Chapter 14
“You do?” Henry’s heart lurched in his chest, anxious to know how much his wife recalled, while simultaneously hoping she did not remember much at all.
Thalia shifted in his arms but did not attempt to pull away. “I remember the fight.”
“What fight?”
“I fought with my brother,” she replied haltingly. “I… began to remember at Farhampton, but it was… so fragmented. Snippets, really. But I dreamed of it, of what happened.”
Oh… that is all. A guilty rush of relief swept through his chest, for though he did hope there would be a day when she remembered everything again, he did not want it to be now.
She would pull away from him, she would remove herself from his arms, and he was just beginning to get used to the pleasant feeling.
Henry gently brushed a lock of sweat-dampened hair out of her face. “Tell me.”
He already knew most of the details of the argument that had kept Kenneth away from Holdridge for two years, but he did not want to stifle her progress by speaking of it himself. He wanted to hear for himself just how much her injured brain had recalled.
“Kenneth had a secret,” Thalia said quietly. “Only I knew about it. He told me at Christmas. He was here, I think. Said he had been gambling for a while and had lost a great deal. I gave him money—your money, I suppose—and thought that would be that.”
Henry nodded along with her words, encouraging her without saying anything.
“It was not the last time, though,” she added with a frown, as if she were trying to keep hold of the memory.
“I gave him money five times to repay debts he had acquired by gambling.
The fifth time, I… told him I would not help him anymore.
I gave him less than before. It was… not enough, I do not think, but I…
would not be swayed. I was insistent that he would receive nothing more from me.
“He screamed at me. He… said such unkind things. He became a version of himself that I had never seen before,” she continued, her voice beginning to shake.
“But… I know that he was scared, too. Terrified of what the debt collectors would do, what they would take. Terrified of what it would do to our family if he could not pay it back. I assume he did, but… oh, what a terrible sister I was, to refuse him.”
Henry could not be silent at that. “No, you did the right thing,” he insisted. “I had heard of your brother’s debts. More to the point, I have encountered many a gambler in my life and the best thing one can do is to refuse assistance. Otherwise, they have no reason to remedy the issue themselves.”
“But he is my brother and he needed me,” she rasped. “I abandoned him when he needed me the most. I could have helped once more. I could have… covered that last debt at least. He did not visit me again because… I refused to be a good sister.”
Henry held her a little tighter. “He did not visit because he was ashamed, as he should have been. You did do the right thing, Thalia. I will not have you believing otherwise.”
She sobbed quietly in his embrace, fresh tears making tracks down her beautiful face, those striking green eyes awash with her heartbreak.
As he watched her, Henry wished he was better at this, wished he knew what to say and what to do to take the pain from her.
But softness had never come easily to him, for it had not been permitted in his formative years.
I studied so many things, learned so much, yet never how to be gentler, how to be tender.
He considered what Luke had told him to do, and gingerly raised his hand to Thalia’s face, his thumb carefully brushing away the tears that fell.
Her eyes widened at the touch, her lips parting as if she might say something, but then her mouth closed again.
A short while later, she sat up, removing herself from his arms entirely… and he was surprised to find that he did not like the sudden emptiness. Somehow, she had fitted in his embrace. Comfortable.
“Even with these memories,” she said, drawing the blanket up over her bent knees, “I do not believe and shall never believe that my brother would go as far as to hurt me for financial gain. Indeed, if I was the one helping him previously, what would he gain from harming me? He would be even less likely to receive monetary help.”
“That is a fair point,” Henry conceded, uncertain of what to do with his hands now that she had moved away from him.
She turned back to look at him, her eyes now glinting with something like hope. “You think so?”
Henry did not respond. Instead, he sifted through his own thoughts on the matter, trying to decide how best to answer.
“When he said he was not who he was two years ago,” Thalia continued urgently, “I believed him. I do not know why; I just did. And after remembering that argument, I still believe him. The brother I saw today was not the one from that memory.”
With a steadying breath, Henry met his wife’s gaze and though every impulse urged him to look away so he would not be pulled in by those green eyes, he held his nerve.
“I shall never trust your brother after his past transgressions,” he said evenly.
“However, I am sorry for the way I spoke to him today, and for causing you undue distress because of it. I, too, was seeing him as the man who had to be dragged from this manor by Baxter two years ago. I did not pause to think that he might have changed.”
She frowned. “Dragged out by Mr. Baxter? I do not remember that part.”
