Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
William held her until she fell sound asleep. Then, he set her down and sat on the edge of her bed in the dim afternoon light.
He had stroked her hair, and when at last her breathing had slowed and evened out, he drew the coverlet up over her.
He rose and stood a long while, looking down at her face, her lashes still dark and damp where they rested against her cheek. Then, he quietly walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.
He had made it as far as the first landing before he had had to brace his hand against the wall, his palm flat against the wallpaper, his head bent.
The hall was empty. A clock on the floor below was ticking, measured and indifferent. Somewhere two floors down, a door opened and closed. He could feel, quite distantly, that his jaw had clenched so tightly it ached, and that his breathing had gone shallow.
“I do not want it.”
She had said it. She had said it in his arms, into his shirt, with her face wet and her shoulders shaking, and he had told her sincerely that he understood.
He did understand. He had held her, and he had said the thing about her mother, and he had said the thing about not being alone, and he had meant every word. But underneath all of it, in a place he would not permit himself to look at while she had still been crying, a small thing had broken.
He needed to go into his study and close the door, to work until his eyes would not focus and his hand cramped around the quill. And so he went into his study and closed the door.
As it happened, he had a great deal of work.
There was the Lancashire rent roll, which required auditing.
There was a letter from his steward at Dawnhurst concerning the east hedge, which had apparently now become a matter of some urgency.
There were three tenants requesting hearings.
There was the draft of a speech he had been asked to give in the House of Lords the following week.
There was correspondence. There was always correspondence.
He sat at the desk, drew the ledger toward him, opened it to the correct page, and dipped his quill. He wrote a column of figures and then moved on to the next.
How could she want a child with me?
He set his quill down. He picked it up again.
How can I blame her for not wanting a child with me?
Selina had not wanted one either, not truly. She had agreed to bear him a child because that was the transaction. A child in exchange for a duchess’s coronet, a London townhouse, and the prestige of his name.
She had discharged the transaction with the same thin mouth she did most things with, and she had not, as far as he had been able to ascertain at any point in the months she had carried his child or in the year she had lived after, taken any pleasure in any aspect of the enterprise.
She had endured it. He had been made to understand, without her ever saying it in so many words, that she had endured it largely on his account.
He had been a younger man then. He had told himself at the time that what she felt about it had been the just price of his face. But he was not a younger man now.
He set down the quill again. He pressed the heel of his hand against his left eye, then traced his scar with his fingertips.
I thought this might be different. But who could want a broken man?
He had thought that Anne was different. He had thought—and he had permitted himself to think, because she had given him every reason to think—that she saw him.
Not only his face, but him. And that in seeing him, she had come to want him in the ordinary way a woman might want a man.
And that by wanting him, she might one day wish to bear him a child, as ordinary women bore ordinary men children.
Not as a transaction, but as a fruit of the love between them.
She had said, I do not want it. She had said, Please. She had wept in his arms and begged him, Please.
He told himself—he made himself tell himself—sitting at the desk with his hand over his eye, that what she had been begging for was not to be spared from having his child.
That she had been begging not to die the way her mother had.
That the two things were not the same thing.
That a reasonable man, a man of sense, a man who loved her, would know the difference between those two things.
He told himself this. He believed it. Almost entirely.
Yet, there was a small thing somewhere underneath that belief that did not shift.
That sat there and would not shift, but festered.
Something that said quietly, in a voice that sounded rather like Selina’s, “Of course, she does not want it. Look at you. Who would?”
He closed the ledger. He sat at the desk in the dim late afternoon light, with his eyes closed, and he did not move for a long while.
That night at dinner, he was courteous. Despite his protestations, Anne insisted on eating at the table, which the doctor had not explicitly forbidden.
“You ought to be resting,” he advised as the footman drew out her chair. “We can have a tray sent up.”
“I have been resting all day, William. I should like to sit at the table and eat a proper meal, if I may.”
“As you wish. How is your health?”
