Her head swam, her cheeks burned, it seemed every eye was on her as she staggered along the paths towards home. Her feet were as unsteady as her mind, too painfully focused on the loss of her one bright shining memory, the only thing Sir Martin could not steal, to do anything else. Her ears rang strangely, no sound audible but the frantic, scattered, agonized pattering of her broken heart.
What would she do without Colin? He could go on as he ever had, perhaps even with Miss Arden at his side, or some other nameless, faceless proper Society girl. He could be what she’d always assumed he would be. Happy without her, better without her, loving without her.
It was not supposed to hurt this much. She had been resigned to it before. Now…
She covered her mouth as a soft sob nearly broke free. She squeezed her eyes shut on the falling tears, every bone in her body suddenly on fire. She couldn’t bear this. She was free to do as she wished and yet she had no direction. Nothing to hope for or dream of, nothing to wonder about or wish on a star for, nothing to take her from her reality.
Nothing.
She could not bear this.
Mayfair was suddenly a place of nightmares. Everything… every tree and horse and person… would remind her of Colin. The houses she was now seeing would remind her of the walk to Colin’s. Hyde Park would be all memories of Colin. The dress she was wearing had been a gift from Colin. Even Tibby would remind her of Colin.
She had to leave. She had to take Freddie and go.
She did not know where, and she did not care either. Anywhere would be better than here. She was not desperate for funds anymore, she could work anywhere and do anything without worry.
But she could not wait. She would not.
Explanation and reason would be impossible.
She was leaving at once, within the hour, if she had anything to say about it.
And no one would dissuade her.
Colin slowly made his way home after escorting Lily Arden to her aunt’s home. He’d happened upon her in the park by accident, and, finding her alone and unaccompanied, he had volunteered to see her there. He’d spent the entire morning finalizing the details of Susannah’s debts and finances, and now it was done, he was finally starting to see a hint of his old self.
But then he’d seen Susannah, and he’d had a devil of a time containing himself.
She wanted to talk about them. He wasn’t ready yet. There was too much left to do.
Yes, he had gone to extraordinary lengths for her, and he would have done more if he could, but he did not do any of it to win her. He was only doing what he could to ease her path, to do what he should have been doing for fifteen years. Instead of doubting her and hating her, thinking the very worst of her, and doing his level best to pretend she was nothing to him, he ought to have given in to his instincts, found a way to dig deeper, and trusted what his heart had been trying to tell him all along.
If he had, perhaps he might have saved her sooner. He might have prevented the horrors in her past, or at least relieved some of them. They might have found happiness. Had it not been for his wounded pride and obstinacy, he might have been worthy of her.
She was the single most remarkable woman in the world. And he loved her beyond all comprehension and reason, far more deeply and thoroughly than he thought he could bear. He loved her enough to know that marriage to him, as he was, while his wildest and most fervent fantasy, would never be a single percentage of what she ought to have.
Through the help of the Gent and his associates, and Colin’s own, they had managed to make a start, and perhaps eventually he would be able to attain his heart’s only desire. But while he was so unworthy, he couldn’t presume such things.
He entered his house to find the strange solitude he had become accustomed to of late. He peered into a drawing room, wondering why the drapes had been pulled to make the room so dark.
He set about pulling back the drapes of the room, feeling as if he were starting to pull back the thick and darkening drapes of his own heart and soul as well. It was an apt analogy.
“Lady Raeburn, sir,” Bartlet’s voice intoned a bit breathlessly from the door.
Colin started to turn when he heard a very shrill voice screech, “What the hell did you do, Colin Gerrard?”
He smirked a little and raised a brow as he turned completely to face Tibby. “I thought you said a lady never swears,” he replied cheekily.
Tibby’s expression wiped his amusement away. Her face was contorted with rage, her lace cap askew, and all hint of her usual finery gone as she stood before him in a simple gray dress and plum colored walking coat. She snarled a bit at him. “Do you see a lady at this moment?” she snapped.
Colin took a moment, measuring Tibby’s obvious distress and anger, something rather nervous unfurling in the pit of his stomach. “What’s happened, Tibby?”
“What’s happened is that I came home from the milliner to find my beloved companion packing her bags,” Tibby snapped, something that looked too much like tears shimmering in her eyes. “It was quick work, as only her old and tatty things were packed. I persuaded her to take two of her newer gowns, but I am half convinced she will sell them, as I believe she did with the others. She did pack Freddie’s clothes, not that he’ll care about that, considering they’ll be living like vagrants.”
Colin marched over to her and seized her arms. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.
She met his eyes indignantly. “I couldn’t stop her, not even when I begged. She refused to say why, only that she couldn’t stay. She was distant and distressed and so pale I thought she was ill. But for all of that, she said she was well, she simply had to leave at once. I knew you had to be at the heart of it. The moment they left, I…”
“They’re gone?” he whispered, his chest beginning to throb. “Where?”
Tibby blinked and was suddenly softer. “I don’t know, Colin. I don’t think she knows either. But yes, they are gone.”
