One Summer of Surrender

by Jess Michaels

  Gray stepped between them at last and glared at her. She turned her face, unable to fully look at him when he was filled with such abject hatred for her. “You pretend to give a damn about his reaction when you wouldn’t even see him? When you had to have known the damage you would do?”

  “Stop,” Lucien said, catching his brother’s arm. Gray shook him off.

  “No.” Gray turned that same glare on his brother. “Someone needs to bloody well say it to her. You destroyed my brother, you hurt my sister, and now you want to flounce back into his life and pretend like you didn’t?”

  “I haven’t pretended,” Elise whispered, holding herself upright by gripping the back of the closest chair. “I have never forgiven myself for what I did to him and I shall never forgive myself now that I know what nearly happened because of me.”

  Felicity moved on her now as Gray spun away with a disgusted snort. Elise couldn’t help but stare at her. She hadn’t seen her best friend in three years. They had avoided each other just as Lucien had avoided her during that time. Now her mind spun back to girlish giggles and happy times.

  Felicity looked beautiful, as she always had, even though her blonde hair was pulled back rather severely and she had nothing but contempt in her pale blue eyes.

  “Don’t you dare cry,” Felicity whispered. Then she drew back and stared. “What—what is…your eye is black, Elise.”

  Elise turned away as Gray took a long step back toward her and his wife, Rosalinde, yanked a hand up to her mouth with a gasp. She had hoped, in their upset, they would all overlook that fact. Especially Felicity. Felicity, who had endured intense physical abuse at the hands of her late husband.

  Felicity, who would suffer the most when the truth about Elise’s lies came out.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “I know it’s nothing. I don’t want your pity.”

  But the tone of the room had softened with Felicity’s observation and her friend backed away, less accusation in her stare.

  Elise looked at Lucien again and he nodded slowly, as if encouraging her to say something, do something, brave something. And she had to now. There was no choice left. It was fitting that there would be an audience, this audience for what was to come.

  “I came here last night, because the new Duke of Kirkford attacked me,” she explained softly. “I had nowhere else to go—Ambrose has made certain of that. I shouldn’t have turned to Stenfax. I deserve none of his kindness, nor anyone’s understanding. I know that.” She cleared her throat and turned away. “Under normal circumstances, I would simply walk away. I realized that would be better for you.” She looked at Stenfax again. “But…I can’t.”

  “Why?” Gray ground out. “Why do you claim you can’t stop this madness?”

  She shook her head. “Because something from the past has reared its ugly head. Something I thought I…I had managed. I was a fool to think I had. And I must tell you the truth.” She let her gaze stray to Stenfax and found him staring back at her, even and almost ready. Like he knew something terrible was about to come and he braced for it. He didn’t know the half of it. “I must tell you everything.”

  Gray’s new wife stepped forward then, a gentle look on her face. Elise almost wept to see it, for it was the only kindness in this room full of anger and misunderstanding and apprehension.

  “May I make a suggestion?” Rosalinde said softly. When no one answered, she plowed ahead anyway. “Why don’t we go into the adjoining parlor and sit? This is obviously a highly emotional moment for everyone and it might make it easier, yes?”

  “A fine idea,” Stenfax croaked.

  Rosalinde moved toward Felicity, who was still staring in disbelief and pain at Elise’s black eye. She took her elbow and gently guided her from the room.

  Stenfax shot Elise a look and she thought he might move to her, but Gray stepped in beside him instead and the two men left the room with her trailing behind them, outside their circle. Once she was done, she would never be let in again.

  But then, she hadn’t expected to be. Whatever she’d shard with Stenfax this past little while had been stolen from the start. She’d never expected it to last, only hoped it would. And that had been her own foolish doing if she was now disappointed.

  They entered the parlor off the breakfast room and Rosalinde situated everyone. She and Gray sat on the settee, her hand placed firmly over his. Felicity sat in one chair while Elise sank into another. But Stenfax did not sit.

