Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
That night, Lilly decided to go to bed early because she was so tired from fishing. Marina was hopeful that the exhaustion could make her nightmares less severe. But Lilly woke up screaming at the usual time of night.
When she hurried to Lilly’s room, Evan was already at the door and about to open it. “Go back to sleep,” he said. “I can handle this.”
Reluctantly, she nodded and went back to her room. She didn’t like staying in her room while listening to Lilly scream. She wanted to check on the little girl to make sure she was all right, just like Evan did.
But at the same time, this was the only moment that Evan spent alone with his daughter. Maybe it was good for both of them to have this time together.
Obviously, Lilly’s nightmares needed to end, and the two of them needed to spend more time together, as father and daughter, but it was important to Evan that he be the one who woke her up. Marina didn’t want to take that away from him.
The next evening, Marina came down to dinner and was happy to see Lilly already waiting in the dining hall. She sat across from her father, next to the seat that Marina usually took for herself. “Good evening, Lilly,” she said cheerfully. “I am pleased to see you could make it today.”
Lilly glared down at her empty plate. She did not say anything.
“Lilly, what do you say to Marina?” Evan asked, his voice gentle.
“Pleased to be here too,” the little girl mumbled.
Evan raised an eyebrow. “Can you try that again?”
His daughter glared at him, her lower lip jutting out in a pout. “No!”
“It is quite all right,” Marina said, taking her seat. “I’m just happy all of us can eat together as a family.”
Lilly whined and slapped the table with her palm.
“None of that,” Evan said sternly but quietly. “If you have something to say, then please use your words.”
“No!”
“Take your time,” Marina said gently. “I know you will say what is on your mind when you are ready.”
A footman served all the food, and Evan and Marina ate dinner in silence while looking at the newest addition to their nightly dinner party. Lilly pushed the food around her plate in stony silence for a while.
“How was your day, Lilly?” Evan asked, finally breaking the silence.”
Lilly glared at him and refused to answer, so Marina answered for her.
“Lilly is continuing to improve on spelling,” she said.
“She also spent some time looking at the pictures in the fish books you brought for her last night. Soon we will start learning about music. Perhaps you can learn to play the pianoforte in the drawing room, Lilly.”
“No!” Lilly shouted at Marina. “Stop talking!”
Marina’s stomach twisted. Lilly had been a little moody and quiet all day, but she thought the girl was just tired. According to the nanny, it had taken a long time for Lilly to fall back to sleep after she woke up from her nightmare.
But it looks like she is truly angry with me. I just wish I knew what I did wrong.
“Lilly, that is enough,” Evan said. “You will sit quietly until you can apologize to Marina.”
Marina appreciated the quiet, stern voice Evan took with his daughter. It was clear that even though he would not tolerate such behavioral issues, he would remain patient with her instead of losing his temper.
Marina started to eat her food. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lilly shove boiled carrots off her plate. “Lilly, you need to eat your vegetables if you want to grow big and strong,” she remarked.
Lilly snatched the carrots off the table with her bare hand and squished them into mush before throwing them at Marina with all of her might. “You’re not my mommy!”
Shocked, Marina barely managed to dodge out of the way of the food.
Evan grabbed his napkin and wiped his face. “That is enough for tonight,” he said, gesturing to a footman. “Dinner is over. Please take my daughter to her room.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the man said.
Lilly got up and stomped away with the hapless footman struggling to keep up. Evan turned to Marina, a cool look in his eyes, but his expression was generally neutral. “I would like a word with you, duchess. In private.”
She bristled a little at the use of the formal title, but she nodded and followed Evan out of the dining room and to his private study.
She closed the door behind him and turned to look at him. His neutral expression was gone, replaced with barely restrained anger. It took her by surprise, and for a moment, she had a childish impulse to run to her room and lock the door.
Do not be silly, Marina. You did nothing wrong, and Evan prides himself on being rational.
“What did you do?” Evan asked, his voice coming out like a low growl.
So much for that thought. She stared at him, speechless.
“What did you do to my daughter? You must have done something to make her hate you.”
The day before, she would have given anything just to have a reaction out of him instead of his usual, neutral demeanor.
Be careful what you wish for. Finally, she managed to speak.
“I did nothing,” she said. “She’s a child.
She is prone to losing herself to fits of strong emotion now and then.
