Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
BENNET HALL, SURREY - JUNE 13, 1816
LEE
Polishing a telescope mirror was always a tedious process with little room for error. Still, it was a worthy endeavor. If I did not keep up on it, the metal would tarnish and then the device would be out of commission until I could get it back to working order. I was forced to abandon a mirror a few months ago after the winter had been too harsh and I hadn’t managed to replace it yet, so I had no backup.
Astronomy had once been a hobby, a passing interest. In the years after the accident, this room had become home. The stars never gasped or made comments. Planets never stared in horror.
The staff had learned to mostly leave me be here. Another thing that would need to change now that I had a wife. I couldn’t very well spend all day and night out here, leaving Charlotte alone in the big house. I’d dragged her out to this secluded estate and insisted on her staying for a year. The least I could do was eat beside her.
Of course, if I managed to ruin another meal the way I had breakfast, perhaps I should live out here. Save us both the trouble of another stilted supper.
It hadn’t been so bad being this large before the accident. The ladies seemed to enjoy it, and I appreciated their enjoyment. Men had generally respected me, likely because they knew they couldn’t actually reach my chin to hit it.
After the accident… The same behaviors that were charming from a handsome man became terrifying from a hideous one. And when that man was three hands taller than a regular person… well, I could not blame anyone for their fears. I would be petrified of a scarred giant as well.
In my darker moments, I was quite glad I hadn’t married Lady Celine following our courtship. She was more than a foot shorter than me and weighed seven, perhaps eight stone soaking wet.
Mia had been more substantial, though not by much. Eight or so inches shorter than me with a waiflike figure. I’d had to be careful not to injure her.
Charlotte was the tallest of the ladies in my life, half a foot, perhaps seven inches shorter than me. But she was still a little thing, even more so than she usually was if the cut of her gowns was any indication. Though tightening at her waist, the fabric hung loose around her arms and wrists this morning. It seemed the first few weeks of her condition had been difficult on her. I would need to make sure she didn’t lose more weight.
A twirl spread through my gut at the thought of my delicate wife. Lord, I hoped I hadn’t hurt her this morning. She said I hadn’t. But she had also dismissed me when I asked what was wrong.
My back gave a token protest, as it always did when I worked on the mirrors. Too far to bend. It got worse after the accident. And worse still after I hit two and thirty. I straightened, bending back over the stool and twisting to one side, then the other.
That was the precise moment I heard Crawford’s pompous rhetoric combined with two sets of footsteps coming up the path.
“And this is the observatory. His lordship had it built himself in?—”
Charlotte! Here. Now.
I shot up, casting around frantically for something to do, something to put away, something to clean. There was too much, no place to start.
Why, oh why, had I assumed Crawford would know that my observatory was not to be part of his tour? The man had all the sense of a half-eaten scone.
The knob on the door rattled before it flew open. Crawford strode in filled with unearned confidence with Charlotte trailing wearily after him.
The man positively strutted, as if he’d built the observatory with his own hands, brick by brick. My wife’s countenance was unreadable. Her pace slowed, abandoning Crawford’s heels, as she stared at the room, her brow furrowed and lips parted. Upon catching sight of the telescope, her head tipped back, back, back. She spun slowly, wordlessly, in place, an implacable expression on her face.
Silently, she advanced along the walls of the hexagonal room, surveying my kingdom. When she reached the desk against the wall opposite me, she drew a finger along one of the star charts spread atop it.
In her position, she was bathed in the light from the opening of the domed ceiling. One of her curls had escaped her pins and brushed her neck with every movement. I had the utterly absurd desire to tug it, to see if it straightened and relaxed or coiled back like a spring.
She pushed aside the top chart and inspected the one beneath it. Then the armillary sphere caught her attention, she stepped over to it and traced it with a long finger.
Her lazy journey brought her to the workbench I had been crouched over moments ago and stopped before me. For the first time, I noticed her eyes had a ring of green around the perimeter of the mahogany irises. Little flecks of gold were there too. More notable for the bright sunlight caressing her face.
My butler, entirely oblivious to the rising tension inherent in her perusal, prattled on about the various construction methods of the building.
“Crawford,” I broke in quickly, between two breaths. My eyes never leaving Charlotte’s.
“Yes, my lord?”
“Get out.”
He froze, speechless for an entire quarter of a minute, before protesting in disgruntled sputters.
“Thank you for the tour, Crawford. Your information has been invaluable,” my wife added, head still tipped back to meet my gaze.
The man grumbled the entirety of the three feet he had to walk to the door and continued for some time, audible through the open ceiling. And through it all, neither of us breathed.
We weren’t close, not scandalously so in any event. I had held her closer the night we danced. Our current distance had been halved the evening of her aborted seduction on the settee.
But this, now, something was in the air, thick and palpable, and I wasn’t willing to be the one to cut it.
Seconds, minutes, hours later, her throat bobbed with a purposeful swallow. “So this is where you were last night?”
“Yes, I—did you need me for something last night?”
Something about my question had her expression shuttering as she took a step back from me. It was breakfast all over again.
I backed up another step, the backs of my legs hitting my work bench, and I half collapsed upon it.
Charlotte considered me carefully for a moment before gesturing to the entirety of my observatory. “What are you studying?”
“A little bit of everything. Stars, the moon, planets, anything, everything there is to see.”