“Improving, I think.”
“Good.”
“Thank you.”
He took his own seat. The soup was served. Felicity, who was sitting across from him, watched their exchange with the quiet of a child who had registered that the atmosphere had changed and was unsure whether to remark on it. Instead, she simply raised an eyebrow, then looked back down at her soup.
“Papa,” she said, after a moment.
“Yes?”
“Uncle Rafe sent me a new book.”
“Did he? That was kind of him.”
“The shading on the illustrations is astonishing. Truly.”
“I am glad,” he said, keeping his eyes on his soup.
“Your Grace,” Celia called from her side of the table, “may I tell you about a cat?”
“Yes, you may tell me about a cat.”
“It was in the garden this morning. It was enormous, not one of the kitchen cats. I know all of the kitchen cats. This one was orange, and it had only one ear that stood up properly. The other one was quite flopped.”
“Flopped?” he asked as the next course was served.
“Flopped, as though it had given up.”
“A retired ear.”
“Yes,” Celia said, setting down her silverware with a loud thunk. “A retired ear. It sat on the wall and looked at me as though it were considering whether to permit me to continue existing.”
He laughed. The laugh was in the correct place and had, he thought, the correct shape despite his current state.
Celia beamed.
He reached for his wine without looking. Across the table, Anne had set her fork down. She had not eaten a great deal, soup included. Her hand rested on the stem of her water glass, not lifting it.
“Anne,” he said. “Was the soup not to your liking?”
“It is very fine. I find I have not the appetite I had hoped for.”
“Shall I have something else brought in?”
“No, thank you. I shall do well enough with this course.”
“As you wish.”
He returned to his wine, and the rest of the meal passed without consequence. Yet, he was aware that Anne was watching him, and that she was not eating. When they rose from the table, he did not offer her his arm.
He did not mean to not offer her his arm. But by the time he noticed, the moment had passed. To offer it a beat late would have called attention to his mistake, so he did not. She crossed the hall beside him without her hand on his sleeve. At the foot of the stairs, he stopped.
“Goodnight, Felicity. Goodnight, Celia.”
“Goodnight, Papa.”
“Goodnight, Your Grace.”
“Goodnight, Anne,” the girls said in unison.
The girls went up the stairs.
Willian then turned to Anne. He had intended to say something more. Yet, as he stood there, he found that he could not.
“Rest well,” he settled on.
Her eyes flickered to his. He saw her register the words. He saw her register what was not in them more than what was. He saw her decide, in the small, composed way she had of deciding such things, not to remark upon it.
“Goodnight, William,” she returned, her voice very carefully composed.
She laid her hand on the banister, not on his sleeve, nor near his sleeve, and went up the stairs alone.
He stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her go, her curves a teasing farewell that made his heart ache. He did not follow.
When she had turned at the landing and slipped out of sight, he crossed the hall to his study. He closed the door behind him quietly, as a man closed a door he did not wish any person in the house to hear.
He was not the sort to cavort at White’s or more unseemly establishments. He was unsure if it was a product of his temperament or his disfigurement. He would drown his sorrows in brandy and pour himself into his work.
Anne stood at her bedroom window for a long while after she had closed the door.
The garden below was blue in the late summer twilight.
Somewhere, a dog was barking. Three short barks and then a pause, and then three more, as though it had something it was trying to communicate and was not being understood.
He did not offer me his arm.
It was a small thing. It was such a small thing that if she had said it aloud to anyone, she would have sounded like a woman making a fuss about nothing. Yet, she had been ill.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window.
She had said, I do not want it. She had said it in his arms of all places. She had said it while clinging to the front of his shirt, with his hand cradling the back of her head, and she had meant that she was frightened.
She had meant that she was terrified out of all reason. She had meant that she could hear her mother’s screams in her ears and had been unable to hear anything else. She had not meant that she did not want to have his child. She had not meant that a child of theirs would not be…
A dream come true.