Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“ Y ou look stunning tonight, Edwina,” Lucien murmured, holding Edwina close. “Teal suits you.”
“It does not look so bad on you, either,” she teased, brushing her thumb over his cravat as he guided her around the dance floor.
Her palms smoothed distractingly over his shoulders as if she were brushing away lint. But he knew it was her fascination with his broad shoulders. He was rather pleased with how much his wife adored his physique.
He knew she mostly enjoyed the ease with which he could pick her up when they were being intimate. Edwina had worried once or twice afterward that she was too wide for such things, and Lucien had responded by picking her up and thrusting into her right in the middle of his chambers, with no wall to support him, but simply his strength.
“I was thinking that perhaps one day this week we might make use of Jasper’s wedding gift,” Edwina murmured, threading her fingers through his hair.
Once again, Lucien was almost distracted by her gentle touches. For a woman who liked to be taken roughly at times, her touches were tender. A man like him had never deserved such things, but now…
It was possible with Edwina. She was making it possible.
He pushed those thoughts aside.
“Is there something you wish to see?” he asked, focusing on her instead of his foolish self-deprecation.
She hummed, nodding. “I found out that the commissioner at the opera house has hired a talented singer from France. She sings epics from old mythology, and apparently, even if one does not understand, it is still something to behold.”
“If you wish to go, then we shall go,” he promised her.
Around them, other couples danced, and he spotted Jasper with a lovely young lady in his arms. No doubt she was the first of many dance partners he would go through during the night. His gaze landed on Edwina’s friend, Diana, who was dancing with the Marquess of Highbury.
“Your friend’s face is as pink as a rose,” he snorted.
Edwina craned her neck to look at her friend. “Ah, she has admired him for a very long time. In fact, when she found out you were staying at Montgomery Manor, she asked me if you knew the Marquess and requested to have some sort of introduction set up if you did.”
“I know him, and we have conversed several times at balls,” Lucien said, smirking. “But it seems I do not have to worry about it any longer.”
“I am glad she is finally dancing with him. I only hope it is followed by a proposal of sorts.”
“Do all women dream to move fast into a courtship?” he asked. “I know the ways of the ton, but I have not been around any debutantes to know if they truly hope for a quick offer of courtship or if it is merely duty.”
He did not admit that he feared he lacked knowledge he could use to deal with his daughter. What if he pushed his wife into something she did not wish for?
Lucien ignored such worries. He and Edwina had yet to decide on having children, although he had not seen her take any tonics after their tumbles.
“I suppose it depends,” Edwina told him. “Personally, I wished for a quick offer of courtship. Seeing the state my brother was in, I did not want to waste time. However, it was more about security and ensuring that Nicholas would be supported, too.”
“I believe I sped up the process,” Lucien teased.
“Indeed.”
“Edwina, had this been an average courtship, would you have accepted my offer?”
His wife blinked up at him, her lips parting in surprise. He did not really know where his question had come from, and he wondered at how she seemed to disarm him more and more lately. He found himself feeling more vulnerable than usual around her.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, I believe I would have.”
“Even though we bickered terribly?”
“We still do.” She giggled, leaning into him as he twirled her around the edge of the dance floor, only to lead her down the length of it.
He liked seeing the flush that always bloomed on her cheeks during her happiest moments. She giggled freely, and he felt as though he was on the edge of the world, his happiness unmatched.
Until the sight of a figure on the edge of the dance floor had him halting abruptly.
“Stop,” he hissed, not meaning to sound so harsh.
Edwina stumbled to a stop, confused. But Lucien could not look away from his uncle, and he could not school his features.
Until his uncle approached them boldly.
“Nephew,” Barnard Fitzgerald greeted, bowing. “I do not wish to intrude, but I was hoping to meet your wife at last.”
Like this, Lucien could barely refuse. Not in front of the other guests, and not at Jasper’s ball. He would not cause a scene, and, despite his feelings, he could not keep Edwina away from his family forever.
His stomach dropped as he stepped away. “If you upset her, I will make you regret it,” he muttered darkly.
“I would not dream of such a thing, Lucien,” Barnard said, sounding hurt. “I only wish to greet the Duchess and ask her to dance.”
To his dismay, Lucien had to agree.
After nodding to his uncle, he turned to Edwina and leaned close to her. He made to tell her not to ask Barnard all the questions he had refused to answer, to tell her not to listen to a word his uncle said, but in the end, he only kissed her knuckles.
“I will be right there, should you need me.”
Before his frustration could take over, as it had with Allan that day, Lucien walked off the dance floor. He kept his eye on his wife and uncle, watching as Edwina’s confused smile turned more genuine as her gaze flicked to him and then back to Barnard.
Lucien’s anger was simmering. He was not furious, but more taken aback at how his uncle had chosen that moment to present himself.
As they danced, Lucien could not help but feel his uncle’s betrayal. He thought of Edwina beseeching him to give Barnard another chance to make amends, but he had not been able to. Every time he came close to thinking about it, he could only remember Barnard’s complicity in his wife’s schemes, and everything in him would hurt all over again.