  No, he remained standing at the fireplace, his eyes locked on her.

  “Begin,” he said.

  Elise drew in a long breath and kept her gaze on him. “I hardly know where to begin,” she whispered.

  “Why don’t you start with the night you decided Lucien wasn’t good enough for you,” Felicity snapped.

  Elise flinched and shot her former best friend a look. “I-I would start there, but that isn’t the start of the story. The story starts not with Lucien and me, but with my late husband.”

  Lucien folded his arms. “Kirkford.”

  She nodded. “Yes, Kirkford. He had always hated you, Lucien. Gray, too, but mostly you. I heard about it for years after, though I didn’t know it then. Do you know why he hated you?”

  Lucien wrinkled his brow as he stared at her. “I have no idea. We were in school together and I though he was an ass, honestly.”

  “He was an ass,” Gray muttered. “Don’t know what that bloody well has to do with this.”

  “Let the poor woman speak,” Rosalinde said softly. “I’m sure it will all become clear.”

  Elise gave Rosalinde a look of gratitude before she continued, “Yes, he hated you in school. He said you were ‘golden’. No matter what, you always were popular, always were liked, where he…struggled.”

  “So he hated me because I had more friends in school. I don’t really give a damn,” Lucien said, his frustration clear.

  She held up a hand. “That isn’t why he hated you. Well, it is, but it isn’t why he wanted to destroy you. About three and a half years ago, you were in a club, gambling at a table with him. He was drinking and, apparently, cheating. You caught him.”

  Lucien looked confused for a moment, and then his face brightened with recollection. “Yes, I do remember that. He was drunk off his head and blustering. He’d just become duke, I think, and wanted to be treated as royalty. When I realized he was cheating, I called him out on it. He flipped a table and threw a punch—”

  “And got publicly and permanently banned from the club,” Elise finished for him, holding his gaze evenly.

  Lucien drew back a little and nodded. “Yes, that part happened too.”

  “Well, it humiliated him. As you said, he had just become duke and he felt he deserved to be respected and revered. Everyone knew of your…financial situation, and yet you were still accepted. Liked. It was a final stray for Kirkford.”

  “The final straw,” Gray said. “What does that mean?”

  Elise turned toward Gray. “He decided he was going to destroy Lucien. And that is where the story begins to involve me.”

  Felicity pushed to her feet. “So you actively participated in this revenge by leaving my brother.”

  “No!” Elise snapped, spinning toward her. “Great God, you would think you knew me better after everything we went through, Felicity.”

  “I don’t know you. I thought I did, but I never did,” Felicity said back, her tone cold and dismissive.

  Elise flinched away from it. “Sit down, I’ll explain it now if everyone would stop interrupting me.”

  Felicity slowly did so, but she folded her arms and glared at Elise. Her contempt was vast and not masked in the slightest. It felt as painful as Ambrose’s punch the night before.

  Elise drew a long breath. Stenfax was staring at her now, no longer leaning on the fireplace mantel, but his body coiled with tension, like he was preparing for an attack.

  “Kirkford came to me the night before
I threw you over,” she explained. “It was the night of some ball and I’d cried off with a headache, but my parents had gone. I was alone when he called. I hardly knew the man, but I was…” She sucked in a breath. “…afraid. There was something wrong with him and I recognized it right away. He told me that I would not be marrying you. He said within twenty-four hours I’d end my engagement.”

  Lucien moved forward. “And what made you go along with that?”

  Now Elise faced Felicity again and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Felicity,” she bit out. “I’m so sorry. He—he knew.”

  Felicity stiffened, going ramrod straight in the chair. “Knew?” she whispered.

  “He knew,” Elise repeated.

  She recognized the moment Felicity fully understood her cryptic words. Her friend jumped up, backing away, her hands up, as if she could ward it off.

  “What is she talking about?” Gray asked, looking at Felicity, then Elise, then Lucien.

  “What are you talking about?” Lucien repeated, but only directed the question at Elise.

