Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Aurelia’s recovery was agonizingly slow.
She spent the first few days in her suite, either in her bedchamber or in the small sitting room adjoined to it, reclining on the sofa positioned before the hearth.
She despised the paleness of her skin and her fatigue, which had never before bothered her.
The Duchess of Fenwick had, on occasion, complained of fatigue, requiring Aurelia to come and read to her, and it had been deathly boring.
As it transpired, being the one read to was only fractionally more interesting. And only because she didn’t have the energy to be bored.
Eventually, however, she made her way downstairs to her first dinner with Sebastian since she had gotten ill. He had taken a less active role in her recovery, coming to sit with her, and even sometimes reading to her, but more often devoting himself to his other duties.
As master of the lands and all its tenants, she imagined he had quite a bit of catching up to do.
Thus, she was unsurprised to find him reading a stack of correspondence when she finally made her way downstairs for dinner. At the sight of her, his gaze jumped up, taking in her shawl, the cane Jane had insisted she use, and her expression—which, she felt, was set in grim lines of determination.
He immediately rose, dropping the letter and hurrying to her side. “I had expected someone to escort you down,” he chided gently, guiding her to her seat. To her surprise and relief, she discovered it was the one beside his. No more sitting at opposite sides of the table like strangers.
Perhaps she could climb atop his lap again.
The thought thrilled her a little more than it ought, considering she hadn’t yet decided if she’d fully forgiven him, or if she would, in time, allow him access to her bedchamber.
“I was perfectly able to make my way downstairs,” she murmured, not mentioning that the stairs had left her feeling sorely weakened. “I was not on death’s door, you know.”
“You were ill,” he pressed, easing her into the chair.
“And now I am not.”
“I will be the judge of that.” He returned to his seat, and she noticed anew that there were dark circles under his eyes; his face was almost as drawn and tired as hers. “How do you feel?”
Unable to help herself, she reached out to draw her fingers along those dark circles. “Perhaps I should be asking you the same question.”
“I often sleep poorly.” He shook away her concern. “Aurelia.”
“Tired, but ready to be out and about again.” She smiled gently at him, and to her surprise, his face softened a little in return. After a second, he seemed to catch himself, frowning and returning to his soup.
“I thought we might venture out to the seaside, if you wrap up warm,” he said gruffly. “Sea air, by all accounts, has restorative properties.”
She furrowed her brows. “Do we not have sea air here, so close to the clifftops?”
“It shall be different on the beach itself.”
Well, she could hardly argue against that. “Are you ever going to tell me where you disappeared to when I followed you into the mist?”
Sebastian tensed, his knuckles turning white, and he lowered his soup spoon back against the bowl. “I see you are single-minded today.”
“You had plenty of opportunities to tell me, but you did not. So now I’m asking. What is it you keep leaving the house to see? And why are you so resistant to me following you?”
His jaw tightened. “I am not obliged to have my wife everywhere I go.”
“No, not obliged. But you were angry to see me following you.”
“Yes,” he admitted, the word sounding as though it was ripped from him. “I had no desire for you to follow me. That is—it’s a private pilgrimage. A place I go to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“…My former wife.”
The one he had killed, according to the rumors. Only, his face did not look like that of a man who had murdered his wife in cold blood. He looked anguished, deep down, as though there was a wound there, and she had pressed on its painful edges until blood beaded.
“Tell me about her,” Aurelia said softly.
Sebastian glanced at her, a hard line between his brows. She had the sudden impulse to smooth it away. “Why should I tell my current wife about my former one?”
“Because you loved her.” The moment she said the words, she knew them to be true. And there was a strange feeling in her stomach at knowing this—a pressure, an ache. She felt both relieved that he had loved her—to know he was capable of love—and a strong desire to protest the validity of that love…
Foolish inclination. She had no reason to believe this Kate was anything other than good and loving.
Sebastian toyed with his glass as he thought. “I am not accustomed to speaking about her,” he murmured.
“By that, I suppose you mean no one has asked?” She leaned forward. “Or perhaps you have resisted anyone who has.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed wryly.
“Was it a love match?”
He nodded once. “I first met her in a London ballroom, and the moment I laid eyes on her, I knew I needed to have her. The courtship was short; her mother certainly thought so. I brought her back here to begin our lives, and that was when the trouble started.”
“Trouble?”
“Catherine and I were… not happy together.” He pronounced these words as though they were fragile glass, liable to shatter at any second.
“I thought we would be, but she wanted something more than this estate and the land it was built on. And I wanted to grow my legacy, to become the kind of man my father had been. She wanted glittering parties in London, thrown as a duchess with her duke on display.”
Aurelia had never seen a marriage like this firsthand, but she had heard of them.
A gentleman blinded by beauty and a lady blinded by rank, married quickly and for all the wrong reasons, and deeply unhappy for it.
And if Catherine had died, that would mean Sebastian had been left with the guilt, blaming himself for all the ways in which they had been unhappy.
“We married young,” he pressed on. “And at the time, I thought I was a man who knew what I wanted—and it was her—but I think I had been as young men often are. Foolish. Which is not to say,” he added, his frown deepening, “that I did not want her, or I should not have married her—although evidently I should not. She had many, many good points, but I was young and stubborn too, and I refused to give where I might have done.”
