by Julia Kelly
That was why she’d said yes to Trevlan. Love had betrayed her time and time again. It was best that she focus on the security she’d come to Edinburgh seeking. She’d thought that being engaged again and marrying would finally give her the security she craved, but instead it was just making her feel incredibly small. She couldn’t help but think that she was losing herself and her happiness along the way.
The visit with the Trevlans, thankfully, didn’t last that much longer. When mother and son had left, Elsie offered Caroline a tight smile. “They seem to be a very loyal family.”
Michael, who had sat through the entire visit looking a little stunned, blinked twice. “That may be the only thing that can be said for them.”
“Mr. Trevlan is your friend,” said Caroline pointedly.
Michael shifted in his chair. “More acquaintance than friend, I should think.”
“Why don’t I ask Mrs. James to arrange some tea for us?” Caroline suggested weakly.
“Stay,” said Elsie, shooing her back into place. “I’ll do that.”
With her sister-in-law gone, she was suddenly acutely aware that she was alone with her brother for the first time since that horrible day that had changed everything. They’d barely spoken about any of it: the fight, her relationship with Moray, her acceptance of Trevlan’s proposal. When she snuck a glance at Michael, she found he was watching her with something akin to pity in his eyes.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she said.
“What is that?” he asked.
“That I brought this upon myself. I indulged in a dalliance with Mr. Moray. I knew the consequences.”
Even now, knowing how it all turned out, she would’ve made the same choices all over again. Moray was unlike any man she’d ever known, and she wouldn’t have given up loving him for anything.
Michael shook his head and sighed. “That wasn’t what I was thinking at all.”
“Then what?” she asked, hating the tremble in her voice.
“I haven’t been a very good brother to you this past year.” He let out a little laugh. “Or perhaps the better part of a decade.”
It was her turn to stare at him. She’d never heard her brother admit anything akin to regret or guilt. He was always the older, practical one and she the mere child, a woman who had entangled herself in a mess of a lawsuit and now seemed to be intent on ruining everything again.
“I don’t find this easy,” he said, waving a hand vaguely between the two of them.
“What is this?” she asked.
He winced. “Family.”
She studied him, chewing on her lower lip before saying, “I imagine many people don’t, but they still try.”
“I know,” he said.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“It was easier not to be around our mother, so I left as soon as I could,” he continued. “I’m ashamed to say I hardly thought what I was doing in leaving you in London with her. I should’ve spent more time at the house when our father died. I should’ve sent for you when Elsie and I married, but we were mired in our own problems almost from the first day.”
She raised a brow, and Michael spread his hands wide. “I know you think I’m a pompous ass and difficult to live with, and you’re right. I married Elsie because she comes from a good family and would be an asset to me, but I doubt either of us had any hope of real affection developing in the marriage. I just . . .”
“Don’t find this easy?” she finished for him, using his own words. “I’m sorry for that for so many reasons, but mostly for you and Elsie.”
“We’ve spoken about it since you arrived, actually. We’re going to try harder.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that I should’ve done more for you and removed you from that house after Father died,” he said.
“Mamma wouldn’t have allowed it. She was intent on seeing me married to some grand gentleman, and even if Julian hadn’t proposed she wouldn’t have thought there was enough good ton in Scotland.”
“I was the head of the household,” said Michael.
“I think we both know that’s not true.”
“Still, it was my responsibility to take care of you. I promised Father.”
Her heart ached for her father, a weak man henpecked by a difficult wife. Her mother never relented, never gave him any peace, and by the end he’d looked so fragile and frail confined to his bed that it seemed as though he was almost slipping away under the weight of her criticism.
“I’m sorry for what happened here. It was never my intention to make your life more difficult when I wrote you to say I needed to stay for a spell,” she said.
“You haven’t made my life more difficult.”
She leveled a look at him.
“You haven’t,” he insisted.
“But I’ve brought a great deal of scrutiny on this house and everyone in it. I know how important your business is to you.”
Michael’s lips pressed into a line, and she knew that, for all his regret, he was still her brother calculating how reputation and appearances could help or hinder his career. Still, he reached out a hand and awkwardly patted her on the shoulder. “This too shall pass.”
As a gesture of comfort from one sibling to another it lacked a great deal, but for Michael and Caroline, it was a start.
It was Moray’s fifth night in a row without sleep. His eyelids felt as though someone had poured all the sand from Brighton’s beach into them, and yet he had no plans to seek out his bed or make use of the cot in his office. Every time he closed those gritty, tired eyes his mind replayed his fight not with Trevlan but with Caroline.
No. It was safer to stay here at his desk, letting the account books, articles, and pages riddled with copy edits wash over him. So long as he kept his pencil scribbling and occasionally took a cup of coffee or ate something Uglow, in a display of uncharacteristic selflessness, set down next to his elbow he’d be fine enough.