I’ve certainly seen the twins have their share of tantrums when they were her age. ”
He shook his head and started pacing the room. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he muttered. “We never should have changed her schedule. I brought you here to help Lilly, not make her worse.”
“You certainly were not complaining yesterday,” she snapped. “By the time we started to head back to the manor after fishing, you were downright jovial.”
“Jovial?”
“As much as you are capable of such a thing, Your Grace.”
“Do not call me that,” he snapped.
“Then stop trying to reprimand me like an employee and start treating me like your wife!” she shouted.
He glared at her. “Starting tomorrow, Lilly will go back to her old schedule. There is no point trying to force her to eat dinner with us when she clearly doesn’t want to.”
“You have not even given it a chance.”
“I gave it a chance tonight. It did not work. That will be the end of it.”
Marina shook her head. “Unbelievable. All of this because a grieving little girl acted out one time over dinner.”
“If you were doing your job correctly, she would not be acting out at all. That is not a rational way to show emotions or communicate.”
“She is five years old. Not even adults are rational all the time. Why should she be?”
“Because she is my daughter! Marrying someone was supposed to make her happy! I thought a mother would give her stability and make her feel safe enough so she would stop having nightmares. But I was wrong.”
“These things take time, Evan. You cannot just will emotions to go away, no matter how much you want them to.” She said it softly, feeling frustrated and tired.
For a man who claimed to champion logic and rational thinking, he could be incredibly dense sometimes.
“Lilly is going through a big change while still dealing with the death of her mother. Of course, she is going to be feeling strong emotions. But that does not mean we give up on her!”
“Her mother has been dead for a year. In all of that time, I’ve never seen her act like this.”
“Then maybe it is a good thing that she is acting out now,” Marina said. “Maybe her willingness to express emotion that she previously kept locked away means she is coming out of her shell and healing.”
He gave her a thoughtful look and stepped toward her.
Even under the circumstances, she felt a thrill from having him move closer to her.
“Have you considered that you are not thinking of her but yourself? Perhaps it is you who locked away her emotions in an effort to hide from hostile parents. Not her.” His voice was quiet now, but despite the note of restrained anger, she didn’t sense that he was trying to lash out at her. Instead, he sounded almost… hurt.
“I did not mean to imply that you were a hostile parent,” she said sincerely. “It’s clear that you want the best for her.”
“I do.” All of the anger had drained from his voice now. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I know I’m not a perfect parent … or a perfect husband.” His voice shook slightly on the word ‘husband’. The tremor was barely perceptible, but it was there. “But I’m trying, Marina.”
“I know. I know you are.” Impulsively, she reached out and grabbed his hand.
He startled a little, but he didn’t pull away.
She could not help but notice how strong and warm it was.
It almost felt like he could—and would—protect her from the world.
“Emotions like grief are hard for adults to process, let alone children. Even if you were a perfect parent—which does not exist—she would probably still have to lock some emotions away for later, or she would simply be too overwhelmed. Her acting out could just be her way of finally processing those emotions.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then frustrated.
Absentmindedly, he started to rub his thumb gently against the back of her hand.
It took all of Marina’s effort to keep from reacting to how good it felt.
Her gaze went to his lips, which were so close.
They looked soft. She wished she remembered their wedding kiss better, as brief and formal as it was.
What would it feel like to truly be kissed by this man?
After a moment, he seemed to come back to himself, and he tugged his hand away to run it through his hair. “Perhaps those emotions should have stayed locked away,” he muttered.
Fresh anger flared inside of her. “What utter nonsense.”
“She needs security and routine,” Evan said. “A routine that leaves no room for random outbursts.”
“You’ve given her a year of security mixed with the same routine every day, and it didn’t work!”
He glared at her. “She certainly did not act out like this before you came along.”
Marina put her hands on her hips. “She has also spent the past year waking up screaming in the middle of the night, so clearly your way wasn’t working!”
He shook his head. “This conversation is over. It is clearly going nowhere.”
“You cannot just pull me into a fight only to end it when you please.”
He spun around so he was inches away from her again. The feeling of him so close took her breath away despite the obvious anger in his eyes. “Watch me,” he growled.
Do not look at his lips, no matter how tempted you are. She turned away before she could do something as stupid as kiss her husband. “Goodnight, Evan,” she muttered before storming out of the room.