Edwina’s smile relaxed further the more she danced, and he wanted to pry her free from the Fitzgeralds’ grasps—Allan, Barnard, and even Rose—and keep her at his side, where he could keep her safe.
He could barely stand it any longer when the dance finally ended.
Barnard brought Edwina back, but Lucien could only say in a tight voice, “I will speak with you privately. Now, Uncle Barnard. Edwina, I will be back shortly.”
“Lucien—”
He could only listen to the blood rushing in his ears as he led his uncle out of the ballroom, to another room off the main hallway. It was a smaller, empty parlor, and he slammed the door shut behind them, rounding on Barnard.
The man started, his gray-streaked blond hair quivering slightly. “Lucien, I?—”
“You have some nerve to walk up to me and my wife after everything that happened,” Lucien seethed. “Approaching her is bad enough when I purposefully did not invite you to our wedding, but to come near me…” He shook his head, dismayed. “Uncle, I cannot fathom it.”
“And I am sorry for the intrusion,” Barnard offered. “But I have attempted to reach out, to make amends. I asked you to come to Katherine’s funeral so we might meet, perhaps share a drink—speak about everything.”
“Speak?” Lucien laughed. “Barnard, the problem is that you never spoke. You remained silent and complicit. And when you realized how easily I could cast you out of my life, you crawled back with written apologies, but you never once came to Stormhold.”
“I assumed that I was not welcome.”
“You would have been,” Lucien snapped. “Once upon a time, you would have been. But not now, not when you have decided to stick with stale, distant apologies. My aunt is dead, and I can only be grateful that I do not have to endure knowing that she lives another day to possibly hurt others.”
“You do not mean that,” Barnard said, his voice filled with agony. “Lucien, she was my wife. We all but raised you as our own.”
“ You might have tried to, but she…” Lucien spat, picturing Katherine in his mind. “She wanted me out of the way.”
“No, Lucien. No. I do not believe it was as rotten as that. Katherine loved you. Why have you never seen that?”
Lucien reared back. “How can you say that to me, knowing what she put me through? I can barely stand to be around my cousins because I despise their mother, because of the strain she had created between the three of us. You cannot look me in the eye and defend her.”
His voice cracked with old pain that he had always done well to bury. It had remained buried—until he had kept seeing his cousins, and now his uncle, and he was not sure how much more he could endure.
“Lucien, please, you must listen?—”
“I listened plenty when I was seventeen, Barnard!” Lucien snapped. “Your remorse was not enough to stop her from putting her plan in motion. You knew long before I overheard that conversation, yet you continued to look the other way,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “She would have gone through with it, you know.”
“I do not believe she would have,” Barnard insisted. “It was not in her nature to kill.”
“Why did my father die, Uncle Barnard? How, and why?”
“It—It was something he ingested, was it not?” Barnard looked genuinely confused as he looked around, as if trying to find the answer. “Something from a meal, or a plant in a drink he had at a ball.”
“No,” Lucien whispered, pain pricking his heart. “It’s not a plant in a drink he had at a ball. He ingested poison that was administered by your late wife. Your own brother , Barnard—she killed your brother. And when she succeeded?—”
“Please, do not,” Barnard pleaded, his voice low. “Do not speak of her that way.”
Lucien ignored him, lost in the confrontation he had never let himself have, spurred on by rage and betrayal.
“When she succeeded, she turned to his only living heir when he came of age. I suppose before I turned eighteen, she had hoped I would die in some other way. Leave the dukedom ready for her beloved golden boy, Allan. But when I did not get out of her way conveniently, she took it into her own hands. Every night, she poisoned me, Barnard—pretending to help me with grief, with stress, with the loneliness of not having a relationship with my cousins because she prevented it.”
He choked, a cry bubbling up his throat.
“You… you sat with me night after night, after I was sick, knowing why, knowing because of whom, and now you look me in the eye and tell me that she was not such a person.”
The pain he had ignored for so many years had festered without him addressing it, and it all spilled out, dark and oozing. His uncle had been blinded by his love for Katherine, having courted her since her debut.
But Barnard was a fool, even with his wife gone, for he could not speak the truth openly.
“I tried to apologize, Lucien,” was all he repeated.
“That woman forced me to unknowingly ingest substances that would have killed me,” Lucien hissed. “She let me become almost addicted to it—both a poison and an antidote, for it helped and hindered me at different times. A cycle she forced on my body. And yet she herself was the poison all along, and she has poisoned you .”
“Nephew,” Barnard said quietly.
Lucien only shook his head, his lips pressed together. Everything rose up, spilling out of him in a wave he could not quite control. He was vulnerable, cut open, and he did not know how to close it all up.
“I have tried to keep my wife away from you all because she is everything good in my life, and you are all a very terrible reminder that you keep defending a woman who tried to kill me. Do you know how that feels, Uncle? I was seven years old, grieving my father, and thinking that there was hope in my new family. Cousins that could be my friends—only to be met with closed doors, a locked bedroom at times, and an aunt who told me I was not good enough to play with her children. I thought perhaps my uncle and aunt could be my guardians. Do you know how betrayed I felt to learn that I would not find safety with them? That they were not there to protect me, as they ought to?”
