Chapter 6: What he chose

Sophie stood in the doorway, hand still on the frame. She looked at Julian, then at me, and then back at Julian.

Nobody said anything.

Julian stepped back first, putting distance between us so fast. “Sophie.” His voice cracked a bit “This isn’t…”

“Isn’t what?” She wiped at her eyes, though I hadn’t seen a tear fall. “Isn’t exactly what it looked like?”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “And even if it had, you don’t get a say in it.”

Her eyes snapped to me. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You ran from this marriage. You don’t get to come back and act like you still own it.”

“I never stopped being his fiancée in my heart.”

“That’s a nice line,” I said. “You should write it down before you forget it, since you’ll probably need it again.”

“Francesca.” Julian’s voice, low, a warning.

I turned on him next. “Don’t. Don’t ‘Francesca’ me like I’m the one who needs to calm down. You’re the one who ran the second she walked in.”

His jaw tightened. “That’s not what happened.”

“It’s exactly what happened. You put distance between us like I was something you got caught holding.”

“I need a minute,” he said, and started for the door.

“Of course you do,” I said. “You always need a minute when there’s a confrontation.”

That stopped him, just for a second though. He didn’t turn around, he just left, and I let him, because I wasn’t going to chase a man out of his own guilt.

Sophie watched the whole thing with some unreadable expression. “You should be more careful,” she said once he was gone.

“Careful of what?”

“Of thinking any of this belongs to you. This house, this name, him. None of it was ever supposed to be yours.”

“And yet here I am,” I said. “Living in it. Wearing his name. Standing two inches from him twenty minutes ago while you were somewhere else entirely, being the reason he can’t just be happy.”

Her mouth opened, then closed.

“You don’t get to walk in here and act wounded,” I went on. “Not after everything you did. You left him at the altar and let me pay for it. If anyone’s earned the right to stand this close to him, it’s not you.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then explain it to me. Actually explain it, instead of crying and disappearing every time someone asks a real question.”

She didn’t have an answer for that. I watched her scramble for one and come up empty. “This isn’t over,” she finally said, and left, her heels sharp against the floor.

I stood alone in the room, my hands shaking slightly.

I didn’t see Julian again until dinner, and even then, he barely looked at me. He answered Sophie’s questions in short, distracted sentences, and when Marta asked if I’d be joining them at the table, he probably expected me to say no.

I went down anyway. I wasn’t going to start hiding in my room over something I hadn’t caused.

Sophie’s eyes flicked up when I took my seat, surprise flashing before she buried it. “I didn’t think you’d want to eat with us tonight.”

“Why wouldn’t I? I live here too.”

Julian didn’t look up from his plate, and I didn’t bother with him either.

Two days passed. Julian avoided me with real effort, leaving early, coming home late, and being polite whenever our paths crossed. I stopped waiting for it to change.

Sophie, meanwhile, seemed to be everywhere. In the kitchen when I came down for tea. In the hallway outside my room. Always with some reason to be there, always managing to mention Julian at least once before she left.

“He took me to dinner last night,” she said on the third day, not looking up from her magazine. “Just the two of us. Reminded him what things used to feel like.”

“Good for you both.” I said

She glanced up, thrown by how little that landed. “You should eat something. You’ve barely touched your food since the other night. Guilt does strange things to people.”

“I don’t feel guilty. I feel annoyed, mostly, that you think mentioning your dinner plans is going to bother me.”

“It should.”

“Well unfortunately for you, I don’t really care.” I said

Before she could speak, someone called for her, so she stood up and left. I finished my tea alone, and it tasted better than it had in days.

I found Davis in the garden that evening, needing somewhere that didn’t feel like a battlefield. “You look like you’ve been fighting all day,” he said, making room for me on the bench.

“I have been.”

“Winning, from the look of it.” He said

“I’m learning to.”

He smiled at that, small and genuine. “Julian’s frightened.”

“Of what?”

“Of wanting something he doesn’t think he’s allowed to want.” He looked at me carefully. “He’s spent his whole life being told what he’s supposed to feel, and about whom. It’s easier for him to retreat than sit with something that doesn’t fit the plan everyone made for him.”

“That’s not an excuse for how he’s treating me.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t. I’m not asking you to forgive it. I’m only telling you why it’s happening, so you’re not left guessing in the dark.”

“I appreciate that. I’m just tired of being the one who has to understand everyone else’s fear while mine doesn’t seem to count for anything.”

“It counts,” Davis said quietly. “More than you think. Just don’t let Sophie convince you it doesn’t. She’s more dangerous when she’s losing, and right now, she’s losing.”

I sat there a while after he left before I decided to go back inside.

The house was dim, most of the lights already turned down for the night. I took the back staircase instead of the main one, the one that led up near my room without passing the sitting room at all.

I was three steps from the top when my foot caught on the edge of the runner rug, loose where it had been pulled from its track.

I didn’t have time to catch the railing.

I went down hard, my shoulder hitting the edge of a step, and my knee twisting under me at an angle that sent pain shooting up my leg. For a while I just lay there, stunned, the air knocked out of me.

“Mrs. Windsor?” Marta’s voice, somewhere above me, footsteps hurrying down.

“I’m fine,” I said, though that wasn’t true.

She helped me sit up, her hands surprisingly gentle. “You’re bleeding.”

I looked down and there indeed was a shallow cut along my forearm. It didn’t hurt yet but I knew it would.

“I’ll get the first aid kit,” she said, already moving.

I sat there on the stairs a moment longer, my knee throbbing, and my arm stinging.

Footsteps again, faster this time, and I looked up to see Julian at the top of the stairs. “What happened?” He asked.

“I fell.”

He was down the stairs before I could say anything else, crouching in front of me, his hands hovering like he didn’t know if he was allowed to touch me anymore.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m aware.”

His eyes moved over me, “Can you stand?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Behind him, in the doorway of the sitting room, Sophie stood watching with a wine glass in her hand. She didn’t move to help nor did she say anything.