Colin released her arms and tore from the room, his heart in his throat as he ran from the house. She couldn’t be gone, it was a misunderstanding, a mistake. She would never leave Tibby, she was devoted to her. And Freddie was well looked after, and his best chance for the future surely lay there.
Colin’s feet skidded as he rounded corners, taking all sorts of shortcuts to get the few blocks to Tibby’s house. People were milling about, staring at him like he was the wild man he was, but he ignored them as he moved around each, his entire being focused on his destination.
Tibby’s house loomed before him suddenly and he burst through the front door, startling the aged butler, two footmen, and three maids in his mad haste.
“Susannah!” he bellowed as he charged the stairs three at a time. His voiced echoed in the entryway and hall eerily, the only sound in the entire house his voice and his steps.
“Susannah!” he cried again, rounding the landing towards the bedchambers. “Freddie! SUSANNAH!”
The door to her room seemed forever out of reach as he raced down the hallway towards it. “Freddie, Susannah, answer me!”
At last, he reached it, and he wrenched the door open. He barreled into the room, nearly tumbling over headfirst as he did so, gasping Susannah’s name.
The room was empty, the bed perfectly made and pristine, and on the table beside the bureau, glinting in the morning light, lay a small, silver locket.
Half of his heart wanted to touch it, thinking it was an illusion, a hallucination, some horrid nightmare from which he could not seem to awaken.
The rest of his heart forced himself out of the room, his chest heaving with agonizing pants of air that sustained nothing. He collapsed against the wall, unable to support his own weight anymore.
She was gone.
How much she had already endured, and survived, and he alone had been what broke her.
A low, shuddering whimper escaped him as his eyes burned. He leaned more heavily against the wall and clutched at his hair, his fingers digging into
his scalp.
What had he done?
Chapter Twenty-One
"You stupid lout…”
Kit’s voice echoed in Colin’s head over and over again, the same as it had done for the last several days. It was one of several insults and scoldings that had been doing so, but was the only one Kit had doled out. And it was, by far and away, the tamest of the lot.
It was nothing compared to what Colin had told himself.
How could he not have seen that his words, though honest enough in his mind, would have been taken in such a way? To use Susannah’s own words against her? Though he hadn’t seen it at the time, it was now acutely and painfully obvious that she had never meant him in her ridiculous analogy. And Kit had taken great care to point that out to him, which was when his one insult made its grand appearance.
Since then, he had been annoyingly considerate and involved, which was why Colin was currently sitting in his new favorite tavern with a drink in front of him. He could not quite recall which drink of the day it was, which was becoming a fairly usual pattern, but what else was a man to do when he had broken his own heart by being the thickest, most heartless imbecile that had ever walked God’s earth? And not only that, but he had destroyed the finest creation of all: Susannah Merritt Hawkins-Dean. The only woman he would ever, or could ever, love.
There would not be anyone else.
Ever.
And the pain of that knowledge was only deadened when he was too soused to know his own name.
So here he sat, and here he drank, and while he was quite certain his brother knew where he was, he had never sent for him. Which he supposed was Kit’s way of allowing Colin to do as he wished. Had he been permitted to drink fifteen years ago, he probably would have done the same thing.
It rather felt as if he were drinking for his sufferings twice over now.
At least his sisters were back to loving him now. Every morning was bright and sweet with their hugs, almost as if nothing foul had ever happened. But the pain came, as it always did, and not even Ginny’s kisses or Bitty’s giggles or Rosie’s sharp wit could bring him out, and it was then that he left. He would not bring them down with his misery.
He could spare them that.
His head pounded and his chest burned and the room spun, and he felt terrible. But everything felt terrible now, so it suited him.
“What happened?” demanded a too-haughty sounding voice.
“Is that a beard?” said another.
“Colin can grow a beard? I thought he was perpetually twelve.”
“He looks bad.”
“That would be an understatement. Colin?”
“Sit,” he ordered, his voice rough and slightly garbled. His head was swimming already, but he ought to have talked to his friends days ago. They should have been told what he’d done, what Susannah had done, everything. Perhaps they could have helped with the money situation. Not with the funds themselves, for he had managed that without trouble and he would never have asked them for it. But the details of it could have used their polishing.
It hardly mattered now.
There was an odd sort of buzzing, a bit muted, and the volume and pitch were changing rapidly. His arm was being shaken repeatedly, and then someone punched him in the face.
He jerked and shook his head rapidly, his eyes focusing once more. He looked around the table at his friends, who were all staring at him in various states of horror.
“Colin,” Nathan said softly, eyes wide, “what happened?”
He was not entirely sure he could do this. Admitting his appalling behavior to people he respected as much as the men before him would crush him further than he already was. The shame would be too much.
Then again, he was unshaven, dirty, rumpled, drinking his umpteenth glass of whatever it was, and was not entirely sure his head was going to remain on his shoulders. It couldn’t exactly get much more shameful than it already was.
