Page 73 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

"Amelia, I do not think —"

"I am not asking you to resolve anything tonight, Sebastian. I am asking you to dance with your wife, because every person in this ballroom is currently watching to see whether the two of us can survive one dance without further scandal, and because I would rather give them a waltz to discuss tomorrow than whatever they are currently constructing out of the silence." Her voice was low, urgent, the anger banked beneath something closer to desperation now. "We can say whatever needs saying afterward, in private, properly. I am only asking for one dance, so that we do not hand this room anything further to whisper about tonight."

He looked at her outstretched hand, and she watched something war behind his eyes, the same battle she had seen play out in the doorway of that small apartment, wanting to hold the wall up and knowing, plainly, it was already failing him.

"I cannot." He said it low, rough, something close to panic finally breaking through the careful stillness he had maintained since she left him. "I need to handle this myself, Amelia."

"Handle what, exactly."

"This." He gestured, vaguely, at the whole ballroom, at her, at something she could not entirely name. "I need a moment I do not currently have, and I cannot find it standing in the middle of a ball pretending nothing is wrong."

"Sebastian —"

But he was already moving, cutting a path toward the ballroom doors with the urgency of a man fleeing rather than walking, and Amelia stood a moment with her hand still extended into empty air, feeling the whole room's attention settle on her, humiliation arriving hot and sudden where the earlier hurt had merely ached.

She would not, she decided, standing very still amid the murmuring guests, let this be the second time in a month she simply let him disappear into a locked room without her.

She followed him, skirts gathered clear of the dancing couples, aware of her mother's alarmed face somewhere behind her and choosing, deliberately, not to stop for it. She ran down the corridor and toward the study, toward whatever wreckage waited for her on the other side of a door she fully intended to open whether he wished it opened or not.

The study door was not locked.

She had half expected it to be, had braced herself for the humiliation of standing in a corridor rattling a handle while her own ball continued without her on the other side of the house, but it gave easily under her hand, and she stepped through into a room lit by a single lamp. Sebastian was standing at the window with his back to her, shoulders rigid in a way that told her nothing about whether her presence was welcome and everything about how little that would stop her now.

"You do not get to simply leave me standing there."

His shoulders tightened. Then he turned.

Whatever composure he had maintained across the ballroom floor had entirely abandoned him here, but there was nothing soft in what had replaced it. His face was hard, his jaw clenched, his eyes cold with an anger she had rarely seen directed at her.

"Amelia, I told you I needed —"

"I do not care what you needed." Her voice broke on it, all the careful steadiness she had held through two dances and a quarter hour of Lady Asworth’s conversation finally giving way now that there was no one left to perform for.

"You do not simply get to say that to me and then walk away." Her voice shook now, temper and hurt tangled together beyond untangling. "Tell me plainly, Sebastian. Do you truly believe I am another version of your mother, incapable of a single decision that does not end in ruin?"

Something flashed across his face.

"Yes."

The word struck harder than if he had shouted it.

Amelia stared at him. Sebastian's chest rose sharply, his anger no longer bothering to disguise itself.

"Yes," he repeated. "Because tonight you proved that I was wrong to believe otherwise."

Her lips parted. "I am not her."

"You are behaving precisely as she did. I have watched decisions made without proper consideration destroy this family once already, and I am not prepared to watch it happen a second time."

"I am not her." Amelia's voice cracked, the whole evening's careful composure finally breaking apart. "I have shared your bed. Your library. The very worst parts of your history. I have faced your mother and defended you when you could not defend yourself. And you are standing here, tonight, comparing me to the very woman who wounded you most, after everything we have built together this past month."

“Everything we have built?” His laugh held no amusement. “You call this building something? You decide what must be done, Amelia, and expect everyone around you to fall into place because you have convinced yourself your intentions are good.”

“That is not what I⁠—”

“It is exactly what you did.”

His voice rose, and this time she did not merely hear the anger in it. She felt it.