A Marriage Most Inconvenient (Inconvenient Matches Book #1)

Chapter 52: Vera

As Minerva held a rag full of small shavings of ice against her red, horridly splotchy face she let out a long sigh. There was nothing quite like a good, solid cry to make one feel slightly less like complete and utter horse shite. Better still if one locked themselves in their first class suite and refused to join the other passengers for a single meal and ate all the tea cakes that could possibly be had from the kitchens. To top it all off, to maximize one's indulgence in their self-pity, one simply must start crying at the smallest reminders of one's husband.

He always liked this color on me.

Cue the waterfall.

This coffee is almost exactly the color of his eyes.

Her buttered toast found a splash of snot on it.

I wonder if he has gotten to Ophelia yet.

There she went sniffling into her handkerchief.

The servers likely thought she was mad, the other passengers likely thought she was too uppity to join them. She could not bring herself to join them knowing there were two newly married couples on board and she would have to witness their love and eagerness while she was so heartbroken. Not to mention that she looked half dead with her sunken eyes and reddened nose.

She felt like complete and utter shite. Likely looked it too. What a sad state of affairs indeed.

Stop it. You are not the first woman to have loved the wrong man, nor shall you be the last, her mind argued but her heart remained unmoved.

But he felt like the right man, it replied petulantly, deflating in anguish.

Oh, enough! She stood up out of her chair and fumed. She pressed the ice-cloth closer to her face in a silly bid to bring down the bloating caused by all the excessive weeping. She would join the other passengers for dinner today, to the devil with all this moping! She would put on one of her favorite evening gowns, have her hair done in an elaborate style, and paint her lips. She would sit with the other ladies and enjoy herself. Perhaps she would join them for some card games. She was among Americans for the first time in years, she might as well enjoy the release from the stuffiness of English Society.

There is no one looking forward to seeing me at dinner. There is no one to join me in the library afterward.

Oh, she had to stop it! She had made a decision because she had respected herself too much to stay with someone who could not offer her trust. She had thought he loved her.

Sniffle.

She had thought he loved her. He had made it feel so real. But he did not and she would not lay herself at his feet in the hopes that someday he would.

And still, she had looked out onto the harbor, hoping to see a familiar head of curling black hair that had been styled to perfection. A regal, perfect posture. Eyes that were normally impassive, but had looked at her with so much affection and passion.

Her eyes watered once more.

What had she wanted? Had she wanted him to run to her side and beg her to stay? Lay his heart down and apologize? Ease this hurt that he had caused?

He had tried. And she hadn't let him. She had run away

He had made her feel so loved and cherished. More so than anyone else in her life.

How could he just throw it away like that?

Except he did not.

She was the one who had left. Like a coward, she had turned her back and fled. She had held him accountable for not giving her the opportunity to speak, but hadn't she just done the same? She had left days before he was due home. She had not given him the opportunity to speak his piece while she was in a clear mind. She had looked at him through the haze of her hurt, through what she had felt was a betrayal. She had felt so unmoored by his treachery that she had clung to her hurt, used it to pull herself to safer ground. She had used it to erect a fortress around her heart so that he would not see her vulnerability again.