“Of course, we wanted to protect you,” his uncle told him.
Lucien laughed bitterly, shaking his head. “No. No, you did not.”
His patience was already worn thin, and the outright denial, the dismissal of what he had been through while living with his aunt and uncle only had him losing every shred of it.
His voice rose, no longer that broken whisper. “I never wish to see you again.”
“Lucien—”
“Leave!” he shouted.
Barnard flinched, hurrying back to the door before slipping out of the room.
But Lucien barely got a moment to compose himself before the door creaked again. He rounded on the intruder, only to find himself face-to-face with his wife, who looked insulted.
“What?” he snapped.
Edwina’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you so cruel to him? To all of them, in fact. I have met all three of your relatives now, Lucien, and I do not understand. None of them deserve your cruelty.”
Lucien could only stare at her for a moment, the last shred of his self-restraint slipping away.
He let out a laugh, one that was hurt and humorless, angry and withdrawn. “None of them deserve it?” he growled low in his throat, unable to help the fury that overtook him. “You have no right to tell me what to do, Edwina. How dare you stand there and judge me for my behavior when you know everything about me and nothing about them!”
Edwina reared back but did not back down. She looked confused and hurt, her face contorting.
“That is the problem, Lucien!” she shouted back. “Because every time I ask, you tell me nothing. And now you expect me to understand? I do not know everything about you because you deflect every single time, and I am done pretending as though it doesn’t hurt. Not when you interfere in my family’s affairs yet you keep me at arm’s length when it comes to yours!”
“For good reason. Why can you not see that?”
“Because I care about you!” she snapped. “Do you not see that I care about you, Lucien? I know you think that nobody can, or nobody will, that you are the hero who swoops in when needed. But you know what, you can also have your own hero. I am supposed to be that person for you, but you do not let me!”
Lucien only barked out another laugh, his mind racing, hearing his aunt’s voice in his head.
“You know I love you like a son, Lucien. I know your eyes hurt from the sunlight, but here, drink this. It shall make it all better…”
He could see Allan desperately trying to please his mother while telling Lucien that he was his best friend. He saw Nicholas’s lies and the slammed doors, his uncle pleading for forgiveness while defending Katherine.
Everybody lied to him, and he could not stand it.
So many times, it had happened, leaving him feeling untethered. How was he supposed to think that Edwina could be different?
His voice low, he asked her, “How can you care for a man you do not even know?”
“Lucien,” Edwina said, her voice softer. “Do not ask foolish things.”
“This is a foolish thing?” he scoffed. “No, Edwina. What is foolish is this . Us . The laughter, watching others have a perfect life and build a future because they truly care for one another.”
“And we do not?” she whispered, her voice breaking.
His heart turned heavy, a boulder in his chest. “No.”
I cannot believe that she could care for me. Not when she is good and I am rotten inside. Cruel and dismissive.
“No, for partners should not care for one another, only for what they could gain out of their agreement.”
“Partners?”
Her voice was cracking, faint, as hurt as Barnard’s had sounded.
She is just another thing I have destroyed , he mused, his fist clenched.
The scent of jasmine and rose tickled his senses, and he knew she had stepped closer. He flinched away, snarling.
“Is all I am to you a partner?” Edwina asked.
“What more is there to this?” he countered. “Your brother’s rehabilitation is going well. You are secure, and I have fulfilled my promises. I helped you, supported you. That was all you required, no?”
“Why are you being so cold to me? I am your wife.”
“Did we not agree that this was a marriage of convenience?”
“So that is it?” Edwina challenged, her voice snappish. “I am no longer convenient, so you must push me away?”
“As you said,” he drawled, putting more distance between them. I cannot afford to let her get close . “You do not know me entirely.”
“Then let me get to know you!” she pleaded. “Do not push me away, Lucien.”
“And then what? You want a life in Stormhold where we will be intimate in every space, pretending that intimacy can fill the chasm between us? A life where I will keep you separate from my cousins and uncle, for I cannot have them in my life? A life where you will always wonder if there may have been another?—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” she snapped. “I agreed to marry you.”
“Agreed, yes.”
“Look me in the eye when you admit that I am no more than a business partner.”
But he could not. Of course, he could not.
“If you are so unhappy with your lack of knowledge about my life,” he continued, holding onto any hurt he could, “then perhaps you should not be in it. Perhaps some distance will stop you from wondering.”
Edwina’s shocked gasp almost made his heart stop. But she was prideful—he had always loved that about her.
By the time he finally lifted his gaze to hers, her face was tight with a myriad of emotions he could not let himself acknowledge, for then he would only hate himself more for putting them there.
“Fine,” she said, but her voice was laced with pain. “If that is what you wish, then I cannot get through to you further than I have tried to.”
“Fine,” he echoed, striding past her. “You may move to the townhouse at your earliest convenience.”
“You will not even say goodbye?” she whispered, turning to him.
Lucien’s heart ached nightmarishly as he took her in, wanting her, needing her, caring for her—hating himself for having her.
“Have a safe journey, Edwina,” was all he said, before he walked away from her.