So he told them, in a low, flat voice, everything. The secrets, the proposals, the money, the gazebo, the revelations from Gent, everything up to her coming to him the other day and his response; he told them it all. And they made no response until his voice trailed off to nothing.
And then it came.
A wave of noise, loud and magnified in his drunken ears, indistinguishable words from three different voices crying out in disbelief and shock. Gasps and groans, blinking eyes and wide-open eyes, and many frantic hand gestures all whirled together before him.
“You didn’t!” he finally could make out from one of them.
He closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples.
“Are you mad?”
“I can’t even… I don’t…”
“Oh hell, Colin…”
“Colin,” Derek finally said, the only one who had yet to make any comment at all.
All eyes, even Colin’s, looked to him.
Derek seemed almost disgusted as he looked at Colin. “Colin… you’re an ass.”
Colin groaned and put his head into his hands, grinding his eyes with the heels of his palms.
Geoff gave an odd sort of laugh. “We all were.”
Duncan cleared his throat. “I wasn’t.”
Nathan snorted. “No, you were just stupid,” he reminded him. “You qualify.”
“It’s a miracle any of us got our wives at all,” Derek sighed, leaning back.
“I didn’t,” Colin murmured, feeling the need to point out the obvious.
Derek looked back at him with a raised brow. “You didn’t let us fail, despite your mocking and protests. We are not going to abandon you now that it’s your turn.”
Colin shook his head at once. “It’s too late.”
“That’s not what Annalise says…” Duncan murmured.
Colin jerked sharply, which made his head spin. “What?” he croaked as he tried to look at only the center Duncan rather than the two on either side of him. “She’s seen her?”
Duncan nodded. “She ran into her the other day while running around in Town. Now she meets up with her every other morning. They talk, shop, who knows what else.”
Colin swallowed hard, his throat feeling filled with shards of glass. “How is she?”
“Hurt,” Duncan said simply.
Colin groaned and put his head into his arms.
“But she won’t talk about it,” Duncan went on, speaking to the others. “Annalise says she’s more skittish than ever. Always wants to meet in a different place, never lets her see her home, insists on walking everywhere and paying for herself… Annalise says she is not herself, but if what Colin says is true, she really has nothing to fear anymore.”
“Except me,” Colin mumbled into his arms.
“We can fix this,” Nathan urged, grabbing Colin’s arm. “You may have to grovel more than the rest of us did…”
“A lot more,” Geoff murmured.
Derek hissed a wince. “I had to grovel a lot. Still do.”
“I’m good,” Duncan said, sitting back.
“Shut up, Duncan,” everyone except Colin replied.
“…but nothing, not even this, is irreparable. Particularly if she is still inclined towards you,” Nathan continued.
Colin shook his head again. “No. I’ve gone too far, I’ve done enough damage.”
“Colin,” Derek tried, leaning forward. “We can come up with a plan.”
Again, he shook his head. “No. There is no plan. I am not getting her back. Don’t waste your time.”
“Come on, Colin,” Geoff said. “Remember what you told me? Romantic heroes run after their women.”
He could sense the attempt at humor, but it fell very flat indeed. He shook his head, making it throb more.
“You have to try,” Duncan insisted. “You know you still want her, and I think she could still…”
“No,” Colin barked suddenly, making his own ears ring. “End of discussion. Accept it, or get out.”
No one moved even the slightest.
The room was feeling rather warm and he had to blink a few times to clear his eyes. He sighed and looked to Nathan. “How are the children?”
Seeming to accept his demands, they began to talk of common things, subjects which no one in a dark pub like this would have been discussing. It did not last long, as Colin was no longer feeling particularly talkative, and his friends eventually drifted away without him noticing. He rubbed at his head, coughed deep, racking coughs that burned his chest even more than it already was, and his stomach rolled and pitched like a sailing ship. How could he possibly have communicated with anyone like this? He ought to stop drinking, it made things so complicated.
He sat there for a while, as time became more and more irrelevant. Everything became irrelevant. He was irrelevant.
He was starting to talk and think nonsense. And he felt miserable, in mind and body. Perhaps he ought to go home, where servants could tend to him and he wouldn’t have to think. And maybe then his head would regain its balance.
Colin pushed back from the table and stood, but had to grab onto it as the room spun and turned black before him.
And then he was falling.
Susannah rubbed at her eyes with a sigh as she left Mrs. Randall’s modiste shop. She had been up most of the night the last three nights finishing the work she had given her, but it had been some of her best work. She ought to receive some very good wages for those pieces, and now that she had finished the commissioned items, she could set to work on the rejected ones that she could keep herself if she could mend them.
She’d never truly thought she would find satisfaction in employment, but there was something to be said for accomplishing work and then receiving pay for it. Particularly when something was done well and she was proud of it.
She had it on very good authority that she would soon be offered a full position there instead of just on the side, but she would have to be patient there. She would be grateful for that; it was tiresome to work so many small positions.
The Burdens of a Bachelor (Arrangements, Book 5) Page 26
