thing could be righted in a morning. “I am discussing the fact that Margaret is still perfectly acceptable to be a member of my family, and I do not even know why she would consider abandoning it.”
There was such rancor in his tone she nearly stepped back.
“I do not follow,” she said.
Dropping her hand from the doorframe, she took a step forward, not caring she was in naught but her night rail. “There was never a question of Margaret’s worthiness,” she ground out. “I have no idea why you mention it. She is the dearest person. She is the one who has been treated poorly by those around her.”
“Not Kit?” he mocked coolly. “His feelings and pain matter not?”
She winced. What was this? It certainly was not her reasonable, collected duke. He was raw with anger and emotion. “She does not wish to marry him when she is no longer the silly, innocent, trusting girl that she was. She can no longer simply put herself into a man’s hands and assume that all will be well. She has seen what can happen now. And that takes some adjusting to.”
“Does it?” he barked. “Has she truly seen what can happen when a young lady goes from her family into some fantasy? She is abandoning my brother for what? A dream of equality that has never been and may never be? Does she know the actual ending to that story? My own m—”
He broke off, his gaze flashing with pain, and he turned away swiftly.
She gaped at him; then it dawned on her, and she closed her eyes, trying to steel herself for the agony she was witnessing. “This is not about Margaret, William. This is about something else.”
He looked back over his squared shoulder, his jaw tightened.
“Tell me,” she said. “I am your friend. Who else should you tell but me? What is this about?”
William did not reply, and as she stared at him, she understood too well the word that he had used: abandoned. “This is about your mother,” she stated, even as her stomach tightened.
There was something wild about him. He thought he was acting logically, above emotion, but he was far more in it than she or Margaret.
William jerked back. “Don’t be a fool.”
“I am not a fool,” she countered, shocked he would say such a thing. Her voice grew lower, firmer in the face of his own lack of reason. “I can see right now that you are tremendously upset by Margaret’s choice. It, I think, affects you as much as Kit. Why?” she asked, fearing she already knew the answer.
“Why?” he growled, his shoulders tensing as he whipped back toward her. “Why do you think? She has broken my brother’s heart. It has been broken once before, and I cannot allow it again.”
“This is not about you,” she pointed out, locking gazes with him. “This is not something you can allow or not allow. You cannot make Margaret choose him. And you cannot make Margaret stay in love with him. Nor can you control if Kit will behave like an adult or a wounded Romeo. This is beyond your control.” She lifted her chin. “Even if you are a duke.”
“Nothing is beyond a duke,” he said harshly. “And this debacle is why love should never be trusted.”
“What?” She gasped, stunned by his passion and his completely ludicrous claim.
He shook his head, his anger and pain humming through him and filling the air around them. “This is why I insisted that when you and I married, love would never be a factor, and I am grateful that I do not love you and that you do not love me.”
She stared at him, aghast. Her own heart ached. It ached so intensely she could scarce believe the power of it. “I beg your pardon.”
He squared his jaw. “I am grateful that we are not so weak. If Margaret was not so colored by emotion, she would see that Kit was the best decision for her. I wish she was as ruled by logic as you.”
“Colored by emotion,” she repeated quietly, trying to grasp the way her life was unraveling so quickly.
“Your Grace,” she began. “Right now? You are naught but emotion. You are the one who is living in the past, living in the pain of when your mother left you. And by God, I am truly sorry for what happened. It must’ve been terrible to lose your mother that way, to have her run away from you, to take a chance on love so great that your father refused to let her see you.”
“Love,” he scoffed, his voice a growl. “That could not have been love. And if it was love, it ruined everything. She left us. She abandoned—”
“No,” Beatrice cut in. “Your father did that.”
He sucked in a sharp breath.
“My darling friend,” she said, refusing to back away from his pain. “You strive to be perfect and untouched by emotion, but you are the one who fools yourself. No one can hold so tightly to perfection and not break, Will. It doesn’t exist. And because you so desperately wish to be seen as above feeling, you are trying to push me away. You have forged a shield with your pain, but it does not protect you. It is creating the very agony you fear.”