Sounded like one too.
It had been one of their shared jokes that he had been born in London but had a broad Aberdonian accent, whereas Nia—thanks to her expensive boarding school in Berkshire—spoke with a kind of smooth drawl that held no trace of her Scottish upbringing.
The chill in his stomach began seeping through his body.
Her voice wasn’t the only misleading thing about her.
He had thought she loved him without reservation. She had told him that she did.
And yet when it had come down to choosing between him and a bunch of bricks and beams she had left him sitting at the train station like an unwanted suitcase.
‘So what happened?’
She glanced up at him. A flush of colour crept over her cheeks and her eyes widened with shock, or maybe confusion. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This…’ he gazed slowly round the room ‘…was once so very important to you.’
It was why she had broken up with him. And the other side of that statement, the unspoken truth, was that he hadn’t been important enough for her to walk away, to leave Lamington behind.
‘So what changed?’ he asked. ‘Why are you playing house down the drive?’
This time there was no mistaking the swift, startled flinch in her eyes, and a part of him hated it that he had caused that flicker of pain. But another part—the part that had never fully forgotten or forgiven the pain she’d caused him—felt nothing.
She shook her head. ‘I’m not playing at anything.’
His chest felt suddenly too tight. She sounded as shaken as he felt. And he knew it wasn’t just his accusation. He knew she was feeling the shock of this encounter just as much as he was.
‘You played me.’ His voice cut through the air like a blade. ‘You made me think it was real.’ She had made him care and hope and believe. ‘So what was I? A gap year adventure? A way to shake up your family a little?’
‘No, that’s not true.’
‘Really?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘You know, I might have believed that. Once upon a time.’ The tension in his voice was making his accent more pronounced. He could hear the influx of glottal stops, the rolled ‘R’s. ‘But guess what, Lady Antonia? I don’t believe in fairy tales any more.’
‘It’s not a fairy tale.’ Her voice was fraying. ‘It’s the truth.’
‘Is that what you tell yourself?’ He shook his head.
She had gone to talk to her parents. Left him standing in the kitchen like some delivery boy.
His heart twisted. He should have known then how it was going to go.
But he had loved her, trusted her—
Even at that distance it had stung, hearing her father say that she would lose her inheritance if she went ahead and married him. But not as much as when she had broken up with him the following day over the phone.
The unrelenting misery of those hours swept over him, the shock of her betrayal as raw and intense as it had been on the day.
‘You used me, Lady Antonia, and then you dumped me.’
Lead was filling his lungs. That first year away from her had nearly broken him. And the worst of it was, he had been there before. A different time, a different kitchen, but the same old story. And yet even though he had heard the thin, shrill whistle of the missile and known what it meant, he still hadn’t seen it coming.
He’d thought Nia was different—special. And he’d been so smitten with her that he’d ignored both the obvious and the lessons of the past.
Idiot that he was, he had actually believed that he was special to her.
‘Your parents thought you might follow your heart. They needn’t have worried. You don’t have a heart, do you, Lady Antonia? Plenty of pride, but no heart.’
‘Just saying things doesn’t make them true.’