Page 77 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

He waited three hours.

He did not leave. He sat instead on the front steps, in full view of the street, dignity entirely abandoned, and waited, and when an hour had passed without any word, he simply began speaking, loud enough, he hoped, to carry through whatever window she might be standing behind.

"I was cruel to you, Amelia, and I have no defense for it beyond the truth, which is that I was afraid, and fear made me say the ugliest thing I could find rather than sit with what actually frightened me." He kept his eyes on the door, though he had no notion whether anyone stood behind it listening. "I compared you to the one person who wounded me most, in the very moment you had given me everything I have ever wanted from another, and I do not expect to undo that with a simple apology. I am only asking for the chance to prove, that I understand what I did, and that I am capable of becoming a man who deserves what you offered me."

The door opened, finally, not to admit him, but simply enough that Amelia stood in the gap, her face carrying none of its usual warmth, though she had clearly heard every word of it.

"You are still here."

"I intend to remain here as long as it takes." He rose from the step, aware of how thoroughly the cold and the wait had disheveled him, aware that he had never in his life presented himself to anyone looking less like a duke than in this moment. "Amelia. I do not ask you to forgive me tonight. I ask only that you allow me to start making amends for my complete lack of judgment."

"I am listening." She did not invite him in, and he understood, how much of that distance was his fault.

"I was cruel to you." He said it plainly, without the softening he had spent the carriage ride rehearsing and abandoning. "I stood in a ballroom you had exhausted yourself preparing, and instead of thanking you for it, I made you answer for fears that were mine alone. I compared you to the very thing I have spent my whole life running from, which was not merely unkind. It was untrue, and I knew it was untrue even as I said it, and I said it anyway because facing what actually frightened me was harder than wounding you."

"You told me to go home to my family."

"I know." The words had cost him dearly, but this time he didn’t look away from her. “I told you to leave because I was angry and afraid. And because sending you away was easier than admitting that I was the one who lost control. I knew what those words meant, and yet I said them anyway. I cannot take them back, but if you allow me, I will spend however long it takes proving that they are not what I want, or the man I intend to be with you. "

She said nothing for a long moment, and he watched her war with herself the way he had once watched her war with a difficult argument at a ball, weighing something with real care rather than simple anger.

"An apology does not erase what you said to me, Sebastian."

"I know that."

"I believed you had finally stopped hiding from me. And at the very first test, you handed me the ugliest version of yourself, and told me to leave rather than let me stand beside you through it." Her voice, when it finally cracked, cracked quietly, more devastating for the restraint around it. "I do not know how to simply set that aside because you have been standing on my father's step for four hours in the cold a week after I left."

"I am not asking you to set it aside. I am asking for the opportunity to prove I understand it." He held her gaze, steady despite everything, refusing to look away from whatever verdict she was building. "Whatever it costs me. Whatever you require of me to believe it. I will do it, Amelia, because losing you is the only outcome I find I cannot survive contemplating."

" I cannot simply forgive that because you have come and made a fine speech about fear."

Her voice shook, though she held herself rigidly composed.

"I am not asking you to forgive it today. I am asking for one opportunity to show you I have changed, in whatever manner you believe would actually prove it, rather than simply telling you I have."

She said nothing for a long moment, studying him with an expression he could not entirely read, and the silence stretched long enough that he began to believe he had already lost whatever chance his speech had bought him.

"I will consider it," she said finally, quiet, giving nothing else away. "That is the whole of what I can offer you tonight."

"You still love him." Mary said it from the window seat, more statement than question, watching Amelia pace the length of her bedroom with the restless energy of a woman who had not properly slept in a week. "It is written across your whole face every time his name is mentioned, Amelia. I watched you while he spoke on the steps. You did not once look away from him. Why did you not simply forgive him and be done with it?"

"Because loving him does not make the hurt disappear, Mary." She stopped pacing, pressing her fingers briefly to her temples. "I have turned it over every night this week, and I keep arriving at the same conclusion. I do love him. I do not doubt that. But love was never the thing in question. He knew precisely how those words would land, and he said them anyway, because in that moment his fear mattered more to him than my standing directly in front of him did. An apology addresses the fear. It does not address whether he has actually learned anything from causing the harm."

"Then what will you do."

"I do not yet know." That is not entirely true. She had known, somewhere beneath the raw ache of the past week, exactly what she intended to do, and had simply been too tired, too hollowed out by grief, to put it into words until tonight. "I will give him a chance. Not because he deserves it outright. Because I believe, watching him on those steps, that some part of him actually understands what he broke, and because I am not yet ready to let go of a man I have watched change so much, however badly he failed when it mattered most."

"A chance to what, precisely?"

She sat at last, at the small writing desk, drawing a fresh sheet of paper toward her with a decisiveness that had been building beneath the hurt and began to write, the words arriving with more clarity than anything she had managed all week.

Requirements for the Duke of Ravensmere to Become a Husband Worth Keeping.

"Amelia." Mary had crossed to look over her shoulder, laughter breaking through her concern despite herself. "You are writing him a list."

"I am doing what I have done in every argument we have ever had. Setting out my terms clearly, so that neither of us mistakes what the other actually requires." Amelia's pen did not pause. "He will spend one afternoon assisting me with something of my choosing, and he will not take over the moment he believes he knows how it ought to be done. So that he understands what it feels like to have every decision questioned by someone who believes they know better."

"That is rather specific."