As if he finally felt Ellie’s presence, Courtland glanced over.
Worry remained etched in every line of his troubled face.
“Ellie,” he greeted absently. “You didn’t have to come today.”
He’d say she hadn’t had to come because he still thought her a child. They all did.
Courtland continued. “It’s not too late if you’d rather—”
She cut him off. “I know I don’t have to be here, Courtland. I want to.”
Because to every member of her family, Ellie was still a small child, no different from her young nephew of two years, who had to be protected. Ellie hadn’t made her Come Out yet, and she suspected even when she did make her entrance before Polite Society that treatment of her would not change.
“What have you heard?” she asked in hushed tones. She felt her brother hesitate.
Courtland stole a glance in his wife’s direction, and when he returned his attention to Ellie, he spoke in hushed tones Ellie struggled to hear. “They say he was speared with a saber in his right shoulder, and his left leg, it was mangled quite badly.”
A pang struck. His rapier fighting arm, as he’d called it those handful of summers ago. That same arm he’d waved about so adroitly as he’d instructed Ellie on the proper way to really handle a sabre and—
Her heart cracked open.
“I . . . fear the duke is being optimistic in the welcoming he’s planned,” Courtland murmured.
As in, the duke hadn’t allowed himself to think about the possibility that his son had been severely hurt. In his mind, he saw Wesley returning the same way Ellie had painted that return in her own mind.
Courtland tensed. “He is here,” he called out. Ellie stiffened.
Tension whipped around the parlor as everyone went motionless.
She managed to slide her gaze over to the window and her heart thumped.
Sure enough, a carriage had come to a stop at the front of the duke’s household. Crimson-clad servants had already begun streaming from inside, rushing to meet Wesley.
Almost simultaneously, everyone found their feet. The duke led the charge, with the duchess flying fast beside him, impressively keeping up with her taller husband.
Courtland hurried to catch Cailin, and the two of them set off after the welcoming party streaming from the room. Gathering her white skirts, Ellie lifted her hem a fraction and rushed to join the family in the foyer.
She took a position at the last place in the line, alongside Lottie.
Lottie clutched her flowers for Wesley Audley close to her stomach and stretched on tiptoes to catch a glimpse of him through the door.
Ellie’s chest tightened, and she reminded herself to breathe even and easily.
And then . . . he was there.
Only, he was there as she’d not expected.
For in all her imaginings of his return, she’d never imagined him being carried on a litter by several servants.
Thwack . . .
Dumbly, Ellie glanced away from Wesley’s prone form to the flowers her sister had dropped.
Lottie swayed.
Or was that Ellie?
Courtland rushed to catch Lottie by the arm, to keep her on her feet, so it must be Ellie’s elder sister.
Ellie’s legs knocked together.
The duchess sobbed softly, and then caught that errant sound of grief and despair in her fist.
All the while, Ellie stood motionless. Her breath came harsh and fast in her ears as she stared at Wesley.
Wesley remained motionless, his eyes shut, and his cheeks covered in a thick growth. But for the lowest, faintest groan to filter from his lips, he remained utterly silent.
What did you think? That he would walk through the doorway?
And yet, oddly, she realized that was precisely what she’d thought. For in her mind, Wesley was indomitable, possessed of a strength and power of the legendary gods, and as such, when she’d played out his return, he’d always been walking. He’d have moved with a swagger. In that romanticized dream of his return, he’d even sported a dashing scar down his cheek which would have only leant to his masculine beauty.
The servants carrying Wesley’s litter paused near Ellie and adjusted their hold on the handles.
Suddenly, Wesley’s eyes opened. Ellie froze, her gaze locked with his. Hunted.
Haunted.
He was a man who was both. As a young girl who’d been both of those herself, she recognized those emotions even within his pain-filled eyes.
“Hullo,” she said, her voice so faint she wasn’t sure if she’d actually spoken that greeting.
He glared at her; the coldness in that agonized gaze knocked her back on her heels, and she automatically took a step backward to escape it.
Suddenly, he spoke, his voice a harsh, angry rasp. “Leave me alone.”
And a vicious pain racked her heart.
The servants carrying Wesley froze and looked desperately at the Duke of Bentley for direction.
“I said, leave me alone!” Wesley thundered. “All of you, just let me be.” He thrashed his head back and forth, shouting, cursing, and Ellie proved a coward, because she retreated several steps.
What did you think? That upon seeing you, he would have hopped to his feet and recognized you as the woman who’d written him, and be miraculously cured?
But then Wesley closed his eyes once more and ceased his shouting and cursing. There was a flurry of motion as servants rushed forward, and an officious-looking man with wire-rimmed spectacles hurried along behind, and Wesley, once strong, powerful, indomitable, and smiling Wesley, was carried above stairs.
When he’d gone, she and their families remained locked in silence broken only by the weeping of the duchess and Wesley’s sister.
Ellie hugged her arms tight.
What if you’d continued writing . . . What if you were the one to pull back home, and in so doing, distract his attentions from where they truly belonged—on fighting?
Bile climbed her throat, and her breathing grew ragged. In both writing those letters, and then not writing them,
Ellie had wronged him.
And there could be no undoing what she’d done. Ever.
Excerpted from The Diamond and the Duke by Christi Caldwell Copyright © 2024 by Christi Caldwell. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