The papers had reported the fight outside the Burkett household, just as Caroline had feared. There was no comfort in the fact that his name hadn’t been connected to it. She was once again on the front page of every gossip rag in the city, and while it didn’t seem as though the news was going to spread countrywide, he knew the shame of it would upset her. He’d known how powerful her pain was, and yet he’d been the cause of more of it.
Still, a part of him couldn’t forget the disgust in her voice when she’d sent him away, accepting the proposal of a man who in so many ways was what he was not. Trevlan had breeding and privilege and money—all things Moray too possessed, but the man was a true gentleman, born into a family that could trace its respectability back for generations.
It was for the best that he hadn’t been able to articulate what he felt for Caroline in that one moment when she’d offered him an opening. She’d mentioned what they’d been to one another, but she couldn’t know. Not about the way he burned for her or how even though she’d turned her back on him, he couldn’t help wanting to see her again. The power she held over him was terrifying.
It was best to let it all go. The ache of his heart would dull over time. He’d forget her just as surely as she’d forget him.
“Keep telling yourself that lie,” he muttered under his breath.
He didn’t look up when the door to his office opened and he heard not one but two sets of shoes on the wood floors.
“What?” he asked irritably.
“It’s time to stop,” said Eva.
“What?” He lifted his head only to be greeted by Eva and Gavin staring at him.
“You’ve been in this room for days,” said Gavin.
“You haven’t been outside,” said Eva.
“I’m working,” he grumbled, marking out an unnecessary clause in an article about an upcoming agricultural bill.
“You’re hiding,” said Eva.
“Leave me alone.”
“No,” his editor pushed. �
��We’ve seen you overwork yourself before, but never like this.”
“Don’t tell me you agree with her,” said Moray, gesturing at Gavin with his pencil.
“She’s right,” said Gavin. “This is unusual, even for you. It’s time for you to go home.”
Eva wrinkled her nose. “Sleep and bathe.”
He cocked a brow at her. It was true that he’d let his usual impeccable appearance go, but surely he couldn’t smell too.
“You’re starting to scare the reporters and the section editors,” said Gavin. “You bark at anyone who comes up here except for Uglow, and that’s only because he’s almost as surly as you.”
“You’re sending back stories with unnecessary edits to reporters and working them into the ground for no good reason,” said Eva.
“McLeod is threatening to quit if you don’t stop making him print test pages just so you can move articles around in the issue before putting them where they were once again,” said Gavin.
Moray stared at them hard, his arms crossed over his chest. “Are you finished?”
“Oh, I can list off a litany of other complaints.” If Eva had been wearing shirtsleeves, she would’ve been rolling them up in anticipation of a fight. “We can start with the fact that I share this space with you, and I can’t hear myself think over your glowering.”
“Glowering doesn’t produce noise,” he grumbled.
“It does when you also slam drawers and grunt with dissatisfaction at regular intervals,” said Eva. “You’re taking the role of tyrannical editor in chief to rather an extreme.”
“These two newspapers are mine.” His voice boomed out through the office. “I’m the owner, the publisher, the editor in chief. If I decide that the work isn’t up to par, it isn’t up to par. There will be no arguments.”
“Is that so?” Eva shot back.
“Yes!”
“And what will you do when everyone walks out of here and goes to one of our rivals because you’re being an ass?”
“I’m not being an ass!” he shouted.
“You’re an ass of the highest order! A king ass!”
“That doesn’t even make sense!” he shouted back.
“You’re fighting with your two closest friends in the world who have nothing but your best interests at heart,” Gavin, the calm one among their trio, pointed out.
“If you were both such good friends, you’d see I need this!”
Something inside Moray cracked, and he fell back into his chair. For the first time in his life, he’d been with a woman who made him look past all of this. It hadn’t been enough to bury himself in this office, because he’d wanted to be with her.
“I need this because I don’t have anything else,” he muttered. This was his life now, just as it had been for years. The loneliness of building up his empire hadn’t mattered, because for years he’d known nothing different. But then Caroline had set his whole world on a tilt. She’d ruined everything by showing him what his life could be. She’d made him think about possibilities. Of a life beyond this building where he thought of things other than circulation numbers and exclusives and chasing down every story.
“What happened with Caroline?” Eva asked softly, the bluster gone from her tone.
His heart squeezed too tight, and his stomach soured. “I was the person involved in the fight with Trevlan outside her house.”
“I assumed as much from the bruises on your hands,” said Gavin.
“And the fact that you wouldn’t let us print a thing about it,” said Eva.
“It . . . it didn’t seem right,” he said, flexing his still-sore fingers and shaking his head.
Eva and Gavin exchanged glances.
“You’ve been backing off covering certain stories in the Tattler,” said Gavin.
“You’ve cut anything truly sordid from its front page, and it’s hurting the circulation,” said Eva more bluntly. “I’ve never been fond of those pieces, but they are the bread and butter of a gossip rag. And what’s worse, the Standard, the Thistle and Tittle, and all the others have been beating us into the ground because all anyone can talk about right now is Miss Burkett.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but then shut it with a snap. They were right. He’d been pulling back, protecting Caroline as best he could, but it was more than that.