Aurelia suspected that was not a trait he had outgrown. Being a duke likely had something to do with it; he had grown up being accustomed to getting his way at every juncture and did not appreciate not doing so.
“What were your favorite traits of hers?”
His gaze turned distant as he looked into his past. “She could light up a room by walking into it. There was a grace and lightness to her. Truly, she was born for Society, and I deprived her by insisting she stay here with me as my prize.”
And yet, that was what he wanted from her. Except she was being held less as his prize than his ransom. A captive wife, brought to his life out of necessity rather than desire.
His gaze focused on Aurelia again, and she could practically see the way he gave himself a mental shake. “Enough of that. She is part of the past.”
“How did she die?” The question emerged as a whisper, and Aurelia could not have held it back even if she wanted to.
Sebastian swallowed.
His expression went icy, but the anger there was not directed at her, she knew.
“We had another argument,” he said, his voice flat as though he were recounting a story he had heard many times over.
“She left the house in one of her moods, slamming doors and screaming that she hated me. I knew it was raining, knew the weather was bad, but instead of chasing her as I ought, I thought I would allow her to get wet and miserable so she would come back—humbled, for once.”
He shook his head, and Aurelia thought she saw tears gleaming in the corners of his eyes.
“Of course, that didn’t happen. She didn’t come home.
After an hour or so, I started to grow concerned and ran out after her.
The storm—” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, deliberately not looking at Aurelia.
“The storm was far worse than I had given credit for.”
“What happened?” she whispered.
Sebastian’s mouth moved, but for a moment, he said nothing. Then, merely, “The villagers found her the next morning.”
“And she was…?”
“Yes, Aurelia, she was dead. That is how the story ends. There is no happy ending. Not for her, and not for me.”
There was more to the story, Aurelia knew—had he chased after her or left her to wander in the storm? Did the storm kill her or did Sebastian?
No, she already knew him well enough to know he would not have raised a hand against her.
Whatever else happened in their marriage—she was at the very least certain of that.
And privately, she thought it unlikely that either had truly loved the other—no one in love could behave in such a puerile way.
These sorts of marriages were common in the ton, where both parties saw something they liked and never bothered to investigate the matter further. They loved what they thought they saw, and there was nothing more to it.
Of course, Aurelia had never been subject to that kind of courting before—she had never been courted at all, in fact. Sebastian’s offer had come out of the blue, and he hadn’t presumed himself in love with what he thought he knew.
“The pertinent point is that she is no longer here,” Sebastian said crisply, “and, thus, I go to the lighthouse to remember her.”
“Did she like it there?”
“It’s a place I remember her. That’s all.”
Aurelia nodded slowly. A terrible feeling rose in her, one she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Anger that he was doing this—although that made no sense. Frustration that he still chased after his former wife’s memory even while navigating a new marriage with her.
And could that be jealousy? Of a dead woman? She shook herself. This was ridiculous. So what if he still thought he loved her, and if he grieved her enough, he held onto her even after death? Certainly, it made no odds to her.
“I cannot tell you what to do,” she began, clearing her voice, “so I won’t try. But I hardly think this is a healthy way of going about this.”
“Much you would know on the subject.”
No, she wouldn’t. Which is why she took a spoonful of soup and did her best to ignore the penetrating quality of his gaze.
“I cannot let myself forget,” he began after a long moment. “How it feels to let someone slip through my fingers. If I forget her, then I forget all the lessons I learned with her. And there were many.”
“I would have assumed one of them would be not to marry rashly, and yet here we are.” Aurelia raised her gaze to his face. “Did you truly choose me because you couldn’t bear to court another woman?”
“That, and because the rumors about Kate’s death were once rampant in London.
They’ve died a little now, but if I were publicly searching for another wife, they would be loudly revisited for all and sundry.
” He spread his hands. “And people are hungry for gossip, Aurelia. Didn’t you see that with the Duchess of Fenwick? ”
Aurelia had, and she’d hated it.
He shook his head and muttered, “The only reason she ever still invited me was because she wanted to see how I was doing and to do her own little investigation into my marriage. The results of which she would no doubt spread about Town.” He sighed, his shoulders falling, and instead of a proud, arrogant man, Aurelia saw a lonely one in his place.
“I understand you dislike the manner by which we were wed, but it was the only way I could see to find a wife who could help me do my duty.”
“Bear your children?”
“I am a duke, Aurelia. I have my name to consider. My inheritance.”
And, despite everything she had thought to the contrary, he truly cared about the people here. The land. His responsibilities as master of the estate—in spite of what the tenants muttered behind his back.
“I don’t mind it,” she said with a little laugh. “If you hadn’t, I would probably have gone to work as a governess somewhere, if someone would hire me. And prayed that it was a reputable family.”
To her surprise, Sebastian reached across the table and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “You would have deserved better.”
“Deserved being a duchess, you mean?” she teased.
“One deserves a role when they have proven themselves capable.” He gave her another long, assessing look. “So, ought we revisit the subject of the drawing room?”