Chapter 32

By the time Amelia arrived at the firm, after pushing past Greenhill and every footman who tried to hold her back, it was a mass of rubble and fire.

Ten-Tonne Tessie no longer existed. All that was left were twisted pieces of metal, many impaled into stone by the force of the blast. The main workshop had collapsed on one side, the roof falling in.

The stacks of coal and firewood that had been placed a far distance from the buildings were burning, sending vicious, choking plumes of smoke into the sky. It was the biggest bonfire she’d ever seen. Even fifty feet away, she was buffeted by the roaring heat. She threw an arm up to protect her face as she searched for Benedict.

Bright orange spots danced in her vision as she scanned her surroundings until she saw him, hunched over against the wall of the smaller workshop.

“Benedict!” She couldn’t even hear her own voice over the fire. She grabbed her skirts and ran to him, stumbling over fallen rock, cutting her hands on twisted metal, refusing to let the pain stop her from reaching him.

“Benedict!”

As she got nearer, she could see his shoulders heaving in heavy sobs. The palms of his hands were pressed into his eye sockets. He was shaking his head.

“No.” There was more pain in that one word than she’d heard in a lifetime.

“Benedict.” It was a whisper he couldn’t possibly hear as she scrambled toward him, but he looked up nonetheless.

“He was so young.”

Amelia recoiled. The mass of red at Benedict’s feet was not a reflection of fire on scrap metal but a body. Her hand flew to her lips. The figure was unidentifiable, but there must have been something in what was left that told Benedict who he was because, as he cried, he kept repeating the name: Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.

The sight of her husband in such sheer agony almost broke her. Her knees buckled and part of her wanted to collapse in a heap, wreckage on wreckage. But she couldn’t. Because he needed her now.

“Oh, my love.” She stepped around the body and knelt beside him, running her fingers through his hair. “My love.” She went to press a kiss on the top of his head, but he moved out of reach. He scuffled away from her, refusing her touch.

“Benedict.” Her throat tightened as she tried to hold back the tears. She bit the inside of her lip, looking to physical pain to keep the sharp stab of grief at bay. Gently, hesitantly, she reached for his hand.

He shook her off. “I did this,” he said, his words choked. “I did this. I should have been around. I should have kept an eye on him. I knew that Tucker had his claws into him. And I did nothing.”

“No. Sweetheart—”

“I should have spent my time with my workers, my friends, my people, instead of playing dress-up for your lords and ladies.”

She shrank away from the viciousness of his voice. The cruelty of his words. This was not him. This was not the man she knew. “His death is not your fault.” Despite desperately wanting to be calm and controlled, her voice wavered. That he would shoulder the blame was agony. But there was something else in his words that frightened her. He was pulling away from her. From them.

“Then whose fault is it?”

She paused, choosing her words carefully. “If he set the fire, then it’s his fault.” It was a stupid, stupid decision made by a reckless boy. And it could break all of them.

Benedict turned away from her, leaning into the wall, his arms caged around his head as if he could block her words out.

She approached him. Slowly. And sighed in relief when he allowed her to run a hand in circles across his back. It made no sense, but she was sure that the only way they’d get through this whole was if she didn’t let him go. She needed to hold tight to him now, or it was over.

“Death is a high price to pay for stupidity,” she said. “But it happens more than anyone cares to admit. You can’t take this on. You’re a good man, my love.”

He snorted, turning his head so he could look at her. The bleakness of his expression made the blood drain from her face, her body sway off-kilter, and her feet turn to lead. He pulled away. There was no getting through this whole. The rift had already taken place.

His voice was strangled. “I used to think so. But then I let friends I’d grown up with wait on me. I pushed aside my distaste for people who willingly ruin the lives of others and invited them into my home. I accepted a business deal that made me a whole lot of money but took away the jobs I promised my people. I tell myself all of it will let me change lives in other ways, but I’ve just turned my back on who I am. And for what? You? A woman who’s ashamed of who I am?”

Each word was a sharp, stinging cut.

“I’m not ashamed of you,” she whispered.

“No?” His tone was cruel, mocking. His face was twisted in a hateful expression, and he didn’t resemble the man she loved.

“You didn’t pretend to your friends that you’d never done any work at the firm? Like work was a filthy secret?”

“I didn’t want them to know I’d done that. But I love what you do. I love what you’ve achieved. I’m so proud of you.” She gripped his shirt, desperate for him to hear the truth of what she was saying.

“You’re proud of me? Yet you dress me up in silks and velvets because I wasn’t good enough the way I was.”

Guilt crashed into every corner of her. Because she had looked down on the clothes that he wore, the house that he lived in, the way that he’d spoken and acted. She had decided—twice—to turn him into a different gentleman.

“I thought it would be easier for you,” she said. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to be an earl. He was going to have to move in those circles. She was trying to smooth out that course.

“Easier for me or easier for you?”

She couldn’t answer because she didn’t know what the truth was. It was all mixed up. So much had changed—her, him. Life had become a constant tumble, head over feet, over and over. She didn’t even know what she wanted.

And her silence damned her.

He took another step backward, shaking his head as though that split second of non-answer confirmed something he hadn’t fully believed. “Go back to London. You were planning to leave us soon anyway—just do it now.”

“I wasn’t planning anything of the sort.” How could he possibly think that? That after all they’d achieved together, she would pack up and leave?

“You didn’t ask Lord Roxburough if he’d be interested in selling his town house?”

“For the Season. Just for the Season. I assumed you’d come with me.”

He stood, putting miles between them with every step he took away from her. “Well, I don’t want to. You should go, though. I’m better off—we’re all better off—without you around. You contribute nothing and just muddy everything up.”

And there it was. The truth she’d fought against her entire life. She was no use to anyone. No use as a daughter, as a fiancée, as a wife, as a partner.

She’d tried. Lord knows she’d put every ounce of effort she had into proving her worth. She’d spent her days working tirelessly in the firm, helping build it into something bigger and better. She’d spent her evenings leading a household that she had become proud to belong to. She’d loved Cassandra like a sister, giving her all the support and guidance she could.

And she’d spent her nights and days simply loving him with everything she had.

And still it wasn’t enough. He didn’t want her around. He had plans to go to the Americas without her, and he hadn’t even bothered to discuss it with her.

“Fine. If that’s what you want, then fine. I’m leaving. And not because I don’t like my life here. Not because I miss the balls and the theater and people. But because of you. I deserve better than your constant judgment, you damned hypocrite. I deserve someone who loves me without conditions. Who accepts me for who I am.”

It felt good to get the words out. Her entire life had been about trying to live up to other people’s expectations. Her father’s. Her friends’. Now her husband’s. Not any longer.

If the past months had taught her anything, it was that she wasn’t perfect—far from it. But she was who she was, and she wasn’t going to twist herself up into any more knots trying to be what someone else wanted her to be.

If she wasn’t good enough for him, then she was done.

She waited a moment for him to respond. Instead he looked out over the rubble, as though she hadn’t spoken a word.

She swallowed. “Good-bye, Ben.” Her voice cracked but she squared her shoulders and turned back toward the house, picking her way through the debris and trying not to cry.

John was standing at the edge of the wreckage, horror-stricken. Tears ran down his face, creating rivers of soot. “Wh-where are you g-going?”

“Back to London. It has been a pleasure knowing you.”

John grabbed her hand. “You can’t leave him. He n-n-needs you.”

She freed her hand gently. “He’s made it clear that he doesn’t. And I won’t live like this.”