Free Web NovelChapter 82: Chapter 82 He broke his promise
_Author’s POV_
Kaelen made it three steps toward the exit before he turned around. ƒrēewebnovel.com
"You," he said, pointing at Pierre. His voice had the raw quality of someone who had lost control of the evening and had fixed on a target for the feeling. "I’m not done with you. I know exactly what you are. I’ve seen the way you look at her, even on the dissolution night. Don’t stand there and give me a speech about one woman for life when you’ve been circling someone else’s wife for months."
Pierre didn’t move.
"She’s not your wife," he said simply. "She stopped being your wife when the decree was registered."
"She was my wife when you started looking at her," Kaelen said. "So what does that make you? You want to talk about character? What’s the character of a man who wants someone who belongs to someone else?"
"She never belonged to you," Pierre said. "That was always the problem."
Kaelen took a step forward.
From across the room, there was a sound.
It was small, just a short exhale, barely audible.
But it came from Alaric and the people nearest to him caught it and stepped back slightly because there was something in it that suggested the next thing he said was going to matter.
Alaric was looking at Pierre.
His expression had shifted into something that was working hard to stay neutral and not entirely succeeding. He looked at Pierre with both annoyance and exhaustion.
Pierre, who had been uninvited. Who had pushed his way into the banquet and spent the evening in the corner watching Rowena with an intensity Alaric had noted and categorized and filed under manageability. Who had just stood up in the middle of the room and implied, clearly enough that no one could miss it, that his feelings for Rowena were both genuine and serious.
Pierre Ashford.
Alaric filed that particular complication away and returned to the present moment.
‘Just how many people,’ he thought, with a feeling that was not entirely dignified for someone in his position, ‘am I competing with.’
He let that thought pass. Then he walked to the center of the room.
"Enough," he said.
The single word landed the way words land when they come from someone with actual authority in a room that is ready to receive them. Everyone stopped.
He looked at Kaelen first. "You were told to leave."
Kaelen opened his mouth.
"That was not an invitation to continue the conversation," Alaric said. "Leave now or the decree violation becomes a formal arrest tonight rather than a required appearance in forty-eight hours. Choose."
Kaelen looked at Rowena one final time.
She was looking past him.
Without another word, he finally left.
Alaric turned to the room. He looked at the ten young men, at the guests, at the arranged tables and the flowers and the preparation that the evening had represented, and he made a decision that he was aware was not entirely within the bounds of his formal authority but that he was going to make regardless.
"I’m asking everyone to conclude the evening," he said. He kept his voice even and his tone respectful. "The Ashthorne family has my complete respect and this gathering was arranged with genuine care. But given the circumstances of tonight, I’m requesting that the formal selection portion be suspended." He paused. "I will personally take responsibility for the Marchioness’s marriage arrangements going forward."
The room absorbed that.
Nana Seraphine, from near the window, looked at him with an expression that was extremely difficult to read.
Celeste looked at Rowena.
Rowena looked at Alaric with an expression that was also extremely difficult to read but that contained, somewhere underneath several other things, a flicker of something that might have been exasperation and might have been something considerably warmer.
The guests began to disperse. Graciously, with the good manners of people from distinguished families who understood when an evening had reached its natural conclusion regardless of what the schedule said. Dorian nodded to Rowena on his way out with a small, genuine smile. Ezra paused to say something to Nana Seraphine that made her nod slowly.
Within twenty minutes the room had emptied of everyone except family.
Kaelen drove home in silence.
The city moved past the windows and he didn’t see any of it. His hands were on the wheel and his knuckles were a color that suggested how hard he was holding it and the road ahead of him blurred occasionally, at some point, Shade was his eyes or he’d have crashed and maybe killed himself.
By the time he reached the Varkos mansion gate his face was wet and he wasn’t pretending it wasn’t.
He sat in the car in the driveway for a while.
“You lost something irreplaceable tonight,” Shade said from somewhere deep and quiet. “You lost it a long time ago and tonight just made it visible.”
Kaelen said nothing.
“And then you left your wife in her recovery bed to go and lose it publicly,” Shade continued. His voice had none of its usual combative energy. Just a flat, tired accuracy. “While she was still healing. Do you understand what kind of man that makes you?”
"That’s enough, Shade," Kaelen said out loud.
“Oh, and the loan,” Shade ignored the warning. “Focus on that if you can’t focus on anything else. Rowena’s money held this family together for three years. You owe a debt that isn’t financial and you’re going to be paying it in other ways for a long time. Start thinking about how.”
“I said enough.”
“I know,” Shade said. “I’m saying it anyway.”
Kaelen finally got out of the car.
The lights were on inside the mansion. He walked through the front door and down the hall and stopped in the doorway of the sitting room.
Virella was on the couch.
The television was on. He looked at it and understood immediately that she had watched it. The footage was being replayed, the clip of him on the floor of the Ashthorne banquet hall, Kasper standing over him, Alaric’s rebuke, and
Rowena’s face when she told him it was gone.
Virella turned to look at him.
"After everything you promised me," she said. Her voice was very quiet. "You promised."
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
She looked back at the screen.
"You told me you’ll not go," she spoke again. And this time her voice broke on the second word and she didn’t try to stop it.
