Page 8 of How the Duke Saved Christmas

“Today’s journey tired me,” she explained, “and I’d prefer an early and quiet evening.”

“Of course. I’ll tell Cook.” Mrs. Hansen gave another bright smile. “Welcome to Northbourne Park. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

Then she was gone. Clara stared after her so long that Anthony misunderstood and closed the door, thinking she wanted privacy. The truth was much worse. Had she married Michael, she would have been mistress of Northbourne Park, and Mrs. Hansen would have been her most trusted servant.

She allowed herself a single, hard blink.

Anthony snatched up a throw blanket that had been tossed across the foot of the poster bed and spread it across her lap and legs.

“Please stop.” Heat grew in her cheeks at his fussing. “I’m not helpless.”

He frowned. “I never said you were.”

“My leg was damaged, and now it’s too stiff and weak to use. I have problems walking, that’s all. I am not an invalid.” She handed back the blanket. “And you can tell Wakefield I said so, too.”

“I think he’s fully aware of that,” he said gently.

Her shoulders slumping, Clara turned away to look out the window beside her at the whiteness that seemed to be swallowing the world.

“What did you two talk about while I was sorting out the luggage?”

“London.” Not entirely a lie. Shehadmentioned it…just not the way she made it sound.

“I don’t understand.” He tossed the unwanted throw back onto the bed and casually leaned a shoulder against the bedpost. “Ever since the accident, you’ve been avoiding Michael. But we used to bump along so well together. Best of friends, in fact, all three of us. What happened?”

Her heart stuttered. Anthony didn’t know about the understanding she’d had with Michael, how he’d already asked her to marry him and was simply waiting for the right time to ask her brother’s permission. He was Anthony’s best friend, so they’d kept their courtship secret. They didn’t want Anthony to be swept up into their business or try to persuade them into marriage if the courtship didn’t work.

In the end, that worry had proven unfounded.

Everything had changed with the accident, including her relationship to Michael. In a matter of seconds, John Morley lost control of the team, the horses darted, the phaeton flipped… When she hit the ground, the rig rolled over on top of her. Then mercifully, the darkness overtook her.

Two years later, though, she was still drowning in the darkness.

Her life had become a shell of what it had been. She’d once been declared an Incomparable, had been courted by dukes, waltzed with princes… Now, she could barely walk six feet without help and remembered dancing at balls as nothing more than a distant dream.

How could she have held Michael to his offer of marriage, knowing the pain and limitations of her life after the accident? It would have been cruel to saddle him with a wife who couldn’t give him the family and home he wanted and deserved. She’d already felt like a burden to her family; the last thing she wanted was to become a burden to Michael, too. So she’d sent the footman to deliver her note setting him free while she’d been carried away from London as fast as she could go.

She’d been cruel to be kind. He didn’t deserve to be a caretaker for the rest of his life. At the very least, he deserved a wife with whom he could dance at his own wedding.

She could never be that woman now.

“I didn’t want him to see me this way,” she confessed the partial truth.I didn’t want to seehimand be reminded of all I can never have...

“What way is that?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Beautiful, as you’ve always been?”

“Pitiful,” she whispered to the window.

“No one thinks that of you. Certainly not Michael. He’s always cared about you, you know that. He still does.”

Oh, that made it all so much worse! “I don’t wish to discuss him. You can remain friends with him—”

“I plan on it.”

“—butIno longer want to be. Please...leave it alone.”

“Clara, you can’t go on as—”

“Please, Anthony!” She leveled on him the most determined gaze she could muster, but even as she looked at him, he grew blurry from the hot tears gathering in her eyes. “We’ll only be at Northbourne for the night, and I’ll be no trouble here in my room.” She wouldn’t leave it until she was carried down in the morning to the carriage. She couldn’t bear to see Michael again. “There’s no need to make more of this than it is.”