Archive of Our Own

It was all his fault.

No matter how he looked it, he was the problem. Who would want to marry someone who proposed to her sister out of panic? A man who claimed he was a gentleman but behaved anything but. A man who almost ruined his family over and over again, who almost hurt his sisters twice over. He was a failure as the head of the house, as a brother, as a viscount, as a fiancé.

He was almost everything bad. He did his best for his family. But it was never enough. He was never enough.

He never will be enough.

Kate Sharma was leaving, his heart safely nestled with her trunks. He will never see her again. Never speak to her or touch and taste her again. He can’t even keep her in his life at a distance, where he can see her smile and pretend that those smiles were for him alone. Where he can see her walking across the street and pretend that the dreams he’s had since that race in the park were true. Dreams of them happy and in love in the country, their beautiful children running around them. It was a picture of bliss that tortured him for months. They were worse during Aubrey Hall because now he had the image of how she looked at all the different times of day and how she looked in his estate. His imagination no longer needed to imagine what her hair looked like loose in the library, or how she would laugh playing pall mall. He no longer had to close his eyes to dream, because she would laugh in his presence and he would be sent straight back to those dreams. And it was both painful and sweet. Because he thought he could never have it.

How right he was to think that.

Because if he hadn’t ruled out love so openly, if he hadn’t loudly remarked about his criteria at the conservatory ball, if he had ignored the diamond for the rarer gem in the shadows, if he had kissed her when he wanted to, if he had told her that she haunts his very being; he could have had her in his arms again. He could be whole again. He should have told her he loved her and how much he loved her the moment he knew, instead of panicking for days and then proposing to her sister because he hasn’t felt more himself in a decade than the moments when Kate’s lips were on his. Be it soft pecks in the cover of the night, or the way she attacked his lips like she was thirsty and he was the only source of water for miles and miles.

What had she told him? That their feelings will pass? He remembers all their interactions vividly, but the one that sticks out at him was the one in the woods after the Sheffield dinner. Her hair was pulled into a long, thick braid to the side. Her beautiful brown eyes glazed with tears as she unknowingly shoved a knife into his chest. He should have known then that he wasn’t anything to her, nothing but a reminder of hurt and betrayal.

“Because this feeling that plagues us so, it will pass. It will become tenable, it will become bearable, and soon enough, it will be as if we never felt it at all. Mere passion. It must because it has to.”

How could it ever pass? Does she still think it could? Had he not told her that all he can do is breathe for her? If India was the only obstacle, surely she should know that he would run with her? He would be on that boat, just to keep her with him.

But you cannot force love, so he will let her do as she wishes. Because if being married to him disgusted her, he would give her the sun and the moon to make her happy. He would go through with a wedding to Edwina again if she only asked him. Because he would do it all for Kate. She will go back home, just as she always wanted, and she will forget about the lowly viscount and she will meet someone who loves her and who she loves. And he will forever be bitter and jealous at who gets to keep her heart. Because he will never forget her. It’s impossible.

As he approached Grosvenor Square, he felt himself drown. Pulled into the deepest depths of grief and misery, anchored to the sea bed by the ring weighing down his pocket. He had failed in duty and he failed in love.

His mother had suggested that he resume his search for a wife after the sham with Edwina. But he knows now that it is impossible. He cannot marry another, he cannot do it to anyone. How could he tie someone down to his mess, whilst his heart will be so far from him? How could he marry another, knowing that he will once again think of Kate in white? How could he have heirs and know that they will never look like the woman he loves? It is far too cruel. And he hopes that when he puts the heart-shaped box in front of his mother, she understands without him having to relive his rejection.

This was his life now. A life without Kate Sharma.

And he had no one to blame but himself.

At night it dawned on him, tears on his cheeks and pillow long since dried, that he never said the words. He never told her he loved her with those words. Actions speak louder than words, and he knows his actions show how lovesick he is. But the once chance he had of telling her those three words, the only time he would ever say those words to another person, and he never said it. He knew she doesn’t love him and that she would probably be rightly offended if he said it, but still. He wanted to say it out loud for once instead of keeping it a secret.

“I love you, Kate Sharma.”