“I think I’ve lost my stomach for it,” he murmured.
“Newspapers?” Eva asked with a gasp.
“Gossip. This business might have been built on the Tattler, but it feels like time to move on from that,” he said.
“It’s a steady share of the profits,” said Eva.
“If we can’t do without it, then we don’t deserve to be in the business at all,” he said.
“You have been desperate to launch an evening newspaper. Ceasing the Tattler would free up that press.”
He considered the argument she’d leveled at him before. The difference was, this time he was actually giving it real thought. “It doesn’t solve the issue of the costs of getting it off the ground.”
But a launch would do him good. He could bury himself under the hiring and layout and all the tiny details that went into giving birth to a paper. It could help him forget about Caroline.
“I’ll go over the staff and see who we might be able to retain. Some will want to continue writing about gossip, but some will want to make the jump to legitimate news,” said Eva.
“Thank you,” he said.
Eva left in a soft rustle of skirts, but Gavin remained rooted in place.
“Have you something else to say?” Moray asked, not caring that his question was more than a little touchy.
“Go to her,” said Gavin. “Tell her.”
“Tell her what?” asked Moray.
“That you love her,” Gavin said.
Moray grunted. “It’s too late for that. The bridge has already been burned, the troops are retreating, all hope is lost.”
“It doesn’t have to be—”
“Yes, it does. She’s made her choice. Now I’m left to figure out how to live with it, and I can’t do that when all I can do is think about her.”
“And when you’re here you don’t think about her,” said Gavin, understanding easy to read on his face. He’d been here before, a little more than a year ago, when he’d thought he’d lost his wife. But Ina and Gavin had fought for a second chance to make their marriage work.
They didn’t squander what they had the way we did. Moray pushed the thought from his mind.
“Just leave me to my work. Please,” he said.
His friend stared at him as though trying to see deep within Moray to find the answers. He’d have no luck, for even Moray himself didn’t know.
“I was just thinking, I’ve never known you to give up before. I don’t know why you’d start now.”
Nearly ten minutes later, Moray realized he was still staring after his friend, Gavin’s words echoing in his mind.
He wasn’t giving up. He wasn’t backing down. He was just admitting defeat.
Why wouldn’t you fight for the best thing that’s ever happened to you?
He snorted with derision. “Because she wants him,” he said out loud.
He picked up his pencil and tried to go back to his work, but something kept pulling at him. Caroline might be marrying that arsehole, but there was one last thing he could do for her. One last thing to put at least some of this right.
He pulled a sheet of paper toward him. Most of his writing these days was confined to reworking the paper’s larger pieces—and even that was limited. But this . . . this felt important. It would be his gift to Caroline, and even though he might never know whether she understood it or not, he would do it.
And so he began to write.
Chapter Twenty-One
A BRIDE SHOULD be excited on her wedding day, even one as rushed for propriety’s sake as hers, but all Caroline felt as Mrs. Parkem did up the back of her wedding dress was dread.
Everythi
ng should’ve been perfect. The dress was white satin embroidered with orange blossoms along the edge of a long train. The lace veil, begrudgingly on loan from her future mother-in-law, who had been married in it, was so fine that she could pull it through the gold and ruby ring Trevlan had given her to wear but which she’d found slipped off her finger far too easily and so spent most days in the china dish on her vanity.
She had achieved exactly what she’d come to Edinburgh to do, so why did it all feel so wrong?
“There you are,” said Mrs. Parkem, doing up the last satin-covered button. “You can go show them.”
Caroline’s fingers brushed the silken skirts, but she didn’t move. “What if . . . ?”
But she couldn’t make herself form the words that had been lodged in her throat for days.
What if I’m making the biggest mistake of my life?
“May I give you some advice I wish someone had given me on my wedding day?” asked the dressmaker.
Caroline nodded.
“If you can think of a reason not to, don’t,” said Mrs. Parkem.
Caroline smiled weakly. “You sound as though you know something of that.”
“I married the wrong man for the wrong reasons, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”
I’m marrying the wrong man.
No. She’d said yes. This was what she’d wanted since long before Moray. Soon enough she’d be settled into her married life and she’d forget him.
I’ll never forget him.
She cleared her throat of the tingle of tears that was building there. The three truths of her life were that she was old, unmarried, and notorious. She was never going to have a better chance than Trevlan. It was best to take it.
“This is what it has to be,” she said, and then she stepped out from behind the screen.
Elsie and Mrs. Sullivan, dressed in their finest for the wedding, stopped talking the moment she walked out.
“Oh, Caroline,” Elsie breathed, setting down her teacup.
“You’re a vision, Miss Burkett,” said Mrs. Sullivan.
“Thank you,” said Caroline. And promptly burst into tears.
In a flash, Elsie was by her side, helping her onto a sofa and stuffing a handkerchief into her hand.