  Elise ignored him for the time being. “I’m sorry,” she repeated to Felicity.

  “How? How?” Felicity asked, hitting the wall beside the door and flattening there, her hands shaking and all the color gone from her face.

  “A servant, I think. He had a letter, signed by the man, confessing his part in it all. I wouldn’t have believed it, but—but I’d seen you after and I’d always known something was wrong about the story you told. I should have pushed harder, I should have made you tell me. I should have been a better friend.”

  Lucien moved across the room in three long steps and placed himself between Elise and Felicity. He looked angry, but more than that, he looked apprehensive.

  “Stop these riddles,” he insisted, his voice suddenly too loud in the quiet room. “You say Kirkford knew something and that it was about Felicity. What is it he knew?”

  Elise moved past him, reaching out to her former friend. And to her surprise, Felicity allowed her to take her hand. She clung to Elise like she was a lifeline.

  “Should I say it?” Elise asked, blinking at tears.

  Felicity shook her head. “No. It’s my secret. I-I should tell them. I probably should have told them a long time ago.”

  Elise nodded slowly, then let Felicity go as she paced past her brother and took the spot where he’d been brooding by the fireplace. Elise moved forward and placed herself beside Lucien, resting a hand on his forearm in order to the give the support she knew he’d need in a moment.

  “You all know what I endured at the hands of my husband,” Felicity began, her voice trembling.

  Both Gray and Lucien flinched, and Elise felt for them. When they’d realized Felicity was being abused by her bastard of a husband, both had tried to save her. But the man had been rich and powerful and Felicity’s husband. The law recognized his right to discipline her as he saw fit. There had been no saving her, and both men had suffered greatly in their powerlessness.

  “You know it was bad, but not how bad,” Felicity continued, and now she was shaking all over. “By the end, his violence had escalated and I truly feared for my life. One night he came to my bedroom, demanding—” She broke off and gave Elise a look. “May I assume he was demanding the same thing the new Duke of Kirkford demanded of you?”

  Elise nodded once. “Yes.”

  “When I wasn’t as exuberant about the prospect as he’d like, he began to hurt me.” Felicity’s eyes brightened with tears that streamed down her cheeks. “And then he told me he was going to kill me. He was choking me, the life was leaving me. I hit him with a vase and he let me go, but he kept coming at me. So I grabbed the pistol from his waist and I shot him.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was a collective gasp from everyone in the room at Felicity’s confession. Lucien stared at his baby sister, whom he loved with all his heart, and couldn’t stop shaking. Elise’s hand tightened on his arm, holding him steady as he lived through the images of all Felicity had suffered, all she had kept silent over the years since that night.

  “You killed him,” Rosalinde finally whispered when the room had been silent for what seemed like an eternity and Felicity had not yet found the power to go on.

  “Yes,” Felicity said, the sound drawn out in a long whisper of brokenness and pain that felt like it pushed Lucien’s own pain wider and fuller. “He died on the floor of my chamber, cursing my name. His family was powerful and as vindictive as he was, and I knew I would be arrested for the crime. No one would have cared that I’d defended my life—they would only care that I had killed a viscount. I was ready to call for the guard and face the consequences, but my husband’s servants came to my rescue. They rallied around me, they made his death look like the hunting accident it was eventually claimed to be and they swore they would never tell the truth.”

  “But someone did,” Elise whispered. “Someone did.”

  “That is what I’ve lived in fear about for years,” Felicity sobbed. “And now to hear it’s true...”

  She buckled, and both Gray and Lucien rushed at her, catching her and both holding her as the three of them huddled together. Lucien had always respected Felicity’s strength of character, her calm collectedness in the face of any situation. Now that was gone and she wept against Gray’s shoulder, great wracking sobs that shook her slender frame violently. Lucien could do nothing except smooth her hair and whisper gentle words of comfort that felt so damned empty.

  For not the first time, he longed to spin the clock backward and do anything in his power to stop Felicity from marrying the brute who had brought this on his family. But he couldn’t.

