I Walked Away And He Fell Apart Chapter 07
Right on cue, Rayford appeared.
“Get away from her!” he roared.
He spurred his horse forward and brought his riding crop down hard.
The leather snapped directly across the back of Garland’s hand. Garland yelped in pain, stumbling backward until he wiped out hard on the cobblestones.
Rayford was off his horse in a second. He checked me over fast to make sure I was okay, then turned his ice-cold focus onto Garland.
“Ambushing my wife’s carriage is a very reckless mistake, Garland,” he warned.
Cradling his bleeding hand, Garland dragged himself up from the muddy street. He watched Rayford step protectively in front of me, his face twisting with raw, ugly jealousy.
“Rayford!” Garland spat. “You just used your rank to force her into this! She doesn’t love you. I broke her heart, and you just swooped in and took advantage of her while she was vulnerable!”
Rayford didn’t even blink. Calmly, he pulled a thick stack of folded documents from his coat and chucked them right into Garland’s face.
“Open your eyes and read,” Rayford said, his voice deadly quiet. “Look at what actually went down three years ago. See for yourself who was playing who, and who the truly shameless one is.”
Garland tensed, his eyes dropping instinctively to the papers. The top page was a signed confession from the duke’s steward.
“In the spring of 1510, Ms. Sabrina Esmond paid a heavy bribe to a court attendant and ordered me to slip an aphrodisiac into Mr. Ridgley Ridgley’s wine. Ms. Esmond then had the doors secured, intending to go inside and spend the night with him.
“However, Ms. Madelyn Kempton happened to walk by, bringing honey water to help Mr. Ridgley sober up. Terrified of being caught, Ms. Esmond panicked, shoved Ms. Kempton into the room, and locked the door behind her…”
Garland stared at the words, frozen by the shock of the revelation.
“Impossible. This is impossible,” he stammered. “Sabrina is way too gentle to ever hurt anyone.
“She’d never do something like this. You made this up! You forged this just to clear her name!”
Rayford just scoffed and clapped his hands. Two guards dragged out a filthy, ragged woman.
The second she lifted her head, Garland recognized her. It was Christa, Sabrina’s most trusted personal maid from years ago.
Christa had vanished without a trace back then. Sabrina had claimed the maid stole from her and was sold off as punishment.
The moment she saw Garland, Christa collapsed to her knees, slamming her forehead against the ground over and over.
“Mr. Ridgley, please, you have to see the truth!” she begged. “Ms. Esmond drugged that drink herself! She hated that you and Ms. Kempton were childhood friends, and she was terrified you’d actually marry her. That’s why she set up this whole scheme.
“Afterward, she was so worried I’d spill her secret that she sold me to a squalid, illegal brothel. If Marshal Harington’s men hadn’t found me, the abuse would have killed me!
“Mr. Ridgley, Ms. Kempton was completely innocent the whole time!”
Garland’s legs gave out. He dropped straight into the muddy water.
Staring at the written proof in his hands and the living witness right in front of him, his denial crumbled.
Memories of that night three years ago hit him on a loop. He remembered me huddled in the corner, my clothes torn and a mess. He remembered the jagged piece of porcelain I had been clutching, and the bleeding cuts sliced across my skin.
But what had he done when he woke up?
But what had he done when he woke up?
He never asked if I was okay. He never bothered to find out what had actually happened. He just glared at me with absolute disgust and said the words that ruined my life.
“Have you completely lost your sense of shame just to marry into my family? You’re pathetic.”
“No, it wasn’t like that…”
Garland clutched his head in agony, letting out a raw, desperate cry.