She nodded, though at what, I had no idea. “What are you working on now?”
“I’m polishing the mirror. It is prone to tarnish and can become misshapen. If it gets too off, I need to replace it.”
“What is it for?”
“The telescope.” I gestured to the massive golden tube occupying the majority of the floor.
“So you spend your nights here? Looking at the stars?” Devil take me. There was something about her tone I could not name, but it left me feeling uneasy, on edge.
“Yes—well, not all of them. Sometimes the weather doesn’t oblige…”
“So if I wish to find my husband, I should begin my search here if the weather is fine?”
“I suppose. But I… is there something I can do for you?”
She shook her head and made another circuit around the room. The scrutiny was overwhelming as she examined my sanctuary with a critical but not unkind eye.
Her fingers were gentle as she trailed them over the various pieces of equipment strewn about the room. She bent over, inspecting the astrological clock on my desk. That motion displayed her pert derrière to great advantage, and I bit back a groan. I was, after all, celibate, not dead.
Finally, she turned to face me again, leaning against the desk, mimicking my position against the workbench. The gap between us spanned the entire room, and I felt every inch of it.
When she finally broke the silence, she didn’t raise her voice, even in spite of the distance. Instead, her words were clear, bell-like, and in a practiced tone. “It is all very interesting. I can see why this would cause a man to abandon his wife on his wedding night.”
Realization washed over me in waves. We hadn’t spoken of it. In my mind, the conversation had been unnecessary. Obviously, I would not burden her with my desires. I could not risk it—could not have born it—not from her.
The muscles of my throat tightened uncomfortably. I swallowed, desperately hoping coherent speech wouldn’t abandon me. “I… it occurs to me now that we never discussed… marital relations in our arrangement.” My voice was thick and syrupy, and not in an attractive way.
Her only response was an arched brow.
I forced myself to continue, dragging each word out of my throat. “It had not occurred to me that you would expect or wish—that is—it is unnecessary given your current… condition. So I had assumed that we would… not.”
“You assumed we would not?” She cocked out her hip, and her hand found it. The note of her voice was sharper, clearer. I could sense the pitfall in front of me. It was right there waiting, but I could not see through the mounds of brush and twigs and leaves. I could not find my way around the trap.
“Yes?”
She was silent. Unmoving. Eerily so.
“Very well.” Her tone was thin, brittle. I had stepped right into that pit, and I had not even noticed the fall, the earth dropping out from under me, until I smacked the bottom with two little words.
Charlotte pressed herself away from the desk and exited the observatory without a sound. I was left with the understanding that I had said something very, very wrong.
And I hadn’t the slightest idea what it was.
CHARLOTTE
Tears traced angry tracks down my cheeks, and I flicked them away with an irritated huff as I stomped away from my husband’s observatory. Once again breaking my rule.
The reason that a cancerous, tangled pain grew in my chest until it stole my breath was a mystery. I hadn’t wanted him in my bed in the first place—I truly hadn’t. But that he did not wish to be…
This was all its fault, I was certain. It left me rounded and thick in all the wrong places and too thin in precisely the opposite ones. I was weak and sensitive in entirely unexpected ways.
Each and every interaction with my husband left me feeling more unappealing and unattractive than the last. Every time I thought he might… Every flicker of interest I thought I read in his eyes… It led nowhere, to nothing.
We had a purely practical arrangement, designed to suit both of our needs. And I should be thrilled—I was—it just seemed as if he had even fewer needs than I had anticipated.
Relief should be washing over me like a hot bath on a cold night. There was no reason to dread my husband’s attentions because he had no intention of paying me any. At least three-quarters of the ton would be ecstatic in my situation. I would have been ecstatic in my situation less than a year ago.
And still the tears refused to cease, burning angry salty trails down my face and neck. I was not pretty crier, not naturally anyway. I could feign tears, lovely individual things. But the real ones were hot and ugly and left me a reddened, snotty mess.
I found myself in some sort of garden that was surely a future stop on Crawford’s never-ending tour. Separated from the observatory by a large hedgerow, I was free to be hideous. Surrounded by flowers of every possible shade, I collapsed onto a wrought iron bench.
Bumblebees flitted from bloom to bloom relishing in their successful gathering. They paid me no mind, caring little for my flushed, swollen face.
Lee did not want me. Wesley did not want me. Rosehill did not want me. For all that men spoke in less than covert whispers about my face and figure, not one of them had shown the slightest interest in me when I was free for the taking.
This scene was entirely absurd. I knew that. Anyone with any sort of sense would know that. A few months ago, I would have told anyone that I was in possession of a great deal of sense. But I knew better now.
Wesley had pledged such words of desire and passion, interspersed with promises to love me. And he had kissed me with such enthusiasm, if not skill. His touches, too, were rough and desperate and even after they left me cold and uneasy I still wanted him.
And then came the day that my courses should have arrived. It came and went without my notice, actually. The day after as well. It was a fortnight before I realized they were late. The work of another fortnight to confirm they were gone and not merely tardy.
Several more weeks were spent in search of the suddenly elusive Wesley. But the day I found him—that boxing match—that was the day I understood that I had been a senseless fool all along.
I had vowed then, in the back of my carriage smelling of sick and piss, to be sensible, practical. I intended, from that day forth, to be the reasonable woman I had always believed I was.
Yet here I was crying in a hedgerow, just as pathetic as I had always been.