“Baxter does, and I do, after hearing of it,” Henry replied, hoping that he had not just given away his informant.
Then again, she was an intelligent woman, she had probably already guessed.
The Thalia who had existed before the accident had certainly been wary of Baxter, always falling silent whenever he entered a room where she had company.
The butler had mentioned it a few times over the years, but then, Baxter also had ways of overhearing without anyone knowing he was there.
“But that is by the by,” Henry continued. “In truth, Thalia, it is your father that I do not trust. He thought he would gain far more than he has from our marriage, and a man who feels slighted is a dangerous creature.”
Thalia stilled. “Whatever do you mean?”
“He thought he was entitled to part of my fortune and was not pleased when he discovered that was not true,” Henry explained somewhat vaguely.
“He is often manipulative, he often makes demands, and when they are not fulfilled, he keeps Dorothy from you. And in the weeks leading up to your fall, he had visited more than he has ever done before. I also know there were conversations between the two of you, but I do not know the nature of them.”
He realized he ought to stop talking, lest he influence his wife’s mind more than he should, coloring her opinion of her father with his own misgivings.
Then again, maybe she deserved to know how weaselly her father had been over the years; it was proving to be a delicate balance that he did not yet know how to manage.
“But, I agree that your brother is probably not capable of hurting you,” he said, circling back to what had begun the conversation.
Thalia fidgeted with the tasseled edges of the blanket, staring down at the woven pattern. “Do you have siblings?”
“One. A younger brother,” he replied. “Walter.”
She waited as if she expected him to say more, and Henry felt himself compelled to continue.
“He is a year younger than me and has resided in Morocco for the past five years,” Henry said, thinking of the sparse letters in his writing desk drawer. Notes, really, from Walter, just to let his older brother know he was still alive.
Thalia’s entire face lit up, the residual shadows of the nightmare evaporating. “Morocco? Goodness, how exotic! Have you never visited him? Have we never visited him?” She paused, a slight frown on her brow. “Have I met him at all?”
“No,” Henry replied, answering all of her questions in one. “He and I are very different.”
“You do not get along?”
To Henry’s surprise, Thalia chose that moment to lie back down upon the Arabian divan, curled up in the opposite direction to how he had found her. She rested her head upon the armrest that acted as a pillow and peered up at him, waiting for him to reply.
He turned his attention toward the fireplace instead of those beautiful eyes of hers and the inviting way she lay there, the shape of her sparking an impulse to lie there with her, behind her, his arm around her waist, holding her close to his body. To rest together in a way they never had before.
“It is not that,” he said at last, his throat tight at the thought of holding her so close. “We get along perfectly fine, but… we are just different. He is living his life as he sees fit, and so am I. There is no quarrel between us.”
There was no real affection either, for it had not been encouraged by their father.
In their younger years, they had certainly been at loggerheads more often than not, but after their father died, the relationship between the brothers softened into one of understanding and respect, each learning why the other had acted a certain way when they were boys, each discovering why they were the way that they were.
“Your parents must have loved one another very much, to have two children in less than two years,” Thalia mumbled.
Henry’s mood darkened at the mere suggestion, glaring at the smoldering embers of the dying fire. Rather metaphorical, in truth.
“They were anything but in love,” he said coolly. “I do not think my father was capable of loving anything other than himself and life’s amusements. He was a selfish, wretched man. He—”
Henry glanced down to find that Thalia’s eyes were closed, her expression relaxed, her lips slightly parted as she breathed in a slow, sleepy rhythm.
Are my stories so boring? His mouth quirked into a smile as he carefully took hold of the edges of the blanket and pulled it over her.
It was improper for a duchess to sleep on a divan in a library, and he knew that he should probably wake her and take her to her chambers, or at least pick her up and carry her there himself. But she looked so at peace, so content, so comfortable that he did not have the heart to disturb her.
Rising slowly to his feet, he took a moment to just look at her: beautiful honey golden hair splayed out upon the armrest, that creamy skin dusted with freckles, the rosiness of her cheeks, the perfect curve of her mouth, the elegant lines of her neck and throat, and the long eyelashes that no longer held beads of tears.
She remained the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and it was becoming a problem. More specifically, being near to her after four years apart was becoming a problem.
“Goodnight,” he whispered, and quickly left the room, otherwise he might truly be tempted to lie down with her and hold her as she slept. And that would be far more than just a problem; that would be catastrophic, considering she still could not remember most of the past four years.
Namely, how their marriage had begun.