The Undoing of Daisy Edwards (A Time for Scandal) by Marguerite Kaye Page A

solitude and surviving, this wouldn’t have happened. I felt as if I was standing on an abyss and I was furious at Dominic for putting me there, but I was much, much more furious with myself.
    When he found me I was cowering on a chair, hugging my coat around me like a suit of armour. I must have looked awful. Tear-streaked, dust streaked, shaking. I didn’t care. If I could have hidden there in that attic, with all the other relics, until I turned to stone or dust myself, I would have. That way I wouldn’t have to think. Wouldn’t have to act. Wouldn’t have to jump. Or run.
    When he tried to pull me to my feet, I cowered away from him like a frightened animal. The look on his face then. Not pity, but as if he’d struck me. I pushed him away and got to my feet. ‘I can manage on my own,’ I said.
    ‘I know.’ He picked me up, hugging me to his chest, ignoring my protests. ‘I know you can, Daisy,’ he said. ‘We both can. But don’t you think it would be nice not to have to?’
    Dominic
    I took her down to the kitchen, the smaller one, not the huge barn that used to be the servants’ hall. She was ashen, her eyes wide, shaking violently when I set her down in a chair, pulling it close to the range. There was coal and wood. It was funny how easily I got the fire to light; I’d been away so long.
    Daisy said nothing, which was a relief, because I knew that if she spoke then she’d tell me it was over, and it couldn’t be over—although it would be different. That’s one thing I’d learned in the war. You can’t go back. There is only forwards, even when you know that forwards will take you into no man’s land.
    The room began to heat. I put a kettle on the range to boil. Daisy raised her hands to the flames. She wasn’t crying now. Her face was set, like a mask. She was pressing her knees together under the mint-green silk of her dress. Trying not to shake. Same reason she pressed her lips so tightly together.
    No going back, but there was a way forwards. I could see it. I just had to make her see it.
My love
, I’d called her. I hadn’t meant to, but once it was out, there it was, hanging between us. The truth we’d been avoiding. The thing we’d said wouldn’t happen.
    ‘I could have taken it back,’ I said, because the silence was becoming painful, and with every passing second Daisy was garnering her will to walk out and she wouldn’t come back. ‘I didn’t mean to say it. I could have pretended it didn’t mean anything more than one of those
darling
s that everyone says these days.’
    ‘You still can,’ she said, not looking at me, but there was anguish in her voice that squeezed at my heart and made me all the more certain.
    ‘Daisy, the problem with the truth is that once it’s been said, you can’t unsay it. And I don’t want to.’
    ‘Then it’s over.’
    ‘No!’
    ‘I can’t.’ She pushed her chair back and got to her feet again, but then she stood there, frozen to the spot. ‘I can’t, Dominic. I won’t. I made it through the last time, I haven’t—I just can’t imagine getting through it again. I have my life. I have my career…’
    ‘Which is severely limited by the fact that you won’t play anything other than tragedy. Have you thought about that, Daisy?’
    She winced. It was brutal, but it was true, and I was fighting for my life here. Not the way I fought in the trenches. I wouldn’t die without her. I’d proved I could go on. But I was fighting for the life I wanted. Just how fiercely I was prepared to fight made me realise then just how badly I wanted it.
    ‘I have my career,’ she said firmly, ‘and it might not be good enough for you, but it’s good enough for me. And I have my sister –’
    ‘A sister who you never see. Not even in her pictures. Another thing you need to think about.’ Brutal, like I said. The look she gave me, white fury and deep hurt. I wanted to sweep her into my arms and say that it was all right, the way they do in the