Chapter 10
T he night sky settled over Huxley House one room at a time, until the wedding had been reduced to quiet hallways, dying fires, and the knowledge that his wife was somewhere beyond a handful of walls.
Adam felt that knowledge with brutal clarity.
The servants had retired for the night, and the doors had closed. The house had gone still in the particular way great houses did after company, when the labor of display was finished and only private life remained.
That should have made the evening simpler. Instead, it only made everything worse around him.
Emily was in the house.
Emily was his wife .
Every custom surrounding marriage, every expectation built into the walls and the servants and the very shape of the night, pointed in one direction—toward her .
He took off his coat in his dressing room with more force than the garment deserved and handed it to no one because he had dismissed everyone already.
He wanted no witness to the rest of the night.
There was no need for anyone to wonder why the Duke could not keep still in his own rooms on his wedding night.
The problem was not uncertainty. He did not stand there debating whether to go to her. Debate implied possibility. He had ruled it out before he crossed his own threshold.
He just would not go.
The decision had been made before the wedding breakfast ended, before the guests left, even before he kissed her in the chapel with more heat than any public room should have tolerated. It had been made because he knew too well what waited on the other side of it if he indulged.
He knew very well that he would not be able to control himself. He wanted her. He had wanted her all day with a force that had turned every touch into a trial he was determined to pass.
For some reason, he had thought the distance would help, but if anything, it only armed his desire.
He finished undressing and went into the bathing chamber, his heart pounding with each step he took. He climbed into the bathtub and felt the water, which was cold enough to bite, rise up his body.
The coldness climbed from his feet to his chest in a hard, punishing sweep, and his whole body tightened under it.
He wanted that. He wanted the cold to strip him of the day, of the altar, of the dance, of the kiss that had nearly turned into something indecent before Harriet’s voice brought him back to himself.
He wanted to be punished for having thoughts he could not control.
Except it did not strip anything away.
If anything, the cold forced the memories into sharper relief. Emily walking down the aisle toward him. Emily in white, carrying resignation on her face until she looked up and saw him. Emily in his arms during the dance, all distance and danger.
He braced one hand on the bath’s rim and closed his eyes.
The water ran over his shoulders and chest. It did nothing useful. His body knew where she was. Knew how little distance separated them. Knew that if he crossed the corridor and opened one door, his wife would be there and legally his in every way the world understood.
That thought was exactly what made the bath necessary.
When he could no longer stand the cold, he stepped out, dried himself briskly, and dressed in a plain shirt and dark trousers. Then, he went to his study and poured himself a glass of whiskey.
The first sip burned cleanly, but the second only sat heavy.
He had not come to the drink for comfort.
He had come to it because feeling anything else was better than the hunger that was threatening to consume him.
If he filled himself with enough alcohol, perhaps he would remain in one chair and keep from walking down the corridor like a man ruled by appetite.
The house was too quiet, but somehow, every form of silence carried her voice, and every pause between sounds let him imagine the rooms above, the chamber prepared for her, the servants undressing her for bed, the pins being removed from her hair, the soft surrender of silk from skin.
He drank to stop imagining it and found the drink only changed the direction of his thought. Now, he imagined how her skin would feel beneath his palm. How her lips would feel against his and how her?—
Oh, for the love of God.
He stood, sat, stood again, and then went to the window. There was nothing to see ahead, so he left it and touched the back of his chair instead. Then, he let go of that as well.
It was beginning to dawn rather clearly on him that the room was not large enough to contain what he was trying to force himself to suppress.
At last, he stopped before the fire and looked into it without seeing much. His mind, as it always did when he let desire grow too large, turned to his father.
He did not remember much about the former Duke that everyone knew and loved. He barely knew anything about the man people loved to receive at their tables and bow to in rooms.
What he remembered was the husband he had been to his mother. He remembered the man inside the house and the figure at the top of the stairs with explanations in his mouth and his wife broken below him.
Adam remembered hearing the scream and seeing the blood.
He had also seen the speed of the next marriage and had learned enough afterward to know what sort of man his father had been behind domestic walls.
What Adam had never been, however, was brave enough to question what he had seen and heard that day.
He pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth. Tonight, he had felt enough raw wanting to look at the marriage bed and see danger before comfort. He thought of wanting Emily so much that the wanting itself became a kind of force she must endure, and the thought sickened him.
He couldn’t live with himself if he did anything that harmed her, so he needed to do the one thing he could do from a distance—protect her.
Emily deserved safety more than she deserved his presence.
She was much safer untouched and without him darkening her doorway like some husband who took marriage as permission to satisfy himself.
She would be better served by distance and absence.
She would be better served by a husband who would leave her in peace than by one who went to her burning.
His reasoning felt enough, but he knew it was steady only for him. For her, her thoughts would be everywhere.
He knew what she would think. He knew what any bride would think.
A woman left alone on her wedding night would not feel protected.
She would feel rejected, insulted, and cast aside before the marriage had even begun.
He knew that, but his fear outweighed all reason.
The real danger in this case was keeping her company.
He refilled his glass but did not touch it.
By the time the fire had burned low and the whiskey had gone warm in the glass, Adam had successfully kept to himself. Fear, at the end of the day, could be stronger than hunger.
What made him even more terrified, however, was the fact that he might have to do this every day.
Every night, he might have to sleep alone.
To protect Emily.
And most importantly, himself.
The next morning, Emily felt a strange emptiness wash over her when she woke up between the softest sheets alone.
Great. Just great.
She went down for breakfast dressed and composed, and determined not to let anyone see the bruise left by a night spent listening for a husband who had chosen not to come.
The breakfast room was bright, warm, and perfectly ordinary, just as it had been the previous day. The tea steamed in the pot, and the bread had been set out.Harriet was already chattering to Gilbert, who sat under her chair waiting for crumbs with criminal optimism.
Theodore looked up when Emily entered and gave her a grave little nod that somehow felt kinder than any speech.
Adam was not there.
Emily paused for only a second before taking her seat. “Is His Grace delayed?”
Harriet looked up at once. “If you’re looking for my brother, he is always very busy.”
The answer landed more sharply than Emily had expected.
Always .
So this was not a single night’s cruelty born of awkwardness or restraint. It was a habit. The whole house understood this habit and had decided to adjust to it.
She didn’t know whether to feel better, knowing he did this to everyone and not just her, or worse that everyone seemed to condone his absence.
Eventually, a footman moved to grab her cup, and she stopped him, deciding on the latter.She poured her tea with a steadier hand than she felt.
“Well, he will not be busy enough to avoid me.”
Harriet, hearing only determination and none of the sting beneath it, smiled as though this was excellent news.
Theodore looked at Emily more carefully, as if he understood that something in the room had changed.
Breakfast passed so quickly that Emily couldn’t believe it ended when it did.
Throughout, Harriet asked whether she preferred apricot jam or orange marmalade, and Theodore spoke once in a while about the servant order.
Emily even got him to tell her which servants could be trusted to answer honestly and which would say whatever they pleased.
The dog, on the other hand, tried to steal some bread twice and was thwarted once.
Despite everything, the house began to show Emily its softer corners. She could see why Harriet loved it. She could see how Theodore had learned to move through it quietly. What she could also see, with increasing annoyance, was that Adam had made himself absent from all of it.
By afternoon, that irritation she had been feeling all morning had ripened into anger.
She was not some decorative object to be installed in a distant chamber while her husband carried on elsewhere untouched.
He had married her. He had wanted her, kissed her, danced with her, looked at her in ways no man ever would, and then retreated each time as if she were the danger rather than the wife he had chosen.