  “Felicity,” Gray whispered as their sister’s crying ceased. “Sweetest love, why didn’t you tell us?”

  She pulled back and looked first Gray, then Lucien, in the face. “Both of you already carried such guilt that you’d allowed the match, I couldn’t allow you even more of it. And what could you have done? Barbridge was dead, the covering up of his murder complete. I saw no point in bringing up my secret and forcing you both to carry it with me.”

  Lucien felt no satisfaction in that answer and Gray didn’t seem to either, judging from his pained expression. But Felicity didn’t allow them time to respond. She pushed from the circle of their arms and moved toward Elise.

  Stenfax turned toward her, too and was surprised to find that Rosalinde had silently joined her and had an arm around her as they watched the family process this bitter news. He found he was happy to see she had support when he couldn’t provide it. After all, her part in this story wasn’t over.

  There was more to come and he dreaded it because he now had a clearer vision of what Elise had done and why. She would have to say it and he would have to hear it.

  “You carried it with me,” Felicity whispered, moving toward Elise. “This secret.”

  Elise swallowed hard, and it seemed she was bracing herself for a rejection from Felicity. She nodded. “I did.”

  “He told you about what he knew. I assume that was his way to destroy Lucien.”

  Elise drew a long breath. “He would have settled for that, of course. But he would have had to be very careful how he revealed your secret. Society could have eaten him alive if they found out he had such terrible information and turned it against you. You both might have burned in those flames. And even if he hadn’t that concern, he wanted a more direct hit on Lucien. He wanted Lucien to know it was Kirkford who had bested him. So he offered me a choice.”

  She stopped, dipping her head. Her shoulders shook, her hands shook. Lucien couldn’t see her like that. Not now.

  “Throw me over and marry him or let him unleash the truth about Felicity into the world,” he said softly.

  Elise jerked her face up and met his gaze. Her green eyes were bright with pain and regret and loss. “Yes,” she admitted. “That was his bargain. Hurt you by rejecting you as I did, orchestrated by him. Or
allow your entire family to be destroyed in a flurry of trial, prison, death and destruction.”

  Stenfax reeled away as the full weight of this confession crushed him like a vise around his heart. He pictured that night long ago when he’d received her note ending their relationship, but now he knew she was being forced to write it. He thought of how he’d banged on her door and been refused, but now he knew she’d been upstairs brokenhearted about that choice.

  He pictured all the times he’d hated her without knowing the truth. He’d thought his life was empty while she moved on, but in truth she had been just as desolate as he had. Only he’d had his family to support him. Her parents had died just after her marriage and she’d been left alone with a man who was capable of such twisted manipulation and cruelty.

  “You chose the marriage,” Felicity whispered, breaking through his tangled thoughts and making him look back at Elise. “Even though you knew it would be miserable.”

  “To protect you and Stenfax? Yes.” Elise let out a long, shaky sigh, as if holding those words in for so long had been painful. “And I would have kept that secret, I would kept your secret, Felicity, until the day I drew my last breath. I would have endured your hatred and your censure with the knowledge that I’d done the best I could to protect you. Only now something has happened that forced my hand.”

  “What?” Gray asked, but for the first time his voice was not harsh toward her.

  “After Ambrose attacked me, I drew a gun on him, just as you did on Barbridge.” Stenfax caught his breath. He knew she’d been assaulted, but not how bad it had actually been. “It stayed his attack, thank God, but not his tongue. He vowed that he would have what he wanted one way or another. And he claimed…”

  She covered her mouth as if what she would say was too painful. Felicity moved toward her, taking her hand. “What did he say?”

  “Ambrose said that Toby, Kirkford the last, kept a book of all the secrets he held over others. A bragging book, I suppose you would call it. And though Ambrose has no idea of what could be in that book, if it exists and he finds it, I don’t think he’d make a bargain for it. I think he would unleash the truth just to cause pain to me and to those I love.”