Chapter 14 #2
Penelope laughed, airy and amused, as if the idea didn’t deserve a serious thought ‘Oh darling, husbands and wives aren’t meant to spend all their time together.
Men retreat when they’re under pressure.
Academic types especially – they burrow into their work like little moles.
Fighting it only makes them dig deeper. What they need is stability.
Security. A foundation that comes from .
. . well, from the right sort of house.’
Christina felt the message land like a door closing softly, but firmly, in her face.
‘You’re quite right,’ Christina murmured, resolving to call her financial adviser on her way back to the cottage. ‘The right foundation changes everything, doesn’t it?’
Penelope smiled, ‘Precisely, darling. Precisely.’ She adjusted her silk scarf with the precision of someone used to being listened to. ‘Better to work around the problem than confront it, don’t you think? Confrontation is so . . . exhausting.’
Christina let the words pass unchallenged, though something inside her bristled.
But what did she know? Lady Penelope had been married to William for thirty years, had navigated these aristocratic waters since birth.
She understood how these things worked better than Christina ever could.
And still, under the smile she offered her friend, the daunting scale of restoring Chase Lodge pooled quietly, deep as the shadows in the crumbling rooms.
Christina’s fork scraped against her plate, toying with the overcooked lasagne she’d made from habit, not hunger. The oven had dried it out at the edges, where the tomato sauce had blackened into a kind of edible varnish. Rather like her marriage.
The TV burbled in the background, a crime drama neither she nor Hamish was watching.
A blonde detective paced through a murder scene in a high-vis jacket, arguing with her scowling partner about blood splatter patterns.
The colours on the screen threw flashes across the table where the couple sat opposite one another.
Hamish chewed with the slow, mechanical focus of someone who had stopped tasting his food several bites ago. His eyes flicked toward the TV. Then, without ceremony, he leaned forward and clicked the remote. Silence.
Christina’s body went rigid.
‘You know who you remind me of?’ he said at last.
She dug her fork into her food and didn’t look up. ‘No.’
‘Anne Boleyn in her last months,’ he continued, his voice warming to that familiar historian’s lilt.
‘She saw the signs – Henry’s wandering eye, Cromwell’s machinations, the courtiers’ shifting loyalties – but she chose accommodation over confrontation.
She kept smiling, kept playing the gracious queen, kept hoping things would fix themselves. ’
Her heart stuttered to a stop. Christina blinked at her plate. Was he trying to confess he was going to leave her like Herny VIII left Anne? But who for? She couldn’t bear to ask. Couldn’t breathe. She deflected. ‘Nonsense. Anne’s problem was she failed to deliver a male heir.’
Hamish leaned back slightly, gazing at her through his glasses. ‘No. That’s too simplistic. She was only thirty-five. Henry’s mother was thirty-seven when she had her last child. Anne still had time. It was her failure to address the actual problems head-on which ultimately led to her destruction.’
Christina stabbed at a piece of burned pasta. ‘Anne was doomed. Henry wasn’t in love with her anymore.’ Like you’re no longer in love with me.
Hamish gave a wry smile. ‘Henry was pragmatic. Love wasn’t his motive – he loved his first queen, Catherine, but that didn’t save her.’
The room felt too still. He used to love me; she thought. Perhaps he’s just staying for Elspeth. Maybe that’s his version of pragmatism.
Hamish set his fork down. ‘What are you so afraid will happen if you tell me what it is you want? What you need? Why you won’t ever stand up for yourself, even when they treat you like they did at that fiasco of a family conflab? What’s made you so sad and withdrawn?’
Her lips parted, but no sound came out. The question was too large.
Like trying to swallow broken glass. This kitchen had once held laughter.
It had buzzed with the smell of ginger and cinnamon, Elspeth dancing in circles with a wooden spoon while Hamish read the names of Tudor courtiers in funny voices.
‘I think I’ve told you what I need,’ she said finally, quieter than she meant to. ‘I need a house that doesn’t make me feel like I’m in the wrong life all the time.’
Hamish looked at her for a long time. ‘You think a house will fix this? That’s what Wolsey tried to do, gifting Hampton Court to Henry.’
‘You think quoting Tudor history at me will fix it?’
A silence. The kind with teeth.
She rose and started clearing plates. The clink of ceramics and the splash of the tap filled the cottage. She felt him watching her but didn’t look back.
‘I think,’ he said eventually, ‘we’re both trying to rewrite the ending.’
Christina dried her hands slowly. The ending. He meant their marriage, didn’t he? ‘And we’re just arguing about whose version gets told?’
‘No.’ Hamish’s voice was gentler now. ‘I’m saying we should deal with what is actually going on.’
She turned then, half-hoping he might come to her.
Touch her wrist, or just say something that didn’t come with conditions attached.
But he didn’t. Instead, he picked up a book from the table, opened it, then put it down with a sigh.
Finally, he stood and came towards her. Her heart skipped a beat, imagining him folding her in his arms and kissing her.
Hamish gave her a smile – too thin to be passionate, but it was a start.
‘You cooked, let me do the dishes. Why don’t you relax for a change. Sit down with a gardening magazine?’
Christina turned back to the sink. Outside, the wind moved through the trees like a sigh.
In the glass above the sink, she saw her reflection. Not tragic, not Anne Boleyn, but tired, and drawn, and with that sensible haircut she never had liked. What if there was no way back?
What if the kiss, the laughter, the warmth from a few years ago had already become part of history too?